Army Theme and To Do List

Felt pretty sick last night, so stayed in and painted for a long while. I got the white drybrush on most of the guardsmen that I had painted so far, and even added a picture of a club (the suit, not the weapon) to their bases as part of their platoon markings. I still need to add regiment, platoon, squad and rank markings to their pauldrons, as well as do some touch up on the models in general, but they are about finished. Yay!



A note about my army: I'm going for a playing card theme, as you may have been able to gather from my pics so far. No, I'm not really sure where the idea came from (probably one night while I was insomniac and decided to start painting), but it's been a lot of fun to paint so far and helps keep everything fresh as I'm not just using the same paint scheme over and over again. I'm also a big fan of card games, Euchre in particular, so that was a plus. I also didn't want to go with one of the more established armies, as it seems that as opposed to every other force in 40k to choose a different Imperial Guard army is to choose a completely separate model line. I don't want to be Cadian, but I do want to use their models and Catachan models... so I went for the crazy theme instead.



Clubs and Hearts will be the markings for my two platoons; Clubs will contain all/the majority of heavy weapons and will play base defense, while Hearts will be led by Al'Rahem and contain special weapon squads. Ironically I am mostly using Hearts platoon these days but only have Clubs platoon painted up in any significant numbers... Diamonds and Spades are reserved for my veterans, who have the better equipment and training as well as the authority to act more independently on the field. Certain characters will be representative of all 4 suits, such as my HQ choices and Marbo. And, as you can tell, I've decided on using painted bases as I think I want to see my troopers as game pieces rather than people... kind of reflects Imperial philosophy to some extent in that way.

Since I love Euchre so much, ranks are according to the cards available in that most awesome of games.
9- Guardsman
10 (or X)- Sergeant
J- Stormtroopers, Psykers, Sentinels, as they all tend to act very independent from the rest of the army and can have a large impact on the game if used correctly (in Euchre, Jacks of the trump suit and the same color suit are the highest cards in the game)
Q- Junior Officer
K- Senior Officer
A- Allies, Commissars and Marbo (because, really, he deserves to be on his own)

I am unsure of what the markings will be for my vehicles, as I am unsure of whether or not to make them part of the 24th or simply attachments to it, as I see the Fortunan regiments as more light infantry with occasional armor back up from attached companies.

Looking at my models that I have right now, here's what I still need to build.

2 Demolition charge guardsmen
1 flamer guardsman
4 melta guardsmen
1 plasma guardsman
4 carapace armored plasma vets
3 sniper vets
3 melta vets
1 Sgt Harker
1 carapace armored Company Commander
1 Platoon Commander
1 Al'Rahem counts as
1 Commissar with power weapon and bolt pistol
Possibly 6 more regular guardsmen for Clubs platoon if I don't want them to contain heavy weapon teams.

And I need to finish building and paint a Leman Russ, two chimeras and four sentinels. And paint up Hearts platoon. And finish off the heavy weapons teams. Lots of work ahead for me...