Circumnavigating the Silver Space Marines of Everything… With Marines Exemplar!

Howdy peeps (croeso welsh readers!),

I've decided to gainfully employ my daemon prince (after I finished painting his skin and all the 'internal glowy fire bits' like, last year) and get with the new chaos muhreens.  Problem...I don't own many chaos muhreens, and a shiny new codex 'everything' has just come out for the good guys.  Alongside my high elves, lizardmen, beastmen, Eldar and Dark Eldar, it's difficult for me to create a space on the paint table for one army, let alone two!

I do however, have a few Black Templars left lying around, and an un-opened dark vengeance boxed set.   I think you can see where I'm going with this.

Using different codices for the same power armoured lumps works very well for many people, indeed my friends blood wolves are alternatively used as blood angels and space wolves, with some of the more specific models added/subtracted as required, and I wanted very much the same flexibility of one army, two dexes, a few specialist models to make them different.  Obvious advantages are that it's half the price, and half the time in painting/assembling.

I didn't however want to go down the generic advice of 'paint them all silver and use whatever dex you want', or 'paint them black and say that they're pre-heresy/fallen'.  I don't like going with the crowd.  So I decided upon using a space marine force turned recently renegade, sprinkling daemon princes and hellbrutes into the renegade lists and dreads and sternguard into the loyalist lists.  This will also let me use the librarian as a sorcerer etc, and add a little narrative to my forces.

Not wanting to repaint lots of Templars, I looked for a mainly black colour scheme that was a touch different, and settled upon the marines exemplar.  Black with red arms, so only some red to do on over half my models, and a pretty blank back-story for me to fill in myself (yes, I know that there are other exemplar players out there with their own take on the chapter, but as much as I don't want to upset anybody part of the beauty of warhammer is the ability to have your own artistic licence, and they can always ignore me lol).

So, they are going to be the 5th Company 'Hellhounds' of the Marines Exemplar, one of the Astartes Praeses created to guard against excursions from the eye of terror.  The hellhounds nickname has a double meaning, being that of the dog that guards the gate to hell, and also of the hounds that set forth from hell to hunt down good Christians (or Imperials...).  And although they have done their duty well, disillusionment with being forever stuck in a meatgrinder war against the chaos fleets, just numbers on vid-screens, for century after century has seen enmity creep in to the 5th Company as they are denied the role of hero that so many other chapters receive.  And being so close to the eye, the powers of Chaos eventually find a way to use that enmity and turn the Hellhounds.......

I've limited it to the 5th company as firstly I can't see me ever having more than a hundred marines in my collection (and the bad guys can always 'hire in' some other renegades if I do) and then it also gives plenty of scope for everyone else in the world to either ignore me (most likely result), or take another company in the chapter, add my story to their own narrative (especially if I ever face another exemplar player!) or create a new 5th company to replace my renegades.

I'm currently de-badging the dark vengeance models, and the termies, captain and librarian are all done (and even converted a bit too!) and I'll get some pics up of my WIP models soon.

Please feel free to tell me your thoughts, good idea? bad idea?

Until next time folks,

Adios

Neil