The Sons Of Gorgax

As a part of this brief series of recaps - what I have been up to in the past three years, basically - it is my pleasure to present to you, the imaginary reader, my SONS OF GORGAX! Now, these chaps started life as The Sons Of Entropy (and will become so, once again), but they were a hotch-potch of different Chaos Space Marine kits and were painted in a wildly disparate range of painting abilities. Some of the models were among my first proper attempts at unit painting, whilst others were more proficient and involved weathering and the like... And so I decided - just like with my Blood Angels - to restart them from scratch. I used a couple of Burning Of Prospero box sets to equip myself with a good old pile of MkIII Power Armour and set to re-imagining my army. This time with far less of a Chaos-y influence...

Here, for starters, is my Chaos Knight! This chap was acquired back when the Chaos Knight kit was only available through Forge World. I really like this model, although I don't get to use him very often. The base has weirdly warped now, though, so I will need to sort that out before he sees the light of day once again...

Similar things apply to this: my Spartan Assault Tank! It's great! And ENORMOUSLY heavy, seeing as how it is pretty much a solid block of resin. I don't get to use it very often though, unfortunately, as it is so expensive in terms of points.

My metal boxes continued with this: my revamped Chaos Vindicator. Previously, it was flat, dull and uninteresting, but I brightened up its paintjob, gave it some nice, bright hazard striping to the dozer blade, and I gave it plenty of weathering (oh, and some transfers, too!) It was fun! Still haven't used it since the repainting, though...

And ditto to this Land Raider! You may notice a growing trend, here... To be honest, most of my games of regular 40K are around the 50-75PL (which I guess equates to 1000-1500pts or thereabouts), so a Land Raider is too expensive to use in these kind of scenarios.

This chap HAS seen the light of day, and he was good fun. In fact, I have another two of these lurking in my Box Of Shame, and why I haven't gotten around to constructing them yet, I don't know. They're fun to build, paint and play with - what's not to love?

But THIS is where things became a lot more useful. My key colour scheme for the Sons of Gorgax is the triad of green, purple and brass. Specifically, Vallejo Heavy Khaki, Xereus Purple and Vallejo Rust. At the time, I thought I was spending ages painting these line infantry guys, but in hindsight I managed to whizz through them pretty quickly. The MkIII armour lends itself well to simple schemes, and it works pretty effectively, I think.

As I mentioned, these guys are trying to resist the more extreme aspects of their descent into Chaos, and are trying to master the forces of the Empyrean, rather than be manipulated by them themselves. We all know how that goes, mind... Still, this is reflected in the fact that these guys are a bit more orthodox in their appearance.

The Cultists, on the other hand... well, they're weak-minded mortals, and are starting to feel the effects of  Nurgle more keenly. Some mutations have begun to appear, and they are all generally a ragtag bunch of ne'er-do-wells. With Cultists it was ever thus.

And so, onto more interesting models! Here I have a Hellforged Leviathan Dreadnought, which I realised - not long after putting him together - was positioned atop an inappropriately small base. Hnnnnntz. That's something to work on in the future, I guess! This guy is a monster, though - and loads of fun to paint and play with.

This project was also great fun because I was able to paint up a load of different characters as part of the journey. This army was particularly good for that, as I was pursuing a particular theme: bridled Chaos. So there were hints of degradation, but the characters and commanders could still display their own original traits. A good example of this would be my Warpsmith - he's a Forge World MkIII Techmarine, and I kitbashed him a little to make him 40K-compatible. I think this dude works pretty well for an army that is essentially uses Iron Warriors rules.

This guy was originally a Primus Medicae - an event-only 30k model that I acquired from eBay. I loved the aesthetic of him, even though he didn't really fit into any of the traditional 40K Chaos Space Marine roles. His build just seemed so well-suited to a Nurgle army, though. I have used him as a Sorcerer, but to be honest I will mostly use him as a non-combatant character, simply to support the Chapter's backstory.

Whilst I polished off some of the new units, I also revisited some of the older ones, such as this Hellbrute. I needed to update the colour scheme to make it conform with the Sons of Gorgax, wwhilst his base needed to be updated to match the new troops. I was pretty pleased with the end results, if truth be told.

It was also a great chance for me to work through some of my older, unopened boxes in my pile of shame. These Chaos Bikers had been untouched for years before I decided I needed something to pop into my Fast Attack slots! I Plasma-ed them up so they have some punch on the tabletop, but in all honesty my main driving (geddit?) factor here was adding an extra splash of purple to the models - something the plasma coils on their guns gave me the opportunity to add.

And so, there you go. Not all of the army has been showcased here - that would take far too long - but here is something of a family photograph...

It's not everything, but it gives you an idea of the scale of things in this project. This, combined with my Blood Angels army, gives me about 10,000pts of painted 40K goodness, and that should be enough by anybody's standards...

...except I am a glutton for punishment! Earlier this year, I succumbed to my own internalised pressure and bought some Death Guard. I had received a handful of models for Christmas 2018, and once I painted them up, I was hooked. I set about having a hobby purge, and have amassed another wince list of embarrassing riches, made up of lovely new Death Guard models which will see me REVISITING the revisiting of the Sons of Entropy! The army above shall represent the army in their early stages, as the Sons Of Gorgax, in the latter years of M.41, but my new Death Guard army (and it is an army) shows them post-Dark Imperium and the emergence of the Cicatrix Maledictum. You will have to wait to see what I have been up to with them, though, as there was a lot that went on in the interim.... Watch this space...