Sam's 2nd Ed. Catachans - Welcome to the Jungle, we got fun and flamethrowers!

So its that time again for a wrap up post. Don't ask me, but somehow I stand victorious! Honestly, I'm so surprised I made it this year. It really was touch and go pretty much every month. I'd like to say its because I now have two kids and I moved house, and it would be accurate (particularly moving house is a lot of work!), but to be fair I'm also insanely lazy, procrastinate a lot and play shitloads of video games. So, for sure I would've had good excuses to enter the field of bones, but I wouldn't have been happy about it at all. Anyhow that's all water under the bridge because we made it, and I'm sure you care more about the below than all this preamble nonsense!

Suitably grainy pic for WD nostalgia purposes...
no, nothing to do with shitty camera, not at all sir!

Imperial Guard were my dream army for 40k when I was a kid, the one I always wanted but never had. Mostly because they were too expensive for an 11 year old. And to be fair that really still goes for now too, so when I was buying up stuff I basically looked for the best bargain, and that is how I ended up at Catachan's. That said the sculpts are fantastic and they have a really nice wide range of poses and weapons. They are also really nice to paint due to nice wide areas and easy highlights.

The army shot, yeah baby!

For the scheme I wanted to do something classic and specifically something over the top. For many goblin green is the colour of the era, but for me its the red weapons. I really just cant resist it. So I knew from the start that was happening and I opted for nice bright yellow to contrast for imperial insignia. The classic Catachan element was pretty much decided - green and black camo, red headbands and white vests - fairly similar to the Eavy Metal look. And for that over the top panache I knew I need to squeeze in those ridiculous yellow and black danger stripes, which I opted to use only for the important models. Overall I'm super happy with how they turned out, and honestly in retrospect I don't think I would change a thing.

The Command

The grunt command

Squad 1 (Ratlings in the back)

Squad 2 (HW Squad in the back)

Squad 3

Sort of armoured backup...

The list changed from my original, mostly because I never got round to buying the tanks. An IG army without the tanks is frankly a bit shit. However, the positive here is that during the challenge I painted all the infantry I will ever need. And that leads nicely into the what's next for the army, loads of tanks of course. I plan to at least add a Hellhound, Chimera, Leman Russ BT and Leman Russ Demolisher.

Of course like all good challengers I'm constantly thinking about what to do next year. I have a whole bunch of choices, loads of tanks being one, pointy eared tree huggers being another, colourful lizards being a third option and some good ol' undead being a distant fourth. I'll mull it over and decide closer to the time.  

Otherwise that's it for me. Looking forward to catching up on all the wrap up posts. And also looking forwards to putting these bad boys opposite Adam's Nids for some good ol' beerhammer funtimes, and fairly likely being consumed into the biomass thanks to a inopportune lack of armoured support at the Imperial resupply depot...

Until next year, peace out

Samuel