Tyrell's Warband - The History of My Chaos Space Marines

It's back to work for me tomorrow.  I'm not sure exactly what update schedule this blog will fall into when I'm working - we'll see quite hot it all plays out.  Obviously it becomes a little harder to dedicate time to painting & modelling when one is working 9 till 5 but we shall see if I can't keep progress going on Fulgrim and the rest.

I thought today I'd talk a bit about my Chaos Space Marines and why I have the army I have. 
The Noise Marines are a unit I've always had a fondness for.  They are both scary and funny - a mixture dating back to the older days of 40K where a unit armed with guitars rocking people to death seemed a good idea.  I think it's the art from the 2nd Ed Codex Chaos which really sold me on them.  In that black and white illo, they are made to like they're extras from an Iron Maiden album cover.

"D'yee noe any Slayer?"

 B.ack in 2002/2003 I made an attempt to restart 40K and a Slaanesh-heavy army was the plan - Vanilla Space Marines seemed a bit dull to me now, but I could still cannibalise some old Vanilla marines this way to bulk out my force.  I picked up stuff, including mail ordering various bits since the core Noise Marine box set of the era came with a rather unimpressive 1 sonic blaster - but alas, when I tried to order the original Noise Marine figure, it turned out it was now out of print.

NO ROCK FOR YOU, MR QUAIL

I made a few additional eBay purchases, statted up a target army with the 3.5 Codex and assembled some figures - I even named my various units and characters.  (Spot the roleplayer.)  My dark lord and master would be Tyrell of Arden IX - the gentleman whose quote regularly opens Slaanesh description articles in Warhammer books, and first appeared in the original Realms of Chaos volume and the first true codification of the Chaos Gods.

Slaves to Darkness, Page 266 - the original quote.

And, yes, before you ask, he had combat card too! 

These little battered cards obviously influenced me way more than I thought!

Nothing much happened with this, army attempt, though.  I kept on roleplaying but miniature nerdity sat in limbo (bar a bit of Blood Bowl painting) until October 2011 when I was encouraged by my girlfriend to try my hand at it again, and through some chums I met on Facebook started playing again.  A year down the line I had a fairly solid wee army - the fact I was unemployed for a few months meant I had some time on my hands to paint.

My army as of September 2012 - Still mostly old figures stripped and repurposed, with a few eBay purchases mixed in.

Another year on and the army has continued to grow.  Out of interest I got it all out before Christmas, added up the point value of everything I owned.... and discovered I now had about 6700 points worth of figures painted up.

Many more eBay "bargains" represented here.

From a certain point of view that's a huge force and can be mostly described as "completed" - when would I ever need more figures than that?  And yet, I still have plenty of figures (many of them eBay "bargains") to paint up.  More Raptors, more Noise Marines, more Bikes and, yes, more Dreadnoughts.   :-)