Reluctant Techmarine

This might come as a surprise since in my last post I talked about how much I love the Blood Angels.

Backstory

Way back in the days of 4th Edition 40k there was a box set called "Battle for Macragge". This was the first 40k product I got as a kid. My brother and I built, painted, and played the campaign. My Dad even made us a table out of wood so we could play on a full battlefield. I can't remember which side I took and who ended up winning, but it did exactly what it was designed to do; get myself and my brother into the hobby.

From there we started new armies. My brother picked Guard (which went on to become the start of my guard collection). I picked Tau for their futuristic look and advanced technology. Eventually he returned to Space Marines after loosing most of our games. With Space Marines, he was able to get a lot more wins (I wasn't a good Tau player). Not long after that we stopped playing for the foreseeable future.

One of my original Fire Warriors

Fast forward to 2020

With my growing interest in fielding a Blood Angels army the obvious choice was to re-base and repaint my old Marines. It would be a cheap way to get enough Tactical Marines to fill a battalion. My wallet had other ideas and suddenly I had 2000pts of unpainted Blood Angels. Including 20 intercessors and 10 Blood Angels Tacticals.

The bulk of my Blood Angels backlog

While I love Tacticals, it feels more fitting to leave them as Ultramarines. Unfortunately a few years ago I thought it was a great idea to respray and paint them as Blood Angels without stripping them. It's not good....

A (re)painted Space Marine

The project

While this is a sentimentally motivated project it's also a good opportunity to practice painting. It would be simple to just paint them up like the Ultramarines on most Space Marine boxes, but I wanted them to have a bit more personality. Since they used to face Tyranids and Tau, third company was the obvious.

Who are the Ultramarines 3rd Company?

The Ultramarines 3rd company are known as the "Scourge of Xenos". As the name suggests they're primarily suited to fighting the various Xenos threats. They've participated in notable campaigns such as The Damocles Crusade (Verse Tau) and the Tyrannic Wars (including the Battle of Maccrage!)

As stated by the Codex Astartes 3rd company have red trim on their shoulder pauldron. This is quite convenient since I have a lot of red.

The Models

When going through my models it was a surprise to find a bunch of model I don't remember having. The model list is:

1 Imperial Pilot (From battle of Macragge boxset)
1 Captain with Bolt Pistol and Powerfist
26 Tactical Marines (5 Sargents, tacticals with boltguns and various special weapons)
5 Scouts (1 Sargent, 1 Heavy Bolter)
5 Assault Marines (Various combinations of pistols and melee weapons)
1 Rhino
1 Predator (All Lascannons)

The soon to be Ultramarines

The biggest surprise was the scouts. I don't ever remember having them. We probably ran them as regular tacticals.

There are a few repairs that need to be made. The Lascannon sponsons on the Predator need to be reattached. One of the tactical Sargents needs it's chainsword fixed. Ultimately however, they all need to be stripped before anything can be done with them.

This should be an interesting project to undertake. I'll still be painting and building my Guard and Blood Angels minis in between so keep an eye out for those posts as well (Including a Valkyrie and Baneblade!)

Welcome to Reluctant Techmarine! This is my personal blog documenting my Warhammer 40k hobby and adventures. In this post we'll go over a bit about myself and what to expect from the blog.

About Me

I live in Brisbane, Australia. While I haven't gotten involved much with the scene here, there definitely is one. Brisbane has a Warhammer Championship Store out at Mt Gravatt which hosts the Australian 40k and AoS championships! So there's no shortage of games here if you're willing to look (although I am between FLGS at the moment).

While I only got back to into the Hobby in any serious capacity almost a year ago, I've known about 40k for about 15 years. That said, most of the time was reading Lore or tactics about the game instead of actually playing.

I mainly play Astra Militarum. I've always loved the concept of having waves of troops and walls of tanks. I love the wide variety of personally and play styles a Guard army can offer. From the static gun lines of Cadia, to the in your face Catachans, there's a bit of everything in the Guard!

My favourite faction however is the Blood Angels. I love their aggressive tactics, their lore, and their special units. Everything about them is interesting. I've always wanted to play them, but I fell into Guard first because I thought it matched my playing style better (and it did. Although ironically it turns out Blood Angels might be better for me after all!) After acquiring a lot of Blood Angels models, this year I plan on finally fulfilling my dream of playing a Blood Angels Force!

While these are my favourite I do enjoy a lot of the factions available in 40k. My first army when I initially started playing over a decade ago was Tau. I still have all those models. I've considered playing heaps of armies including (but not limited to) AdMech, Imperial Fists, even Inquisition at some point. Maybe one day I'll branch out. I do love the look of some of the new AdMech units set to be released later this year.

Why start a blog?

I've always wanted to start a blog but I never had anything to write about. As I got back into Warhammer I started reading more blogs. Eventually I decided I wanted to start my own, but I again didn't know what I would write about. Eventually the answer came to me.

Like most people, I have a large pile of unbuilt and unpainted miniatures. I also have some old minis I want to redo, and I'll always be buying more. I'm not very good at painting however, and I find building a bit tedious at times (more on that later). As a result, I thought this would be a great opportunity to document my projects and show my hobby progression.

Why Reluctant Techmarine?

The name Reluctant Techmarine sort of just came to me (clique I know). The inspiration was based around how I felt about building and painting. I love the idea of building a force, but I really wanted to play more than anything. One of the reasons I don't like building is that I hate using glue. I find it annoying to deal with and get paranoid about it sticking to my skin when I use it. I'm also not very good at using it but I am improving.

All that said, I do love planning out and building characters/units/armies and the sense of achievement I get when I have the finished project on the table or displayed in a case. I also generally like building things (I work in software development).

Considering those factors, my love for the Blood Angels, and my motivation to document my building and painting, Reluctant Techmarine was born.

What to expect

Since my unbuilt and unpainted pile is so large most content initially will be around those topics in the form of project posts and updates. I'll probably get into battle reports at some point when I get around to playing more often. Variety will increase as I get into a routine of writing and posting more frequently.

If any of that interests you I hope you stick around! Stay tuned for my first project post coming soon.