WIP: I Am Alpharius- Starting My Alpha Legion Army

Ah, that new army smell. Super excited to get started on these guys.

It's a little surprising that I've been in the GW hobby for over 2 years now, and this is the first basic Space Marine model I've touched. Only slight miscalculation I made using loyalist models to make my Alpha chapter is the over abundance of aquillas on all the armor. These guys are going to be pretty rusted, so I think I can make them look appropriately traitor by taking a file to the aquillas and banging them up.

I've given it a quick shot, and I think it'll work out well. Will kind of make it look like battle damage, but could also be purposeful desecration of the Loyalist symbol.

I bought some FW Alpha shoulder pads, so that will help them look the part. Will likely press mold some of the details to customize a few more. I'm also thinking about sculpting some scales on to a shoulder pad to see how it comes out. If I can get the handle on Green Stuff, then I can mold that one and use it over and over. I don't want to overdo it, but a few of those Hydra elements sprinkled throughout will help add a lot of character and keep these from looking like too-light-blue Ultramarines.

Fluff-wise, It's probably more Alpha for every soldier to look identical, but what's the fun in that? I'm already taking some liberties here going with modern armor so I don't mind cheating a bit more. In my world, the Alphas have gotten ahold of some post-Heresy armor as part of their nefarious efforts to blend with the Loyalists. I don't care if that's a blatant back-end justification of my not wanting to paint basic CSM troops or pay for FW models. I think they're going to look great and I can't wait to start painting. I think I'm going to force myself to assemble all 20 troops I've got though, and maybe mock up a Chaos Lord HQ from my Ultramarines command set so I can batch paint all of them at once. That'll take some time if I'm really going to do some sculpting and customizing here (and will likely mean I'll have to find some other interesting blog topics for a while), but it'll be worth it in the long term.

~Deet