Imperial Guard of the Necro-8th regiment. First goal of 2014.

So my first completed models of 2014 are the men of the Imperium. 20 Veteran guardsman. Well, I cheated a little, these models were actually almost nearing completion some 3 years ago (built up the Necro-8th during 5th Edition). But that's not gonna take away my claim for "completed models for 2014"! Because thats exactly what I did. Complete them! 

This final push I have invigorated for this army is due to the fact that I would want to play more 40K this year as well and the looming arrival of the new Guard Book for 6th edition in March. Hopefully nothing much will be too drastically changed rendering my painted army totally unplayable..... 

Below you can see all 65 models (6x Ten man Veteran Squad & 1x Five man Company Command Squad). And out of them I put the finishing touches to the first 20 Veterans.

I'll talk a little more about the models I have for my Necro-8th Army. The base of the models are from the now Generic Cadian troopers. In order to make them look different I opted for less bulky armour and overall size.

The excellent Pig-Iron Gas masked heads were a perfect fit for them. Giving them a pseudo Steel Legion/Krieg look.

As you can see in the comparison to the standard Cadian model, I took a scalpel and trimmed down the shoulder pads till it looked just like a sleeve. This not only made the model more realistic (in reference to standard army fatigues) but I feel it drastically changes the shape of the whole model.

Another step I took was trimming down the side pockets, yet another bulk reducing measure. The Guardsmen of the Necro-8th looks sleek now.

However this was a painstaking process and after cutting down 20 shoulder pads my fingers were sore. Multiply that by 65 models meant 130 shoulder pads to cut down and 130 side pockets!!!

Here are all 20 of them fully painted and based.
Yay now I have 20 models to my 2014 painted miniatures count!

A close up shot of the completed models.

One other thing which I made a habit a couple of years ago was to date the models when they were finally completed. (complete as in finished, game over, I'm never gonna paint/repaint this model ever again kind of finished)

This is really a nifty idea (can't credit it I don't recall but it's definitely from someone else's blog, sorry!) as it helps us keep track of when we painted a model (obviously). Not only that its a nice archiving system and I regret not doing this earlier with my models before I started doing this.

Wouldn't it be nice picking up that Butt-ugly Nagash model and look under to base to see 1998?

My next post will hopefully see me complete the other 45 models and then I'll move on to the Tanks of Necro-8th. Which are also abut 80% painted. Back to painting, till the next!