Warhammer 40K Army project - Part 1: Symfony Of Suffering

I’ve been thinking about getting back into 40K for quite some time, I had some necrons as a kid, but this time I wanted a proper army. My old roommates got quite hyped as well and we decided to go for it.

First I had to decide on an army.

The pre-selection was easy, and I ended up with only two contenders, Drukhari or Sisters of Battle. But deciding between the two was so hard!

I really liked the Drukhari boats, the Incubi, and the idea of playing fast, mobile troops, strong enough to take on anything that stood in front of them in a bloody melee was quite endearing. I was not that excited about the covens miniatures however.

On the Sisters side, I loved most of their models, especially the Sacresants and the Zephyrim, and did you look at their tanks ? The Exorcist and the Immolator are georgeous!

After spending weeks hopping from one to the other, reading lore and checking their rules, I knew I’d end up doing both of these army at some point, but which one should I start with ?

I ended up picking the sisters, regular humans fighting against the horror of the universe with their faith, blood and flamethrowers.

Quite grimdark if you ask me.

They’re not enhanced like those boring space marines…(I actually like marines as well, but my roommates ended up with Ultramarines and Grey Knights so I must take jabs at them before they wipe my units), and therefore are super squishy (Toughness 3, 1 wound, if you look at them wrong, they might die).

But if you can keep them alive long enough to reach the enemy, they’ll take out some tough opponents before dying in the next turn. Whether it’s Repentias in close combat, or Seraphims with their 4 hand flamers.

So it was time to buy the first boxes!

I started by getting a box of the Sacresants and one of the Zephyrim, which was a little ambitious, it would have been wiser to take regular sisters to start. But shortly after, three buddies of mine got me a combat patrol box and Morvenn Vahl for my birthday!

The reasonable thing would have been to build and paint everything, but I stumbled upon an army of the faith box (which was not available anymore at any GamesWorkshop store) so I snatched it and added a group of Paragons to escort Morvenn.

all my sister boxes before I started to build anything

Well, that’s a lot of work.

I started by building the combat patrol, since it contained a squad of basic sisters this was probably the safest option to start.

First squad of Seraphims

The complete combat patrol built

I had a little fun on the Rhino and magnetized the rocket launcher to be able to remove it and return the hatch when the hunter-killer missile is used. It wasn’t super hard, but I’m really not looking forward to magnetize my Paragons.

At this stage, we played our first games with my roomates, ~530pts or so, A 1v1 against marines, and a 3 players free for all: marines against marines against sisters

In both game, my sisters couldn’t kill their toughest units (Terminators and a Dreadnought), and they were dying left and right every time they got out of cover. But I had more units than them, which allowed me to keep control of most objectives and win both games by a thread!

I then painted 2 of the sisters, trying to find my color scheme.

Committing to a paint scheme for an army is so much more intimidating than just painting board game miniatures. I’ll have to paint a lot more minis in the same style, and they gotta look good on the battlefield!

I knew I did not want to do the classic black/red theme, and I wanted to avoid metallic armor. After many try, I ended up with a dark grey armor, and a dark blue and white cloak.

But before finishing my first squad, I based all the already built miniatures! With some inspirations from online creators, I decided to try cork since it looked simple enough.

cork bases for the first squad

cork bases for the combat patrol

Once based, I had no more excuses, and went on painting heavily to have at least a full squad completed. They took way longer than expected, but here they are:

First squad completed!

I kept it somewhat simple, just trying to get them battle ready.

There were multiple times where I didn’t know where I was going, and I’m still a beginner painter, but I’m super happy with this squad!

What was especially difficult for me was the blending on the cloak, my colourblindness did not help and I could not see what I was doing.

The bases still need to be painted, but I’ve not yet decided how. Two main ideas are desert orange to provide a nice contrast or snowy to blend more with the minis. But I’ll probably wait till the full combat patrol is painted.

Now that I have something finished, I’m super excited about painting the rest of them, there is quite a lot of minis!

Next on the list: the Penitent Engine and the Arco-flagellants. Probably followed by the Repentias. I’m quite intimidated by all this skin I have to paint, but I’m gonna keep it simple and see where it’s going. I also want to build a few more units, to start playing 750pts game and then 1000pts even before they’re all painted.

I also need to find a name for this order of sisters and some basic lore, which could give me ideas for the bases or some conversions.

See you next time with all this good stuff in part 2 of this serie.

Faith guides the blade.