2014 challenge

With the holidays and work craziness out of the way I can start working on my men a little bit more.  In order to help focus me a bit on the giant nurgle project I've been slowly accumulating models for over the course of the last few months, I decided to jump right into the 2014 Independent Characters Hobby Progress Challenge.  This year is a bit different, instead of having 10 months to make an 1850 force, it is now split.  You have 5 months to make a 1000 point zone mortalis force (which basically means no vehicles other than dreadnoughts) and then another 5 to add another 1000 points and turn it into a full 2000 point army.

Since I just finished reading Horus Heresy Book II: Massacre from Forge World, I felt the need to concentrate on the marine side of my nurgle army, specifically a 30k force of Death Guard (using the forge world rules for HH).  Although I am building a 30k list, there are so many similarities that I can use these guys as regular space marines or chaos space marines if I ever end up playing a game with them (which most likely won't happen for a long, long time).

While I'm working on these marines, I'll also have my daemons in the background as something fleshy to work on to break up the monotony of white power armor.  Perhaps come fall I'll finally finish off the last few squads of Necrons I have.

Currently, I'm finishing up the last 4 Deathshroud Terminators I have before I dive into the challenge (it doesn't officially start until February).  I'm nearly done with them and then I've got some building to do.  My plan is to do all of my infantry in the first 5 months of the challenge and then I can spend the last 5 months painting tanks.  Here is my projected breakdown of the challenge....

February- tactical marines
March- legion vet squad + extra weapon dudes
April- 2- 5 man units of tactical support squads
May- 10 man breacher squad
June- Legion Praetor
July- Fire Raptor
August-plasma predator
September- Sicaran Battle Tank
October- Legion Glaive
November- Typhon

I would say I'm pretty much set in stone on the first 5 months of the challenge.  I have everything, and with the exception of the breacher marines everything is assembled.  I also have the fire raptor.  The rest of the it is up for grabs.  I changed my list around a lot last year (which is allowed) and I will probably do so again this year.  I would like to get a rhino, and old school land raider, the new grave warden models and some heavy weapon marines but they may not make it into the challenge due to time and points (not to mention $$$).  I want this list to be very pre-heresey death guard in construction.  Lots of overwhelming firepower (chemical weapons!), hard troops and plenty of tanks forming a slowly advancing wall of doom.  If the rumors are true and the Mortarion model comes out this year then I'm fucked, this whole list will have to be redone.

Here is my first months commitment, 10 marines.  Pretty boring shit.  These first few months are going to be rough trying to bust out all of these troops that basically look the same except for some guns.