MONTHLY MUSTER - JANUARY: HORUS HERESY DEATH GUARD
The debut project of 2026 is a strong start to the year. This month, I am taking a huge Horus Heresy Death Guard army, bought second hand and needing some TLC, and turning it in to a mighty, glorious warhost for the tabletop. And best of all, I’m giving them away at the end of the month! In this first of four articles, I go over week one of four on this projects progress.
WIN THIS ENTIRE PROJECT!
Once this army is complete, I’ll be handing over to long time friend of all things Unrelenting, Dave Barfield. He found himself with some terrible cards dealt pre Christmas. To support him in his adventure to start his own online hobby store, he’s being given this project when completed, and raffling it off to a donor on his gofund me page. More details can be found on this HERE.
The State of Play:
Rescue project purchased second hand off FB marketplace. Not all of this will be in the list finalised.
This lot had been in the wars (Ha). The paint was thankfully on almost everything very thin. Which meant little to no stripping would be required. The vehicles were almost all in some form if disrepair. The front panels off and greenstuff filling the brackets on the rhinos where they’d sit (I have no idea why…). Track pieces were broken off in several places but thankfully all accounted for. The amount of pintle bolters was obscene or not fit for a legal list. So they needed ripping off and replacing. The Scorpious was the only tank where the paint was too thick. Some application in some IPA and the worst of it was sorted. And bizarrely most of all, none of the tanks had headlamps that should have had them. So they’d need to be sourced and applied.
The infantry were in a mostly ok form. Some of the heads were facing in odd direction that were unnatural but they pinged off with minimal effort. almost all the marines had bolters, so clearly a line spam tac list was the original intent. I wanted something a bit more interesting so started ripping off arms and bolters with reckless delight.
Before any of this though, I wanted to get a 3000 point list together. Game legal, potent without spam and thematic to the Death Guard. Here’s what I decided to work toward:
This all came to a delightful and exact 3000 Points.
So with a clear target in mind. I wanted to dedicate week one of this challenge to adding bits to the list (The Praetor, Centurion, Spartan and Leviathan were all donated from my stash), printing the bits that were needed to make the infantry better and repairs to the vehicles. By the end of the week I wanted to have the whole army primed and ready to paint for week 2. And with tester/s to show.
Using a sharpie, I assigned code to the underside of each base so each squad was clear (T1 - Tac Squad 1. T2 - Tac Squad 2. I - Inductii. B - Breachers.
Repairs, Printing and Building
The vehicles had all their tracks added, their exhaust stacks pinged off (Ease of painting), marines adjusted and tweeked and assigned to their squads and all the pintle weapons on the vehicles removed. Printing involved heads to spice up the infantry, replacement hatches for the cupolas that needed them and the all important Vexilla and Voxes, that came out absolutely mega. These are not only really useful to keep your squads in play, but they add so much flavour to the army, I’m glad I decided to add the effort in to them. Once that was done, I built the Leviathan Dreadnought, the Spartan and the Centurion. Once everything was printed, built, repaired and completed, I added texture to the bases ready to paint once the units are set and painted. I do this to stop that awful ‘lul’ period when you finish painting something, and then apply texture to bases and wait forever for it to dry. Proper painting buzzkill! Doing this now doesn’t slow you down later.
By this point I was a day ahead of schedule! Using extra strength elastic bands when building tanks reduces the stress of gap filling later. Super glue activator was a massive support with all the resin that needed gluing and it was so satisfying seeing this once slapped and dashed army starting to take somewhat of a form.
Seriously, how sick are these handheld vexilla?
With everything built, prebased and ready to rock it was time to get some testers underway!
Tester Painting
I’d been trying to decide if I wanted to paint this army in the nice traditional Heresy Death Guard scheme of sickly sepia and green, or go for the old school black library colours of marble white and deep green. I figured I may as well paint up one of each and see how it goes and get a consensus and make an informed choice.
Bill and Ben, our Tac Testers.
The Black Library Scheme took significantly less work, but didn’t look anywhere as nice as the traditional scheme which took a good chunk more effort.
Above is a rough guide on the colours and paints used for each tester. If you have any questions or comments, join the discord and fire away. So with the tester done, and the effort and result paying off for the traditional scheme, I was locked in for the whole army to start being painted. I primed everything Colour Forge Matt Black (Until my half used can ran out with a few tanks left to do). By this point, I was two days ahead of schedule, which was mega!
B B B B BONUS CONTENT!
Thursday came. I was out of Matt Black and my pals at Tabletop Events were due some on Friday. So I decided while the sun was shining, I’ll make hay and get started painting! I decided on a Rhino and the 5 Terminators. Confident I could paint these up in a day, and they’d be good to executed the scheme on some larger models and practice for all the tanks. Following the same process of how I did the infantry, it all came together in no time with no issues at all. The balance of bright colours, weathering and the dark rusty bases I feel tells a great story of on the cusp of corruption Death Guard. Post Istvaan and slowly delving in to the madness of the Dark Gods. It will also make for a super grabbing and attractive army on the tabletop.
Friday I decided to spend doing admin, packing some commissions to post next week and getting ready for a Middle Earth event I was attending on Saturday at Tabletop Events (And to pick up some needed black spray…
That’s week one done! Don’t forget, any questions you have regarding this project can be asked directly in the Discord in the Monthly-Muster channel, where regular updates throughout the day are shared so you get first hand exclusive insights on to how the project is coming to life. A video tutorial will be underway next week as how to paint this scheme exactly, so watch this space.
And, for your chance to win this army once completed, head to Dave Barfield’s Gofundme page here, and follow the instructions for your chance to win a fully painted, 3000 point Death Guard army!
Until next week! When the painting of 40 odd infantry begins proper. \m/
