so I’ve recently returned from two weeks of road-tripping around Ireland. During that time I finalised the fluff for the Adulators.

But then the new Space Marine Codex came out.

Overcome with the shiny new book and awesome formations, I have put the Adulators on the back burner and returned to my other created chapter, the Sons of Anubis. I have begun tarting them up ready to play in a campaign weekend with some friends in July, so very much looking forward to that!

The Adulators are coming along. I have begun composing some background for them. To help with this I have been using the Chapter Creation Tables from the Deathwatch role playing game. A rundown of the tables can be found here:

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Space_Marine_Chapter_Creation_Tables

It’s a really good starting point and provides a frame for you to build the story of your chapter. Once I have finished everything I will post it up.

On the painting front I have finished the first model for my tactical squad.

I’m very happy with how he turned out. It was a fairly simple job after spraying the various sub-assemblies. Now on to the rest of the squad!

“Adulator”, from “adulation” meaning “excessive admiration or praise”.

When I found the name Adulators in a list of Space Marine chapters I immediately checked the dictionary to see what the name meant and found the above. From there I could create a rough idea of background for this mysterious chapters.

I decided that the Adulators would be one of the few chapters that venerated the Emperor as a God. This is rare amongst the Astartes though notable exceptions include the Black Templars and the Fire Angels. Both of these chapters followed the Imperial Faith to some extent. I saw the Adulators being a more extreme version of the two, like religious fanatics in power armour.

Friends of mine drew comparisons of my vision to pre-Heresy Word Bearers, and they would be right to do so. The difference being that before the Heresy, venerating the Emperor as a god was strongly dissuaded by the Emperor himself. This drove the Word bearers to chaos. In the 41st millennium however, a space marine chapter venerating the Emperor as a god would be positively encouraged by the likes of the Ecclesiarchy.

Therefore I saw the Adulators having close ties to the Ecclesiarchy. I saw them calling the Adulators only in the most dire situations, where the Adepta Sororitas would not be enough, and a heavier hand than the Fire Angels would be needed. The Adulators would be fanatics utterly loyal to the Imperium and their god on his golden throne.

From here I plan to make more detailed background. So far all I have is that the chapter master will be called Darius and will wield a meteor hammer (because it just sounds awesome!).

In terms of painting I have made a (slow) start on a unit of ten marines. I spray the arms separate from the bodies so as not to get any red on the white of the main body.

Space Marines are my favourite  army from Games Workshop. It doesn’t even matter if they are loyalist or traitor; if it’s 9ft tall and wears power armour then I love it. There’s many reasons why I love them so. They have the most extensive lore of any race in the game, stretching over millennia. The range of models is enormous, and offers so much in terms of converting and kit bashing. They have even made the leap to video games.

So for this particular project I have decided to go with a loyalist chapter. The reason being that they are more varied, in terms of model and background. I have had several other loyalist marine armies including Dark Angels, Raven Guard, Grey Knights, and my own chapter, the Sons Of Anubis. I have loved every one of those armies and still add to my Sons of Anubis from time to time. But then the hobby itch got me and I wanted to start another chapter.

Blood Angels had always appealed to me. They are the epitome of the Emperor’s Angels of Death. I love that they bring the fight to the enemy, and despite their angelic appearance they are still flawed. However I know quite a few Blood Angels players and I don’t like to step on people’s toes too much. I decided then that I would use the rules for Blood Angels but for my own chapter.

One of the great things about space marines is that they encourage a lot of creativity. The ability to create your own chapter and apply existing rules to them from one of the existing codices is very appealing. I fell to this a few years ago and made my Sons of Anubis; a run-of-the mill marines army.

This time I would use the Blood Angels rules rather than “vanilla”. I searched for a list of existing space marine chapters to give me an idea of names. One of the first on the list was the Adulators. Nothing existed for them: no paint scheme, no back ground, nothing. So I decided I would take them and make them my own.

First I needed a paint scheme. I had always wanted to paint an army in white simply to challenge myself, and red contrasts well with white. A bright red rather than a dark red, plus white and gold, symbolised that they were loyalist. After a bit of time messing with an app, I settled on this as the basic scheme:

After painting a test model using spare bits, I felt ready to begin the project: an army of Adulators Space Marines!

Wargaming. I love it.

I’ve been playing table-top war games (predominantly those of Games Workshop) for over 15 years, and I show no signs of stopping!

In fact, I have decided to create this blog to chronicle my various projects. Currently I am working on a Horus Heresy Night Lords legion, but my newest project idea (and main inspiration for this blog) are the new 40k space marines chapter I have created.

The Adulators are coming..