I've always been a big fan of painting models exactly like codex, army book, fluff, and/or real life historical markings and schemes. I've also been a big fan of, "they're your dolls, painting 'em however you want." The third choice, however, it to paint them like something else. I've thought long and hard about painting a Cadian Imperial Guard army up like GI Joe and Cobra. The Cobra half would be a blob squad with a couple of characters like Destro, Cobra Commander, and the Baroness. The Joe half would be veteran squads with heavily converted models to make up all of the "good guys." Duke, Flint, Gung Ho, Snake Eyes, and Beachhead were my favorites. Tunnel Rat too. I've seen a couple of others before, but I really like the look of this guy's Cobra army: Cobra Themed GI Joe - Imperial Guard Army Other cool models I've seen have been the Gundam Tau: A whole bunch of Avengers:

I had this thought the other day as I was working on an army list. What if Detachments and Formations were developed as a deliberate attempt to sabotage "net lists?" After Games Workshop shut down their own tournament series, lots of armies were built the same way because the independent tourneys published the winning lists online for everyone to mimic. The proliferation of Formations and all of the new codex specific Detachments could be the way Nottingham has decided to guide players into building lists that are a bit more fluffy and in character. Of course, the cynic in me says it could also just be a simple sales technique to sell more vehicles and models that are slow movers. Either way, I love the bonuses of the Salamander Flame Strike formation, but I don't really want to take a devastator squad. At least the current rules don't force me to arm them with any actual heavy weapons...

Today I played in a 1,500 point Rogue Trader style tournament and did very well. I brought my "Bastards of Badab" Astral Claws army and came in second by getting the most victory points. I brought a Space Marine biker CAD, a Librarius Conclave all rolling on Telepathy, and a Sky Hammer Annihilation Force with 3 grav and multimeltas in the devastator squads. I switched from White Scars chapter tactics to Ultramarines recently and I'm glad I did. The doctrines, even though I only get to use each one once in this build, have been a big help because I don't need to put librarians with divination nearby. If this had been a larger point game, I would have brought devastator centurions and because of the Ultramarines Chapter Tactics, I don't need to sink a lot of points into Tigurius. The conclave on bikes usually means that I can throw some sort of protection on the CentsDevs. In my first battle, I played Eli and his Khorn Daemonkin. It was Vanguard deployment...

One of the many side projects is building a 40k Old Hammer list. I think a Space Marine was among the first minis I ever painted and of course I painted him just like the blue armor and white helmeted chaps on the box. I still had a handful of the old Rouge Trader models sitting around collecting dust but I recently started assembling an army in earnest about the time the Horus Heresy models from Forge World were released. My plan was to build a real Heresy army out of RT models and I've finally started that ball rolling with these classic minis. I've got about 2,000 points lined up to build my Ultramarines, complete with Tac squads in rhinos, termies, a librarius conclave, and a land raider. I can almost field a Gladius Strike Force...