Without further ado:

“During M42, The Custiam Capitis or The Head Guard in low gothic, chapter operated not as a cohesive whole but rather small detachments of ten to twenty Astartes. These detachments were sent by Roboute Guilliman himself to guard and provide support to key Imperial figures. The above marine, Lucius Aelius was detached to the Swords of Davion to assist their Primus Astartes integrating into the chapter.

Capitis squads have saved many lives, especially those in the Imperium Nilius, however there are some reports that they serve a more sinister role of Guilliman’s spies or leashing the opinions of those that would go against his wishes.”

Well now you say “dude, what the hell is the Something Heretical Chapter Challenge”, well let me explain.

Every year or so, a bunch of goons get together and grab a name or two from here, then commit to painting a single Intercessor Astartes, commonly the marine from the easy build/start warhams today magazine. Sometimes there are modifiers on the ruleset, such as ‘hard mode’ where if you ask for a ‘reroll’ of your chapter name, you have a banned and must use citadel colour on top of coming up with a scheme.

This year we went with a simple, 2 rolls and pick the one you like system. I scored the aforementioned HEAD GUARD and VERMILLION MENTORS.

I chewed on the schemes for a bit. The Head Guard was a silly name but a cool concept of Roman Praetorian Guard esque marines came to mind pretty easy. The Vermillion Mentors concepts I came up with where pretty much ‘The Mentor Legion, but red’ and schemes were all ‘Well that’s a Blood Angel/Blood Raven’ or they looked way to similar to my 2017 challenge marine (more on him soon.)

So, Purple is defo in, I also wanted to hit at the roman style of armour that you see in Gladiator.

Well that doesn’t look too bad! I ended up modifying the helm to add more purple/silver into the mix. Combine this with a command transfer for a gold head surrounded by wreaths, painting over a tac symbol so it’s GOOOOOLLLLLD and boom. 2019 CCM is doneski.

Just so I can say I beefed out the artic… EXPANDED ON MY IDEA, here is my 2017 marine:

“The Battle Slayers are a fleet based Salamander successor. The chapter operates as a rapid response force to brewing conflicts, favouring rapid leadership decapitation of anti imperial elements. The chapter has gained notoriety after a Battle Slayer’s fleet, lead battle barge Repentless drop podded the chapter enmass in response to the Chaos cell “eyes of the insane” engineering a slave’s revolt on on the planet of Araya.

Some imperial elements, namely Tiberious Rex of the Swords Of Davion, characterised the Battle Slayer’s use of brute force as excessive, even for astartes. Chapter Master Bostaph responded that he would rather paint a “world in blood than doom a planet to spend even a single season on the abyss”.

Despite the criticism, the chapter enjoys support and favour from forgeworld Metallica, with Battle Slayer and Metallica forces frequently supporting each other on campaign.”

I was banned from Caledor Sky and had to use Steel Legion drab. I really wanted to cheeky wink at the band slayer, hence the colours and chapter symbol. You can read up on the rest of the 2017 entries here. Seriously check that out as there is some pure gold in there.

I also used these guys as a progress check.

So, 1998, 2017, 2019, 2017, 2018 in that order. I really like doing little photos like this as they are a great tool to motivate yourself to push harder or try something new. While I’m not making leaps from 2017 to now, little things like better shading, transfer use and smoother paint show that I’ve made some baby steps on becoming a better painter.

So, run your own chapter challenge or have done something similar? Got some questions about anything you have read? Drop me a line on Twittar or Insta and let me know!

Cheers and have a good ‘un,

Coda