What Next?

I am currently doing the finishing touches on my Vampire Counts army for Skitterleap this weekend. As we all know an army is never truly finished but with selection of units I will have painted the undead are good for now.

So with no events planned for the near future except for the Team Champs in Feb and not willing to paint for other people at the moment, I find myself in a luxurious position I havn't had for a while. I get to paint whatever I want... thing is, what?

I really want a new 40k army and I know my regular gaming buddies have heard me say this an awful lot so I'm sorry. I've had a very good time with the Eldar and they're really fun in 6th ed but after 4 years of consistent play I want new toys. I think 6th ed is a good system and have enjoyed all the games I have played I just want a project to be passionate about like I was with my Eldar.

So ideas I have had and like are as follows. Most stuff is inspired by the Horus Heresy and with all the awesome kits FW is putting out any project would incorporate some heresy era models. Also all these ideas are Loyal or Chaos marines.

Alpha Legion leaning more towards heresy era with a less chaotic appearance. They are one of my favourite chapter in the HH books but I think they could look quite boring on the table if I stayed true to their fluff as they strive to appear very uniform without embellishment on their armour. I could go the new chaos codex route and use Huron for Master of Deception, cultists and marine squads and 'chaos' it up a bit more.

Imperial Fists. I like the idea of them being stalwart defenders and picture models based on fortified emplacements or on ruins. I would embellish the armour somewhat adding more gold to the yellow I think. As it uses the marine codex there are plenty of unit options available and I definitely would pack some Sternguard in there.

Night Lords. Always liked the imagery though I thnk they blinged them up a bit too much in the new CSM codex. Too much gold on that Helldrake for me, not nasty looking enough. Would try to make them very dark looking trying to emulate a dark environment. Where I could use the Blood Angel codex I would most likely use the new CSM one.

Blood Angels. Just finished Fear to Tread and at the end of 5th I was playing some fun games with the BA. They give me a lot of scope to make an angelic army with all the bells and whistles but I also like the idea of the feral bloodthirsty blood angels that were roaming the battlefield of Signus Prime in the later part of the book. So a lot of variety here. They play quite well and have the flying brick - stormraven which gets all the nice new flyer rules in 6th.

Dark Angels. New book coming, rumoured to be a Matt Ward book! Will most likely have broken plasma units in it thanks to Mr Ward. I have the Dark Vengeance models which also goes for the above Chaos options. Would model and paint them as more individual knight like units using the black preheresy colour rather than the green.

Generic Chaos Marine army. Don't worry about a legion and just go all out mutated evil. Savage bezerkers and Daemonic influences.

So if anyone has any suggestions or votes for something I've listed or something they themselves think I could pull off please share. It doesn't have to be marine based at the end of the day. Elaborate with possible units and allies if you want, never know what the community can come up with.