Immediately after Baltimore 2002, I began planning for next year's army. How to top the Thousand Squats?

I put some thought to what kind of army to try with, and came close to ripping myself off with a converted Space Slann army using Tau rules. But having brought just the previous year a similar Fantasy/40k converted army, this seemed redundant. Whatever I did had to be different, and somehow (though I didn't know how) superior.

The army I did ended up choosing me in the end. The Warmonger Club Black Crusade project developed right out of that same GT- the club planned a massive 18' display with the 9 founding Chaos legions for the next year. The other 8 guys put me on Black Legion; nobody else wanted it, and it had to be the centerpiece, so as the year's winner it was on my shoulders.

I had to solve two problems to get the army to 'work'. The first was all that black armour, which was a no-no when it comes to tournament armies. Black just looks ass on the tabletop, no matter how much time you put in the details, it seems too easy to paint. This I solved by mixing up marauder plastics to create a half naked marine. The army was still half black, but better half than all!

The second problem was how to make it a stand out army. This I tackled in a number of ways, the most striking of which was a non-metal metallic painting style. Although insanely time consuming, this technique really added a layer of depth and detail to the models that more than anything else helped the army's appearance. To support the theme of the army, I adopted the Black Legion logo in a few ways; as eye tattoos on each model's head, and as 'living banners' that each unit carried.

There were a few other subtle details that made the army seem like a lot went into it. I made bullet casings shooting of every weapon, ala The Matrix, and modeled each head to have 'tentacles', based off illustrations in the Hordes of Chaos book.

It was like déjá vu all over again at Baltimore; The Black Legion came home with a Player's Choice trophy, just as the Squats had the previous year. I even managed to win a few games with the Legion as well, and brought home a 2nd place Best Overall!