HoP Idol II: Writing 40K Army Background

Who's ready to get Wyrd? Everyone? Fantastic because Wyrd of "Miscellaneous Miniatures" is our next contender for the HoP Idol II contest extravaganza.

Writing 40k Army Background

I know what you’re thinking, “Oh god not another damn article about writing army background. Haven’t I read myself to sleep on enough of these?” While I think there are a lot of great articles out there about the topic let’s face it not everyone can get to the same place the same way. Normally that might be some segway into talking about autistic kids and maps but not today. Today I’m talking about army background. In my experience most people look to broad when they start working on this kind of thing and that is I think where we make our mistake.


My approach is more about starting with a simple question. What about this game and setting put simply gets your proverbial rocks off over and over again? Seriously, what one thing do you always go back too? Is doesn’t matter if it’s a character, a type of unit, or hell an event in all of the fluff that is out there. That one thing will keep you coming back to your army. That one thing that will always make you say, “damn that is cool”.

I’m not sitting here preaching about something I haven’t gone through myself. I have. I went through it. It sucked ass in a not so pleasant way. I was bored and had gone through more paint schemes and ideas than I could count with my space marines until a few years ago I asked myself just that question.

I answered it. I think space marine chaplains are awesome. I’m not talking about in a math-hammer-I’m-going-to-school-you-in-a-tournament kind of way. I mean in concept. They are the guy in a chapter with all black armor, a skull helmet, and a power weapon for a religious symbol they can beat their enemies with who are responsible for the spiritual well being of a chapter. To me that is cool.

So how did I take that into an idea for a whole chapter? Wikipedia thou art my friend. A couple of queries about priests and ancient Rome later I discovered something called an augur. “The augur was a priest and official in the classical world,... His main role was to interpret the will of the gods by studying the flight of birds” 

 What do we have all over the Imperium? Double headed eagles. Bam and there I was. Augurs for a chapter name. Paint scheme was a no brainer. Chaplains where black armor, I like red so lets throw that on the shoulder pads, add some gold here and there, and I was done. Add a witty motto, “A chapter in numbers, a legion in faith.” It went from there.

My point is no matter how great a paint job, color scheme, or devastating your army or mine is it doesn’t mean shit if after a couple of weeks or months you get bored. I hate getting bored. I know other people get bored with their armies. My local gaming store has a used bin for miniatures. I see army after army go in there. While I appreciate cheap models I don’t wish boredom on anyone. Find that one thing you always go back to in the fluff, your codex, etc and start there. I don’t care what it is you can base an army off of it with a bit of work. If you’re having trouble hell email me and I’ll try to help.