CicadaSpectre

I'm painting a Stormcast army in an original color scheme, and I know so little about their organization. Do I need to invent a whole Stormhost for them, or can individual Chambers/Conclaves of a Stormhost have their own unique names, color schemes, etc.? I'm more familiar with 40K Astartes structures, or Chaos warbands. The military structure of the Stormcast sort of confuses me. I imagine Stormhosts are more like Astartes Legions, with individual Chambers varying in color schemes and character like the Astartes Chapters. Since AoS is very open to making your army your own.

I thought I saw something about a Chamber from one of the big Stormhosts that took on the symbols and colors of one of the Cities of Sigmar. I'd like to tie my Stormcast to my (hopefully) future Cities of Sigmar army, thematically and lorewise.

Last of the repaint 'Mechs I have so far, it's the Lyran Guards from the Lyran Commonwealth. A pretty popular color scheme and I can see why. The cyan and white really pop.

The Lyran Commonwealth is a German-coded faction with a heavy emphasis on mercantilism, to the point where their military suffers from "social officers" - officers who merely buy their ranks and positions, rather than based on their quality. At one point, the Lyran Commonwealth joins up with the Federated Suns to form the Federated Commonwealth, becoming the dominant power for awhile. War and internal divisions inevitably lead to them breaking apart, though.

I'm really happy with how these turned out, though. Very crisp. Some of my best work with any minis.

Second lance I repainted in canon colors: the Free Worlds Guards of the Free Worlds League. I went with which color schemes I liked best, not the best names.

The Free Worlds League is really more of a loose confederation of various duchies and individual worlds that united for mutual defense. They are, canonically, paralyzed by this lack of centralized leadership, with the various near-sovereign political bodies constantly bickering and countermanding each other. The only time the FWL can effectively unite is when House Marik, one of the setting's five Great Houses, takes over and forms a military junta. They're the most ethnically/religiously diverse of the Successor States, and are genuinely depicted as rather benign. Still ruled by nobility, and its constituent states range in practices and freedoms of its worlds.

Honestly know the least about this Great House/Successor State, and very little about this military unit. I just liked the color scheme.

Not Warhammer, but I'm hoping the community doesn't care. I didn't want to post to Lemmyworld, because BattleTech community is - like the Warhammer community - plagued with fans that can't see the issues with the franchise.

These are Death Commandos, an elite military unit that are loyal to the Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation. They are canonically very skilled and ruthless pilots, able to conduct secret missions and leave no survivors, be it as infantry or as MechWarriors.

I could (and probably will) make a post about everything I find wrong about the Capellan Confederation in due time, but to summarize: imagine if you combined every negative trait about Nazi Germany (but dial the racism back from "master race and genocide" to "our culture is dominant and people should look and act like us"), the military incompetence of fascist Italy, and the underhanded deception and sinister machinations of the US and UK (particularly the overreliance on deception, proxy wars, war crime-grade weapons, and subterfuge). Now, imagine if you coded the entire faction as Han Chinese/Russian. To top it all off, the leaders are genetically disposed to being insane, and incestuous, and they have a rigid caste system and a violent, evil Thugee cult (the cult the British made up to help justify brutalizing India; it's real in this setting, and members of the Capellan leadership follow it). And they call themselves socialist because centralized economy.

I could write a thesis paper about the Capellan Confederation and what it says about the creators, and the fanbase, but I'll save more ranting for another post. Suffice it to say, it's the biggest hurdle for leftists to enjoy the setting, and given the general libertarian bent of the fandom, that's not surprising. Would love it if more comrades could like it, too. Just like Warhammer: why should rightoids get all the fun?