Army Showcase: Dylan Gould’s 2nd Edition Chaos Space Marines

Welcome to GOONHAMMER ’96, where we take a look back at our favorite games with a retro bent. We’ve already talked about the wonderful insanity of the 2nd edition CODEX: CHAOS this week, but we’ve got more retro Chaos goodness this week. In today’s army showcase, we’re looking at Dylan Gould’s beautifully painted 2nd edition Chaos army. You may remember Dylan from his previous article on his amazing Underhive terrain and table, by the way.

I put this army together between 2013-2018. I have more to add to it, notably missing are Night Lords and Noise Marines. I do have a couple more squads of Berserkers and Plague Marines to do, a Land Raider for Abandon to ride in and a properly Nurgled-up Rhino/Predator. I still play with them from time to time – my first game of 8th edition was with this army.

Also, if you like this and want to see more of the stuff I work on, you can find me on Instagram – I’m 40khamslam.

Note: if the images seem small, click on them to get the full-size versions.

The Black Legion

Alongside the Night Lords, these were the featured legion in the 2nd Ed codex. I referenced the images in the codex heavily and tried to match the paint as close as I could. I had lots of fun painting all the freehand on these guys.

Credit: Dylan Gould

Credit: Dylan Gould

Credit: Dylan Gould

The Predator was fun to add some armor plates from the Ork range (Editor’s Note: This was a common conversion trick they showed off in the codex) and again, freehand….

Credit: Dylan Gould

Credit: Dylan Gould

One of the most challenging parts of building the metal chaos terminators is that they came with a random/irregular assortment of arms and bits – this was easier to see if you were buying one in a single model blister but the 5-model squad box came with a semi-random assortment of melee weapons and didn’t have the champion model!

Iron Warriors

Same deal as the Black Legion, matched what was in the codex, even using a Terminator as the squad champion. The Dreadnought from the codex always stuck in my mind, so I had to do one to match. (Editors Note: Back in the day, metal dreadnoughts were not supplied with bases. Dreads wouldn’t start getting bases until the release of the plastic space marines dreadnought about a decade later).

Credit: Dylan Gould

Credit: Dylan Gould

 

Juggernaut, Khorne Berserkers, Khorne Marines, and Rhino

Again matching the codex, though a mix of Rogue Trader and 2nd Ed minis. The squad with bolters are less common and included in there is an unreleased Khorne marine body, who I equipped with a Heavy Plasma Gun. This was inspired by some Jes Goodwin concept art. The Rhino has Khorne icons added from the marine and daemon range and the large top piece is from the later Chaos Dwarf Hellcannon, though later, it fits in really well.

Credit: Dylan Gould

Credit: Dylan Gould

Credit: Dylan Gould

Credit: Dylan Gould

 

Plague Marines and Thousand Sons

For these I matched the paint schemes in the How to Paint Citadel Miniatures book. Famed for the 4-step paint process, these were fun, though the Thousand Sons were a challenge – with so many colors next to each other, they took several hours each to paint up.

Credit: Dylan Gould

Credit: Dylan Gould

 

Plague Bearers

The only daemons I have painted to-date, but very fun to do up and get a range of colors into them.

Credit: Dylan Gould

 

If you’re looking for how these were painted so you can replicate the results, check back tomorrow when we’ll be covering all of the Chaos 2nd edition paint schemes in How to Paint Everything: 2nd Edition Chaos Space Marines. In the meantime if you have any questions or feedback, drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.