Musings of the Outlander Just another Hobby Core Network site

Imperial guard. to homebrew? or to go mainstream?

So, as is my first bread and butter post for this blog, I wanted to ask a question of you (my audience) and that is this. When picking up a new imperial guard army, would you rather spring for a Cadian army, go for the green and stalwart discipline of well formed gunlines? Or would you rather create your own army with your own planet and your own story?

 

I have seen both done well, and both done poorly.

I started with a Cadian modeled army and decided to call it something different, I painted all the cadians with bright red instead of green, and called it my own. if I had spent any time on the models, i wouldnt say how big of a failure it was, but truly, looking back, it was not done well. not by a long shot.

My friend Dan, on the other hand, when he learned to play warhammer 40k back in 4th edition days, found the Cadians, and purchased paints specifically mentioned on the box, so he could get his color scheme as close as he could to the Cadian 8th.  He put a lot of pride and effort into his models, which made him care about the army, and truly make a great tabletop experience.

Finally I decided (after seeing Dan's army, and knowing that I had more painting experience than he, wanted something to look as good on the tabletop as his army, decided to take apart my red cadians, and go for something a little different)

3 boxes of wood elf glade guard,

1 box of eldar guardians,

1 box of black guard

1 box of sanguinary guard

1 box of space marine scouts

2 boxes of tanith guard

3 sheets of plasticard,

2 tubes of greenstuff

and 6 bloodletters and a werewolf later,

I had an entirely different guard army I could place on the table, the army has charisma, and was something new, and always receives compliments at the local hobby store that I play at (A Games Hobbies, represent!)

That took, however, much much longer to put together and paint then the same amount of points for dan's cadian army.

 

Was the time and effort worth it? I'd say yes, but I want to get your say.

Secondly, I can understand the hate, or not so much hate, but jaded-ness (jaded-osity?) around space marine homebrews, because one would figure they'd already hit the 1000 chapter mark way before a new homebrew spacemarine chapter was made, but when one homebrews imperial guard, there are billions of planets, and each one with a unique identity, so why not homebrew?

 

I'm in favor of homebrewing, mainly because of my army, but what do you think?