The Start of the Pre-Heresy Death Guard

My local GW was planning to run a 30K Campain and after reading Flight of the Eistenstein I knew it would have to be Death Guard. I didn't really set out with much of a plan, I just thought I have a go at the first squad and see where it went from there. I was a bit apprehensive about painting a whole army a colour which is supposed to be slightly off white so thought I'd just see how it goes.

I used a mix of Chaos Space Marine and standard Space Marine bits to make the squad as at the time Forgeworld hadn't got round to anything Pre-Heresy. I decided to do something different with the weapons so the flamers got shortened and I thought I'd attempt to move the bolter magazine further forward to be more like the bolters on the original Rogue Trader marines. After realising the hand would be in the way and ruling out repositioning every single arm I went for a side loading magazine, something a bit like the Sten SMG. I'm not sure it's overly pre-heresy but I like it all the same. 

When it came to painting I wanted to try and make these guys look like the spend hours making their armour pristine like say the Emperors Children so I went for shading the recesses in the armour with Chestnut Ink. Although I like the way these guys looked at the time, now I think there are a few things which need addressing which I'll come to later.