Dark Angels Command Squad and Devastators.

The Tournament at MAWS is approching fast, and I've got to get my Dark angels finished by then. Its on sunday. Ah. 

Well, to be honest, I shouldn't be to bad. I've got a good chunk of them finished now. I have a dreadnought and a Librarian to finish this week and I'm golden. I don't have any full painting days between now and then, however, so I've just got evenings to work with.

I've hammered out the last two squads this week. Firstly, my command squad, with my lynchpin/bullet magnet model, the standard bearer hoisting the standard of devastation. One thing I will say about buying second hand stuff, is that you get a random collection of models. The empire banner top wasn't a conversion of mine, it came to me like that. I quite liked it though, so he stayed. Also, I'm loving the 2nd Ed apothecary! 

Next up, bringing some support to the field, the devastators. Pictures are somewhat rushed to be honest, but I have a good reason for that too, which I will explain in a minute... 

The squad is in 2 combat squads, for obvious reasons given the weapons they're carrying. I can honestly say after painting this lot, I have got the hang of painting the Dark Angels chapter symbol on shoulder pads.

So, as I mentioned, I rushed these photos a little. The reason being that I just found out the scythe and teacup in liverpool is hosting a Warmachine and Hordes hardcore qualifier in april. This is probably old news to the Warmahordes community, but I've not been keeping up with them recently. I've very tempted to enter but that gives me a hard deadline. To get 50 points of warmachine painted and practised with in 8 weeks? Holy moly, the clock is a tickin'...

Gonders

Pre-heresy Emperor's Children Land Speeder.

Well, you aren't going to see this one coming.  First off, its worth mentioning where I stand on heresy era armies and the whole '30k' side of the hobby which has reared it's head in the last few years. In a nut shell, I dislike whats happened with it.

As I grew up with toy soldiers, the heresy was a time swathed in myth and legend. From a purely background perspective, gamers in the 90's knew that the Emperor created the Legions, the Primarchs, and that after he fought Horus, he was stuck in the golden throne. That was pretty much anyone in the 41st millennium knew too. Going off what was written then, the history from 10,000 years ago was a mystery.

And that, was cool. I like mystery. I like not knowing.

Then, around the 2001 mark, in white dwarf, a series of articles appeared, the Index Astartes. These scribblings detailed the space marine chapters, including touching on the pre heresy side of things, and explained a little more about the primarchs. This provided quite the inspiration for starting some of these chapters and uncovered a little bit of the mystery we all loved.

A few years of this, and the black library releases a book called 'Horus Rising', and two more luna wolves novels, 'Galaxy in flames' and 'False gods'. These were cool books but set up the ruination of the heresy story for me. 

Hourus Heresy mania had begun.

Fast forward a good few years, and forgeworld release the unthinkable. An actual official model of an actual Primarch. The beings no-one knew anything about, suddenly have a face, and suddenly, there's no mystery left in Horus' story. We know every detail about every fight, down to the last punch thrown and bolter shell fired, and if we can stretch our wallets like never before, can fight these battles from pre history on our table tops.

All of which, I do not like.

Despite this, just like the Dark gods themselves and mighty Horus, Games Workshop's Influence has broken my mind. This last week, I've felt the pull of building my own preheresy army. I don't know why.

Maybe I'm just joining what I can't beat. Maybe since painting my Dark Angels, I've got my power armoured addiction on. I can't explain it.

But how to scratch the itch without missing a mortgage payment? Well, when I bought a whole bunch of dark angel's second hand a few months ago, the young merchant was kind enough to throw a second edition metal Ravenwing land speeder in the bundle. Not having any use for it, it has languished at the bottom of a box, waiting to wedge the heresy era door open for me.   

So this week, it has received an experimental paint job. Despite me hating myself, I'm quite happy with this little gem.

Ok, its just stuck into a lump of resin at the moment.

I don't know if I enjoyed painting it because it was a throw back to 2nd edition, or if it was the 30k bug driving my on. Only time will tell. 

I figured Emperor's children would work well with the Ravenwing wings on there. Ok, the sword has broken off the angel on the front, but there's little I can do about it. Hopefully its just a test model. With any luck, I might not even have to do the rest of an army!

Even managed a cheeky freehand chapter symbol on his shoulder plate there.

If I end my bank account on the forgeworld website, I'll be sure to let you know. 

Gonders

In progress. What, no blog?!

Alright, alright, I missed one! If you've been following this here blog of mine, you'll know I've been trying my hardest to blog every other day this year. A week or so ago, I mentioned in a post that I doubted I could keep it up at that rate. And what do you know, yesterday I should've posted and didn't.

Why? Well simply put, I haven't had anything to show. Partly because I haven't had the time to paint a lot, partly because I've decided to finish my Dark Angels batch painting them.

I have a tournament coming up in a couple of weeks, and I've got to make sure my dark angels are painted up to 1600 points. That's why my painting desk currently has this on it.

As you can see, I have been painting away, but this is as far as I've managed. When I was talking about blogging every other day, I said I'd been inspired to do it by another guy at our club, Dwez, who does just that. However, I realised the differences in our blogs. Where mine is meant to be solely about painting, Dwez's is more general 40k. I think that with this, I'm putting to much pressure on myself, which in turn is probably lowering my painting standard. I dont want to be rushing things through just to get something on the web. So I'm not going to promise to blog every other day, but I can only try my best. I'll be back with finished dark angels ASAP!

Gonders