Following on from Toby's lead here are my thoughts on my army for next year's challenge!
Since they came out I've wanted to do a Blood Angels army. I love the multi-part plastic kits that GW have brought out in recent years and in particular the way they can be inter-mixed with one another. I don't want to do a regular Blood Angels army though so I've decided to do a successor chapter - The Grail Bearers.
May vague thoughts on background is that when this chapter was founded, the Captain who was granted the right to serve as Chapter Master to the fledgling chapter received a vision which he believed came straight from Sanguinius.
A golden grail filled with light shining like a beacon through the darkness of space. A great desire to find this grail filled him, a longing to possess it and bring it back to Baal. As he mustered his chapter, he tasked each group of supplicants to travel out into the darkness of the galaxy - to move to those parts of the Imperium which had not seen the Emperor's light for eons. For decades, some times centuries, they traveled away from the chapter homeworld, Avalon, battling the foes of humanity and restoring order or punishing the guilty. After a particularly great battle, or the defeat of a truly heinous enemy they would find it; a shining, golden chalice. Sometimes they would be hidden in a tyrant's treasure horde. Other times they might appear seemingly out of the ether, laying in the ruins of a conquered fortress where moments before they had not been. Always they were a sign that it was time for the crusading force to return home to their fortress monastery bearing their treasure, hoping that finally they will have found the true Grail.
Each grail is assessed by the Sanguinary Priests to see if it is the chalice the chapter seeks - the Graal Sanguine. Thus far, none of these grails have been the one true grail that the chapter have sought, yet each one has been a unique gift, seemingly from the chapter's genetic father, and imbued with special powers that fill the warriors in its presence with fire and vigour! The warriors who have found these grails have been varied and manifold - some mighty captains, others simple brother-scouts. Each one has been left changed though, marked for greatness and destined for induction into the First Company - the Grail Knights.
The Grails are considered holy relics to the chapter, assuaging the worst of the Red Thirst and aiding even those brothers afflicted by the chapter's gene curse the Black Rage. Once they have been suitably assessed and prayers for their blessings have been said, they are issued once more to the Sanguinary priests of the crusading battle companies and sent out into the void once more, to lend their strength to the brothers of the chapter in their ongoing quest to find the true Graal Sanguine.
As to what the Graal itself is for, this is a secret known only to the Lords of the Chapter - the Chapter Master, the Chaplains, the Librarians and the Sanguinary Priests. Only the Grail Knights amongst the line brothers of the chapter know the truth. The vision gifted to the Chapter Masters of the Grail Bearers is of a gilded chalice, filled with the blood not of Sanguinius, but of his father - gifted to his angelic son as an expression of a father's love and understanding. A draft that if infused into their fallen father's veins, might just be enough to return their gene-father to them, and lift the twin-curses from their veins once and for all!
Ok, so that's my background ideas!
I'm going to knock myself my first models up over christmas using these -
In an issue of White Dwarf last year there were two studio guys who were tasked to build the start of a Blood Angels army from just a Battleforce and a Space Marine Commander box. They did pretty good jobs, so I decided I wanted to give it a go too! Check back here for photos of how it's going over christmas!
In the meantime here's a photo of my tester model with it's practise colour scheme.
I like to think of the last one as "he's behind you!"
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