Launching a crusade

For xmas, Santa brought to me - a blood angels battleforce, a captain box, and some more death company (thanks Angel!). The last couple of days have been spent in a haze of plastic glue and I now have assembled -

1 Assault Squad, with jump packs, power fist and two inferno pistols.

1 Assault Squad, without jump packs (I'm going to paint them as a tactical squad as I wanted to suggest that the Grail Bearers use chainsword and pistol as often as bolters and this was the easiest way to do it) with power sword, melta gun and two inferno pistols (red hot death!).

1 Death Company Squad, with 2 power weapons, power fist and bolters. I went with bolters as I wanted to take advantage of the Death Company's relentless rule to storm up to the enemy, let them have it with both barrels from the bolters and then assault! In turns of power weapons I have a sword and an axe so that I can have some AP2 in there.

Finally, a captain I've converted up to be my counts as Captain Tycho. I was quite pleased to be able to do this entirely in plastic, using mostly captain and blood angel bits, with just a breast plate from my bits box.

Photos below -

Here's the sergeant from the assault squad.

And here's the tactical squad

One of the tactical marines

And two others.

And the sergeant. I've based this guy on sergeant Rafen from the James Swallow novels, in particular I was inspired by the cover of Red Fury where he has his hair unbound and hanging down, and his armour has shields and heraldry on it. This then went on to inspire much of the rest of my conversions as it fits the knightly theme I'm going for. Note below the grail crest knee pad on my captain.

Here's the captain

I sculpted the face mask from green stuff after carving away part of the face with a craft knife.

And instead of the wing dripping blood that was Tycho's crest, I've modeled a winged grail as his crest.

To represent the 'Dead Man's Hand' I've nicked a hand from my bits box left over from the Grey Knights. I figured if he could rip the head off a daemonette then he doesn't care about armour saves.

And finally, here's some of the Death Company. I really went to town on these guys, trying to make them as individual as possible.

This one was a simple issue of posing him so that he looks like he's running towards the enemy, firing his bolter.

This one I trimmed the spiky crest off a helmet and modeled it as part of the back pack.

This one is based on a classic Death Company miniature back when they were metal. I wanted him to look like he was leaning back into the swing of the axe.

This one is one of the only bald blood angels. I wanted him to look like an aged veteran who has finally given in to the rage and is fighting his way through a horde of enemies, both real and imagined. I call him the Sgt Cloten marine.

And finally, my favourite. I wondered what it would look like if one of the Sanguinary Guard fell to the Rage so decided to model one. I picked the death mask with a tear weeping from one eye and figure I'll paint the mask bone white, with a single red tear and a gold crest.

Well that's all for now, more in January when I've got some of them painted!