Some call him.... Tim!

Slightly overdue, but here's a Blood Angels update. March was dreadnought month! I painted three dreads over the end of Feb/early March. Since I had the time, I also painted up a drop pod for the Death Company or their dreadnought compatriot.

So here's the photos!

First here's the Death Company dread - Brother Mordred - and his deep striking transport. I talked it over with people and decided on Blood Talons for him in the end. Despite meaning it drops him down to AP3 rather than the usual AP2, but the ability to throw himself into a squad and start mincing them with his Blood Rage ability was too tempting to pass up. He's had two games to try his luck in so far. In the first one he was taken out by glancing hits fired at him with snapshots (a very ignominious demise for such a noble warrior). In the second game against my pal Marcus' orks, he minced a unit of grots that dared to fire a quad autocannon at him, then turned round and roasted a unit of stormboyz with his heavy flamer. Despite his best efforts, he couldn't extricate the ork Big Mek from the second story building in which he was hiding.

 Next up, the Venerable Furioso Librarian Brother Timmerklynn (some call him... Tim). I knocked this guy together from the Venerable Dreadnought kit and some spare bits from the Furioso kit used for the next dread. I ummed and ahhed over what colour scheme to go with for this guy as a lot of art and the GW eavy metal collection show Librarian dreads painted red with just a blue sarcophagus. I decided I wanted him to stand out though, and given that regular librarians are completely blue armoured, I felt that Tim should be painted the same way.

Much like Mordred, in his first game he was glanced to death with repeated hits from plasma guns. In the game against the orks though, he chopped through one squad of orks after another, more than proving his worth and flitting around the board on pyschically created Wings of Sanguinius.

The shield on the side of his arm is from a Dreadknight box. I thought it might look good as a sort of image of one of the noble deeds he accomplished before being placed in the sarcophagus. Of course, now I feel I need to convert him on foot and maybe convert a model of the Slaaneshi Demon Prince he is clearly fighting...

Finally we have the other Furioso, Brother Bors (chop it's head off Bors!). I went for a Frag cannon on him as it's just too fun not to have one for the purposes of snapfire (2xD3 Str6 Rending automatic hits!). He was made with the spare bits from the Venerable kit so he has slightly more ornate leg armour and the cool fist shaped dreadnought close combat weapon. He was cruelly shot down by a Forgefiend's autocannon dire in his first game in the very first turn without even moving an inch! In his second game though he smashed apart a truck load of boys, then got stuck into the rest of the ork army, helping me fight to a hard fought draw!

The white blood droplet marks him out as a member of the 3rd company.

Right, that's it for now - off to nag some of the others to get off their arses and post some pics of their works in progress. During the rest of March I finished off some allies for the army - will post some pics of them shortly. At the moment I'm working on the rest of the terminator squad. Details on them later this month!

Month 2 complete - and then some!

Ok, so for this month I set myself the task of painting up the Death Company so I'd have a second troops squad painted up.

Only problem is I got a little carried away and ended up painting more than I had originally intended - oh well, I'll just have to paint even more stuff in the rest of this month/March!

First of all, here's the finished Death Company - I've armed them with bolters as their relentless rule means they can rapid fire with these and then still assault the enemy. To help with that I've given them a couple of power weapons and a power fist for those more heavily armoured targets!

All they really need now is a chaplain to lead them (perhaps next month!)

I've also painted up a land raider redeemer to carry Captain Galad and his squad (painted last month) around the board. I press-moulded the grail symbol from a Bretonian banner then made a green stuff cast of it. Then I stuck a couple of Bretonian shields on the side and painted them up to match the heraldry on the captain's knee pad. As a final touch, I named this noble steed - Concorde. Sweet Concorde - bonus points for anyone who spots the reference!

And I started painting a squad of scouts. Three of them are done, and the other two will probably be finished tonight. I've decided to call the middle one Depardiu as he does look quite a bit like Gerard Depardiu to me! These guys should be able to guide any deep striking troops down bang on target, as well as roughing any enemies up they come across!

Then as a final touch - here's a couple of veteran models I did a test paint on -

The Vanguard veteran has Sanguinary Guard legs and jump pack, and a grey knight head.

The Terminator has a Sanguinary Guard torso on a Grey Knight back piece and has a Grey Knight terminator helm. The shield is the symbol from the Sanguinary Guard banner top mounted on a simple plastic shield.

And lastly, an Iron Hand space marine. I decided I wanted some heavy fire support for the army, and thought the best way to do that would be to add some heavy duty allies from the regular Space Marines codex. Eventually there will be a squad of 10 of these painted up, along with a Master of the Forge with Conversion Beamer and another techmarine with a Thunderfire cannon.

Right, that's it - I'm off to paint some dreadnoughts!

1st month's goal complete!

Ok, so the goal for the first month was to paint one HQ choice and one Troops choice. For my first month I decided to paint my own version of the Captain Tycho special character, and a tactical squad, but as I'm doing my own successor chapter the Grailbearers my tactical squad is a little different to the one you'd see in a regular army.

Since the Grailbearers are styled more as a group of crusading knights, it seemed more appropriate for them to carry pistols and chainswords than bolt guns. This isn't to say I won't have some boltgun squads in the army, just that I want to have more combat armed units than shooty units. Luckily the Blood Angels codex gives you the option to take an assault squad without jump packs as a troops choice - the perfect way to represent a combat weapon armed tactical squad!

I've painted mine up as 3rd squad of 3rd company, as you can see by the the red droplet on yellow knee pad, and the white blood droplet on their rights shoulder pads. I've also modeled the sergeant on Sergeant Rafen from the James Swallow novels as I really like the cover of Red Fury (like I said in my last post). I've tried to make him stand out by giving him his own heraldry on his knee pad, so it's not just yellow and red but yellow, black and red.

The squad is armed with a melta gun, two inferno pistols and a power sword and I intend to drop it in from orbit in a land raider for some series tank busting fury!

The captain is my version of Tycho, like I said in my last post I'm quite chuffed to have been able to convert it entirely in plastic! Still considering a name for him - currently thinking Galad since most of my other models in the army have names on their shoulder pads from medieval knights.

Here's some photos anyway.

As to what I'll be doing next month, I'm currently thinking Death Company! Maybe even a dreadnought (even though it's only supposed to be one force organisation chart per month).

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!

Bring me a shrubbery!!!

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!"