Friday 40K Blogging: Blood And Fire

This post (along with next week’s) is liable to be the final entry in the “Friday 40K Blogging” series for a while, since my Blood Angels army is the only force I haven’t yet photographed and put up here. Hopefully we can return next year, by which time I hope to have finished my Tau force, and included a few more squads into my Chaos warband. I’ll probably have a Blood Angels fleet done by the end of the year, providing I can find the necessary coinage.

Anyway, onto the models.

The army gathered in the foothills, around the wreck of an Imperial Aquila Lander (painted in Battlefleet Isoka colours, naturally). I actually started this army only a few months after my Dark Angels force, in order to give me something to paint whenever I got sick of all that green, but it grew only slowly in-between working on the senior Angels, and reorganising the rabble of Tyranids that had been lying around my house since the mid 90’s.

A Force Commander with his Honour Guard. Having painted the power swords of the Dark Angels red fading to orange, I decided a similar kind of “spot colour” approach would work here, hence the blue that lightens as it travels up the blade. Two power swords and two melta-guns (sort of) make this bunch pretty handy at close quarters, which is obviously exactly how it should be.

Speaking of those who excel at the close-combat FUBAR, a Death Company Chaplain and his psychotic vampire killing machines. Given my total incompetence at this game, there really isn’t that much I have that can put the wind up C, but these bastards always manage to do the job.

The Death Company Rhino. This vehicle is a little bit plainer than most of mine, because I had to paint it up in a hurry (the specific reason for this escapes me right now), but I don’t think it looks too bad. I mean, how much more black could it be?

A Death Company Furioso Dreadnought in its Drop Pod. I am really proud of the Dread itself, it was painted during the period when I really felt I was starting to get into the stage of painting competently (albeit simplistically), rather than employing a style that relied entirely on what I can only describe as the half-life of fuck ups; if I only fucked up half the original model, then I would only fuck up half of the following corrections, and so on. Every now and again I still go back to those old figures for tidying duty, which means that, had I not improved, particularly imaginative archaeologists would be able to gauge the age of the figures by exactly what proportion of them looked like shit.

I should also mention how pissed of I am that I shelled out fifty-odd quid for a Dreadnought Drop Pod (C pointed out at the time that it was probably the first Forge World miniature to actually cost more in pounds than it did in points), spent four months assembling and painting it [1], and discovered one week later that GW were releasing it as a plastic kit. Well, OK, the kit was for a troop-carrier, but it wouldn’t have taken much conversion, and I’d be thirty pounds better off. Think of what I could have spent that on! [2]

My final Elites choice, a small squad of Veteran Assault Marines. Aside from the Death Company, these chaps are probably the best reason to collect Blood Angels. They will, quite simply, fuck you up. Their Veteran Sergeant is armed with a Power Fist to fuck you up if you’re ten feet tall, one of his comrades has a power sword to fuck you up if you’re in heavy armour (and have dodged the Power Fist due to not being an enemy tree, or a belligerent rock, or something), and another has a flamer, to fuck you up in the most amusing way possible. The fact that the Death Company draws so much fire and often leaves these guys comparatively unharmed is a big bonus, and if they can both get through intact…

More next week.

[1] Neither of which is remotely easy where resin is concerned, you need a gas mask, a hacksaw, three dozen coatings of paint, and not to drop the fucking thing on a Tau Piranha, though admittedly that last one was my fault entirely, and didn’t do half as much damage to the Pod as the Piranha, which detonated like it was made of blancmange.

[2] Beer. Obviously, it would have been beer.