Darkness Continues

October starts with me knocking out my first two squads of Ravenwing:



And my first two squads of the Deathwing:



And even though I have three more assembled and primed squads of Deathwing waiting, I am going to take a short break from DA's; in order to clear out some of my projects box and I plan on celebrating Red Orktober! Details to follow.

Dark Update

Knocked out a few units for the boys in green:

Devastator Squad


Command Squad


Chaplains and Dark Vengeance Goodies


Librarians


Budget Azrael and Friend


And some odds and ends. Somehow I keep winding up with dogs. No idea why.

Short Update then Back to Work

Just celebrating a narrow win on The D6 Generation-it came down to three of us for their Art Description contest and the dice were kind to me. Either way all the entries were good but the two I was up against were excellent; I would have been honored to lose to any of the entries but either of them especially. Every time they have these contests I have to really step up my game to remain competative so it is good to be challegend by worthy opponents!

Meanwhile I am in a "build" phase; I'm knocking out my Dark Angels. I have always meant for this to be a small army. I mentally assign it a diffent block than my Ultramarines so that 1) I don't feel the need to replicate everything twice; i.e. play the Dark Angels like green painted marines and 2) I'm not upset that the goodies they got don't overlap with the goodies in the new Space Marine codex. I know a lot of people have been upset and there were some really good toys that frankly there is no real reason the Dark Angels should not have gotten (although I suspect that the Blood Angels and Space Wolves are going to miss out on some of these units as well) and the fluff reason put out is a little lame [bad grammar alert] BUT Dark Angels will now be my premier Terminator and Bike army whereas the Ultras will fill out everything else. I should really do up a Kanban board like The Independent Characters started to organize all my stuff but in the mean time my goals are:

Paint
Dark Angels Devastator Squad
Dark Angels Command Squad
Dark Angels Librarians (2)
Dark Angels Budget Azrael
Dark Angels DV Captain
Deathwing Terminator Standard Squad (x3)
Deathwing T-Hammer Squad [Going to ignore the FAQ outlawing SSTH Sgts. Really GW?]
Deathwing Knight Squad
Ultramarines Heresy Era Heavy Weapons Squads

Assemble and Paint
Ultramarine Stormraven
Armorcast Wolfhount Titans

Revise and Paint
Thunderhawk (not happy with how main cannon turned out.

Closing out the post I ask what is better than a new Space Marine codex? A new Space Marine codex and kittens!

Visions of Saint Diego

Visons of Saint Diego

++++Thought for the day:++++
++++The eye sees much the mind cannot handle.++++
++++File Number LERHGE88877ZZ++++
++++File begins. The Imperium is filled with countless saints, some beautified and honored by entire segementums, others barely known and their veneration limited to one minor planet. St. Diego was one of these minor saints. Although screened and found negative of psyker taint, as a common priest St. Diego was doing a mind recording of scriptural lessons for his congregation when he began having visions. These visions seem to record heretical figures and events that were not known of at the time. They would have been dismissed and Diego purged as a heretic (albeit a reluctant one) when a vision resulted in preventing an assassination on the planetary governor by a disgruntled minor noble. At this point his works were sealed by the Inquisition and he was taken for further cerebral interpretation. His role in saving the governor’s live however resulted in his name being circulated among the masses and his legend grew. He was beautified fifty years after his death and ultimately declared a minor saint. His first images appear below as recovered imagery from recent attacks indicated that they may at last be coming to fruition. The discovery of ruins on Zeta Omnicron V match the ones he first envisioned. We are now debating on actively summoning the Dark Angels Space Marine chapter, although cryptic signs hint that they may already be involved in the region.

++Replay begins++ [Voice of St. Diego] And here we shall have a pict of a lad being switched with the phrase, “Penitence is the path to righteous-“ [Image shakes as St. Diego starts to convulse.

Image blacks out then new images stream in.] [Voice of St. Diego] I see the ruins of the [unintelligible] system….Vor [unintelligible] for which they seek!

[Image changes] Several lords of Chaos! Several champions! One seeks power in the black legion-his breastplate taken from the noble Blood Angel and painted in shadow. The second shall gather many around him for his dread master. The third cares only for the blood he spills and the last, not a lord one given in wholly to slaughter! Their brother, trapped in living death has traded his soul for skulls and power in his walking tomb!



[Image changes] Cultist! Foul traitors who have bartered their souls for fleeting power but their deaths will be for naught as they join others of their kind. Their leader, cobbled together from many sources-his face a mask of gold, his cape of human flesh!

[Image changes] Angels of Death! Angels of Darkness! Do they brink redemption or salvation!?? I Know not!!!

[St. Diego screams in torment and blacks out. The image goes to static as the machine spirits of the recorder reject the images coming from his mind.]

++Replay ends++
Troubling. I fear we have not seen the last of any of these individuals. I am assembling a kill team in order to- ++++Connection Lost++++
++++Reload Fail++++
++++Reload Fail++++
++++Reload Fail++++
++++There is no record of the file you seek++++

Dark Angels and More Terrain

Here is my first two squads of Dark Angles (that are mine to keep): These guys have been a total nightmare. First I simply bit off more than I usually chew and getting up the gumption to do twenty was harder than usual. Add to that I have had primer issues with the bases (basically what do you do with primer that refuses to dry!!!???) so I had to rescrub those all down and try again. Clearly I only partially learned my lesson because a could still turned out bad. Then the shoulder icon decal on the meltagun guy has been a pain in the butt and I am going to have to go back and redo that somehow. Currently debating either freehanding it (which I suck at) or doing up a press mould. The other big time drain was working on this project: My only New Year's resolution this year was to knock out some projects that I have had sitting around for some time. This was one of them. Like most of my stuff it is supposed to be a multi-function engine/pump. It would be at home at the heart of a starship engine room, part of a promethium processing field, or on the floor of a hive factory. Equally important is that it blocks terrain but also has some points figures can climb for high ground. Good to get that one off of my chest. Now I think I will brave my Thunderhawk rebuild.

Cheap Terrain

I have two generic modules made out of Burger King Kid's meal giveaways and a ton of crates made out of soda bottle lids. The only thing better than decent looking terrain is decent looking terrain that was dirt cheap. I don't know who invented the soda lid crates, or maybe there were one of those good ideas that multiple people discovered at once like fire or the atlatl but they are super easy and look good with very little work.

Toys for Tots 2013

The Chinook is done and off to the client who was apparently pleased. On to the next: These are my contributions to the 2013 40k Radio Freebootaz Toys for Tots Ebay Auction. I present to you Tas Squad with Multimelta, Meltagun, and Veteran Sergeant with Power Sword.