40k | Blood Angels - 1st Company Reinforcements!

After a long couple of weeks of college work and driving theory, I'm back! Last week I managed to get some work done on my Blood Angel Terminators, and since then I received the rest of them in the post, along with my new codex. I'm tempted to do a review/tactica series on the codex (I'm renowned for using sub-par units to good effect in games, and can almost always see the potential in a unit), but that remains to be seen. For now - Terminators!

These are my 1st Company brothers as they stand right now. Half of them (the vanilla tacticals) are assembled with their torsos magnetised, and I've also magnetised almost all of their weapons options save for a storm bolter, power fist and chainfist, as I haven't needed to do them yet. Those guys just need a couple of heads, and most of their shoulder pads attaching, and then they're ready for basing and painting.
In a considerably less-built state are the Blood Angel Assault Terminators and the TDA Librarian, who require magnetising before they get attached to their bases. On a side note - these guys don't like standing up on their own, a couple of them are wobbly and one of them refuses to stay upright at all.
To the side stands Karlaen, along with the dead Terminator from Space Hulk and a pair of Teleport Homers, ready for basing and painting. I have a couple of ideas for more Objective Markers, but they'll have to wait for now.

I magnetised the Terminators using 2mm x 1mm Neodymium magnets, and a 1/16" drill bit in my pin vice. I've made sure that all the magnets face the same way - "outwards" on the torsos and "inwards" on the arms, meaning that all the arms are fully interchangeable, and I'll be doing the same with the rest of them. How - or if - I magnetise the BA Librarian remains to be seen, as I almost always use power axes on them, and I know I'll never give him a combi-melta... although it is a very nice weapon, so someone else might end up getting it instead.

That's it for the Blood Angels today, another update will be along when I make some more progress on them. As for other things going down - well, here's another hint on the Oriental project I have coming up;

And, with that, it's back to work for me. be sure to tune in next time for another dose of hobby, and happy gaming!

-Mike

40k | Blood Angels - A new era for the Golden Host!

Hello everyone! The topic of today's shockingly on-time post is my personal iteration of the faction I hold dearest - the proud and noble Blood Angels! Before I delve into my current BA workload, however, I feel a little background is in order.

My first foray into wargaming as a whole began when I was around 8 years old, when I was given the Warhammer 40k 2nd Edition starter set, amongst a few other things. I'll admit, my actually miniature collection started a little earlier, as my older brother had previously given me the Catachan battleforce which I had assembled and even mostly painted with a large amount of help from my dad - a long-time avid wargamer himself.

This collection was further boosted by the arrival of a 2nd edition Space Hulk, yet again featuring the Blood Angels chapter in the form of the gritty, heavily-armoured and tenacious 1st company veteran Terminators. With that, I was fully hooked, and despite them not being my first 40k models, I always regard them as my first Warhammer army and have always held a great fondness for the red-and-gold warriors.

Fast forward a decade, and I find myself watching all the new 7th edition codices being released with increasing anxiousness. I now possess a hefty Chaos warband, a stupid amount of Imperial Guardsmen that still have yet to be fielded, a small mechanised Tallarn force (minus their Chimeras, because as with most of my projects, lack of funding and other distractions drew my attention away too soon) a respectably sized Ork Mekmob, and a small Dark Eldar raiding force. 

However, by far the largest army I own is my Blood Angels force. Over the ten or so years I've been wargaming, they have always been my constant, and moreso than any other army I always find it incredibly easy to add yet more to them. At this point, I own over 12,000 points of Blood Angels in varying states of completeness, including the entire 3rd Company, along with large elements of the 1st, 4th, and 10th Companies. But I'm watching the new releases for other factions, and I'm nervously awaiting the inevitable announcement of the new BA codex. 

Finally, we come to today. I sit in front of my computer, writing a blog post on one monitor, the other screen with the Google images tab of "Blood Angels Terminators" I was gazing at last night still open. Shield of Baal has been and gone, and I was lucky enough to pick up the Datacards and copy of Deathstorm to split with a friend, although I can still see the box of Tyranid sprues and bases denoting the fact he hasn't paid me for his half yet. I'm still excited to get my Blood Angels codex, and the new Terminators kit - perhaps even the Terminator Librarian if my funds can stretch that far. And even now, over eleven years since I first started wargaming, I still want to add even more models to my enormous Blood Angels army, even considering the possibility of one day possessing the entire chapter, model for model. 

Perhaps a little lengthy, but I could write far more on my history with this particular band of little plastic men, and my fondness for them above all others. But enough history, let's talk about the present! Here is the current state of my Deathstorm models, built as per the datasheet in the box. First up, the Death Company boys along with Cassor the Damned, the last remaining Troops Dreadnought. Clearly he didn't get the update memo, but I'm not complaining!

And here's the Shield of Baal himself, Captain Karlaen of the Blood Angels 1st Company, along with the dead Terminator from the newer Space Hulk sets, who'll become a much-needed objective marker eventually. I've become infamous for forgetting my objective markers for games, so hopefully some themed ones will help me remember them!

I still have the Terminators to build, but as I said in my previous update, I'm holding off until I've got a box of the BA Assault Termies to bash with them and make them look a little less vanilla. I'm also keeping an eagle eye pealed for a set of the Space Hulk Terminators for sale so that I can further boost my 1st Coy. collection. Did I say that I liked Terminators?

In other news, I'm hoping to pick up an SD card for my camera on the weekend (sorry for procrastinating, I've just been too busy!) And I'm still writing up the Hail Caesar Battle Report from the other week - lots of (dodgy) pictures this time! Yay!

That's all for now, so be sure to check out my next post. Until then, happy gaming!

-Mike

Update time - A new year of hobbying, and my projects for 2015!

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the blog! I was hoping to have my first year's post up last Friday, but various events ended up in the usual delay, so it's here today instead! In this post, I'm going to be going over my targets and projects for the coming months - with pictures!

First off, on the subject of pictures - hurrah!  I ended up getting a camera for Christmas, so once I've sorted out an SD card for it, I'll have lovely lovely pictures to show you all, rather than the usual dull blocks of text!

So, what's on my table at the moment?

Well, at this moment in time I have several different things going on, with the Terminators from Deathstorm currently awaiting their Assault Terminator brethren (so that I can split the iconography over the two squads so they don't look completely different) Next up, at the back you'll struggle to see a couple guys on one of my bitz boxes - they're scouts, but more on them later...
On the other side there are my three Deathwing Terminators - relics of a cancelled project but not yet forgotten - and three Uruk-Hai Warg riders, part of a much larger enterprise that I don't believe I've covered yet, but that's a story for another post.
Finally, there's an array of cast resin bases, bought from Daemonscape, which I purchased for an entirely new undertaking...

I've finally taken the dive! Malifaux has always been a game I've been interested in starting for a long time, drawn in by the exquisite miniatures and innovative gameplay mechanics. Over the holidays I ended up having a little more money spare than I'd anticipated, and so ended up (after consulting the Wyrd Forums and receiving tons of advice from the friendly denizens within) buying a crew, along with the rulebook and the Schemes and Strategies deck - sadly the fate deck I wanted was out of stock, so I'll be substituting a standard deck of cards until I can pick up the deck I'm after.

I'll go in to more depth on everything here, as well as wrapping up the D&D adventure I ran last year, and covering a Hail Caesar battle report from last week, in later posts. Speaking of which, this year I intend to have a much more rigid posting timetable - at the moment, I'm thinking Mondays and Fridays, but we'll see how it goes. And lastly, there is one more project on the horizon - something distinctly... Oriental...

Until then, happy gaming everyone!

-Mike