[Archive] Fear of the Dark (Angels)

Archive [Archive] Off-Topic Showcase
1

Thommy H:

When I first got back into the hobby after the compulsory “beer and girls” sabbatical, it wasn’t the gothic fantasy world of Warhammer to which I returned. No, I channelled my renewed interest in painting and collecting towards the grim darkness of the far future (where, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s just war left now - nowt else). My last army from my youth, and the only army I was ever very pleased with, was Dark Angels. I rebuilt my army and started adding to it, piece by piece, until it ended up at some 4,500 points. It had to stay at home with my parents (apart from a brief period of living in my room when I shared a house with eight other people - this was not practical) and I ended up sidestepping into other projects. Even then though, I considered myself primarily a 40K player until my love for Chaos Dwarfs was reawakened and, for the next few years, I was all about the Fantasy. You know that story.

I didn’t have much use for 40K for a long time after that and, as my painting skills improved, I was no longer so proud of my Dark Angels. When I returned to my parents for visits, I didn’t bother getting them out any more. It was sad. But you know how it is: it only takes on thing to draw you back into an army or game and for me it was Space Hulk. See, one of the last things I bought for my Dark Angels was a Terminator squad which I assembled but never painted due to having one missing base (I used it for my Great Taurus - see my Chaos Dwarf army). Well, somewhere along the line I’d gotten another 40mm round base, so I could complete them and, inspired by those lovely Space Hulk models, I leapt back into 40K. I had some Company Veterans hiding too which I decided were up to my current standard and I based them to fit my new Termies. So, before I knew it, I was starting a new Dark Angels army!

Yes, I know I have 4,500 points of them already, but I just know that if I dug them out and brought them back home I’d want to repaint them all and that’s not a project I feel like taking on. I may have a quick rummage through next time I’m at my parents to see if there’s any good stuff I can take back though - I happen to know I have a Vindicator that looks pretty nice.

Anyway, enough waffle. Here are some Dark Angels! When I started my original army, they were pure Deathwing. I plan to do the same thing this time, as you shall see.

Squad Samuel





Brother-Sergeant Samuel leads the squad. As a Dark Angel, i.e. a son of Lion El’Johnson, he could conceivably be known as “Samuel El’Johnson”…



Brother Jael is the squad’s point man, teleporting into battle first. His base is shorter than everyone else’s, because he has nothing to prove.



Brother Molochai kills bitches dead with his assault cannon.



Brother Joshua is not distinctive in any way.



Brother Uriel loves hugs!

Squad Nathaniel



Squad Nathaniel are an elite Veteran squad from the 5th Company, although they have no marking whatsoever to indicate that.

Grand Master Belial



Belial is the Master of the Deathwing and I won’t go into his background. The model is Captain Stern, from the Grey Knights, and it took some converting to pull this model off. See below:



Right, so we have the Stern body with the right shoulder pad filed down so a normal Termie pad will go over it. The left arm is a separate part (thank The Emperor) but I needed to have a proper Crux Terminatus and the only one I had was on a metal Terminator power fist arm, so I had to cut the fist away and replace it with the only Terminator left arm I had - one holding a power sword - and then cut away the sword and replace it with a storm bolter from a left hand. Thankfully I could hide the horrible joins with all the little bits of crap that Space Marines cover themselves with.

Force Belial, such as it is…



More to come!

2

AGPO:

Nice work Thommy, why have you gone for the pre-heresy colour scheme?

3

Ishkur Cinderhat:

Very nice! Shame all the terminator pics are blurry. The Grey Knight conversion works very well though!

4

Thommy H:

Nice work Thommy, why have you gone for the pre-heresy colour scheme?

AGPO
I haven't - pre-Heresy Dark Angels are black.
5

Perturabo:

Very nice. I’m liking Samuel El’Johnsons power sword. Your Belial conversion is awesome.

6

torn:

loving the deathwing :slight_smile: have you read the short story in the space hulk deathwing book or issue 0 of warhammer monthly?

its a really hard colour to paint, the white of their armour, and i think you have pulled it off very well :slight_smile: also, its great going back to nostalgia days

7

Thommy H:

Some additions, from my original army. I almost immediately broke my vow to not just take old models and repaint them, btw:

Honoured Brother Ramiel









I slightly repainted this - just some touch ups here and there, really. It’s a plastic Dreadnought, so I can alter his weapons if I really feel the need because I didn’t glue the arms on. I usually just default to the lascannon and power fist plus flamer though (or I would if I actually, you know, played games).

7th Vindicator: "Venger"







Yeah, I remembered this model looking a lot better so, when I saw it wasn’t that good after all, I had to repaint it from scratch. Last time I do it. Promise. There’s a very boring story here: I bought this off ebay, and it was already built and undercoated. This was good, but the struts that attach the dozer blade are at the wrong angle and the eagle on one door is off-centre. Not much I can do about those things, sadly. I think it looks okay though.

Force Belial, updated

8

Thommy H:

Time for a long overdue update. Several months ago, while on holiday, I picked up a copy of Assault on Black Reach to supplement my Dark Angels (and eventually give me an army of Ork antagonists for the fiancée to command). I took my time painting my new Space Marines (most of which seemed to be spent filing off mould lines…) but they’ve been done for a while now, I just didn’t get time to take photos because we never seem to have a weekend free now. This may have something to do with having set a date for the wedding, which means we now spend an inordinate amount of time wandering around hotels and offering to give the owners huge sums of money in return for letting us fill their bar with our friends and family. Ho hum.

Anyway, there’s a few updates of existing models in the following batch, so bear with me:

Grand Master Belial



Just a couple of small tweaks: he now has eyes (very handy when shooting that storm bolter) and his little shield thing carries his proper heraldry. This ties into the new Terminator squad (see later).

Company Master Zacharai





Master Zacharai is something of a young hothead - for one thing, he hasn’t even dyed his hair black like every other Dark Angel in history apparently! This would be the rather dubious Captain from the AoBR set: turns out you can polish a turd after all, because he turned out fairly nice. I really like his face. As you can see, there’s some very minor conversion work, in that I ditched the standard back pack and gave him a Dark Angels one along with a proper Dark Angels banner on his back instead. His armament, interestingly, is not legal in Codex: Dark Angels - Company Masters can’t be given bolters. Since it looks master-crafted though, and since master-crafted = re-roll, and re-roll also = twin linked, we can think of it as the equivalent of a twin-linked bolter, and a twin-linked bolter is really just a storm bolter. So it counts as that.

Squad Jacob



As much stuff as you get in the AoBR set, there’s no denying that the models you get are pretty rubbish compared to the ‘real’ box sets. These Terminators are actually noticeably smaller than their multi-part counterparts! I also couldn’t quite get my white recipe right, so they’re a little lighter in colour than their brethren. The assault cannon Marine is converted from the spare assault cannon I had (the DA accessory sprue comes with one, so you end up with an extra). Note the little shields too: I think the idea is to give each Terminator their own heraldry, and the logic I’ve followed is that they base their markings on the symbol of the Company they’re drawn from. Should they ever make it to Company Master, their heraldry will match because they’ll only ever be put in command of their original Company. Or something.

Squad Nathaniel



My Company Veterans squad has now magically morphed into a Command Squad with the addition of a banner. This means they don’t take up a slot on the FOC (yay), but limits their options a bit. Thankfully, the squad is still perfectly legal - Nathaniel just has to become a Company Champion now. The banner is made from a Bretonnian Men at Arms standard which was going spare because my Bretonnian commoner banners are just simple colours with no heraldry.

Squad Isaiah







Tactical squad. Yep. Standard layout, Dark Angels green. You’ll notice I paint my bolters black - this is because Space Marines do not celebrate Christmas.

Honoured Brother Sheol







Deathwing dreadnoughts are just cool. This is Sheol, who existed in my old Dark Angels army as my counts-as Belial. The story is that he was a former Master of the Deathwing, now interred in a Dreadnought, which makes this army the “next generation” of Dark Angels, I guess. I’ve decided that the skull/star symbol on some of the AoBR models represents a campaign marking from battles my old army fought, so anyone with it usually has a name I’ve used before. Hence Sheol going from Grand Master to Dreadnought. Master Zacharai was the Sergeant of a command squad and Nathaniel was a regular Tactical Squad Sergeant.

Anyway, here’s the whole army so far:



It’s actually legal now! On the painting table for the future: a Ravenwing bike squadron and some bits I’m going to use to build a Techmarine.

9

Warhammerman:

Yay for Squad Jacob! I knew if marines were really tough they would name a squad after me. haha. Really nice models and the AoBR captain is very nicely painted.

10

Willmark:

Looks awesome. My own are meh so if I was going to start up 40k again it would be Dark Angels or perhaps a themed Fallen Angel Dark Angel force.

11

Willmark:

Looks awesome. My own are meh so if I was going to start up 40k again it would be Dark Angels or perhaps a themed Fallen Angel Dark Angel force.

12

Kera foehunter:

Tommy h Wow !! becide being best with everything else your a great painter too!! love your White painting

13

The Brain:

Hay Thommy nice army. I was wondering if you have been playing angels long. If so what do you think of the current codex. I have been playing them for years and I know over here in the US since the current codex came out we lost a lot of players to the rule changes. Just looking to hear opinions from outside the US.

14

Loki:

Great looking dark angles army , possible one of the best that i have seen :slight_smile:

15

AGPO:

Nice work Thommy, why have you gone for the pre-heresy colour scheme?

AGPO
I haven't - pre-Heresy Dark Angels are black.


Thommy H
Ah I see now the first crop of pictures looked black on my monitor. Really like what you've done with these guys. I know what you mean about the black reach Termies though - its a very visable difference
16

Thommy H:

Hay Thommy nice army. I was wondering if you have been playing angels long. If so what do you think of the current codex. I have been playing them for years and I know over here in the US since the current codex came out we lost a lot of players to the rule changes. Just looking to hear opinions from outside the US.

The Brain
I've been playing them since 3rd Edition, although, technically, when I started playing back in 2nd, I had a mixed-Chapter army and I had a handful of Dark Angels while I was nominally collecting Blood Angels - and since they shared a Codex in those days, I did occasionally field Dark Angels instead. So I've been with them through Codex: Angels of Death, Codex: Space Marines (3rd Edition), Codex: Space Marines + Codex: DA V.1, Codex: Space Marines + Codex: DA V.2, Codex Space Marines (4th Edition) + Codex: DA V.2 and, finally, the current Codex: Dark Angels.

And, honestly, the current book is the one I like best. When I look back at the pamphlet Dex (as I did recently, funnily enough), I wonder how the hell I ever played with it!

Now, I'm not a very competitive player, and I wouldn't be seen dead at a tournament, but the way I see it Codex: Dark Angels is only "broken" in extreme conditions. It frustrates me, too, when people say that C:SM (or worse, the new Space Wolves!) can do Dark Angels better - I mean yeah, sure, if you take nothing but Tactical Squads, C: DA is going to come out a bit worse, but why even bother playing Dark Angels if you don't use the things that make them different from regular Space Marines? It's like taking Pedro Cantor without including any Sternguard in your army, or trying to play a fighty Tau army. There's no point playing Dark Angels if you don't include any Ravenwing or Deathwing, or use options that make the whole army Fearless. That's what Dark Angels are for! They're not just Space Marines.

So yeah, that's how I feel about it. That said, I would quite like WS 6 Company Masters and storm shields that give a 3+ invulnerable save, but I understand how things move forward and I don't bear a grudge.
17

Thommy H:

Time for a long overdue update:

The Paladin, squad Isaiah’s Rhino





This is a Rhino from my old army, blinged up a bit and repainted. I’d custom made a Dark Angels symbol for one door years ago, but it didn’t look good enough and now I’ve got the Ravenwing sprue which comes with loads of cool symbols to stick on vehicles, so I had to hack it off and replace it. That’s where the “battle damage” comes from on the right door. I also wish I didn’t have the gunner sticking out of the top now, but in my youthful exuberance I obviously wanted to use all the coolest bits.

Squad Gamaliel





Squad Gamaliel is, self evidently, a Ravenwing Attack Squadron. The Ravenwing sprue is amazing, btw - you get loads of custom parts to make your vehicles Dark Angels-y, including special tank crew parts, which I put to good use (see below). Also, I wanted to do a conversion based on the picture on page 26 of the Codex, with the Ravenwing biker letting a raven alight on his hand as he sits in front of a massed Dark Angels assault. It’s an awesome, iconic image and of course I didn’t do it justice, but look! He’s got a birdie!

Brother Techmarine Eleazar



I never meant to build a Techmarine, but when I saw the Dark Angels tank crew head and shoulder pad (the Ad-Mech skull has a little hood on it!) on the Ravenwing sprue, it seemed silly not to kitbash one. He uses an Assault Marine’s chest, ordinary Tactical legs and the Dark Angels power maul from the Veterans sprue. Techmarines usually have axes, of course, but a power weapon’s a power weapon. His backpack and servo-arm is Fabius Bile’s chirurgeon, which is a bit Chaotic, but fits for the always-borderline Dark Angels.

Squad Eliakim









This is a Deathwing Terminator Squad, equipped with assault weapons (with some of the obligatory Deathwing weapon-mixing in the form of the cyclone missile launcher) that I finished painting literally this morning. Of note is the sergeant, Eliakim. As you can see, he carries a sword and shield, which counts as a thunder hammer and storm shield. The story with him is that he’s actually the Deathwing’s equivalent of a Company Champion - called the Custodian, who presides over the Feast of Malediction each year (hence the grail symbol on his leg - that represents the Cup of Retribution used in the feast), which is stretching the fluff a bit, but I like the concept. If I ever convert up a Terminator Apothecary and standard bearer, he’ll probably join them in a proper Deathwing command squad.

Force Belial



So that’s it for now. In the painting pile are two Veteran sprues which will be used to create ten Veterans - five for a second Command Squad, and five for a unit of Company Veterans. That’ll bring the army up to 2,400 points, which is pretty big given that I just started this project last year. Army building with Space Marines is very easy, apparently.

18

Warhammerman:

Awesome stuff.

This message was automatically appended because it was too short.

19

Loki:

Great work Thommy i really like the converted techmarine :slight_smile:

20

Baggronor:

Stop tempting me back to 40K :slight_smile:

As mentioned already, the Techmarine is very nifty, liking the mace.

Always nice to read other people’s army blogs, they seem so much more organised than mine.