Warhammer 40,000: Dark Vengeance Unboxing

Originally I wasn't going to buy the boxed set of 6th Edition Warhammer 40,000, Dark Vengeance.  The Dark Angels are a little too angsty, goth, and arrogant for my tastes, and while the chaos models are cool, my Word Bearers army is still in its infancy, and has been on the back burner for ages now.  But then I thought, I do want to get the rulebook.  I did find the small rulebook in 5th edition to be very useful, and far less cumbersome than the full size rulebook.  So I thought a bit, and decided that if I spent a little bit more money than for the big rulebook, I'd get a boatload of great minis too.  If I didn't want to ever paint the Dark Angels, I could always trade them or something.  In the end that put me over the edge.

Chaos Daemon Bloodbath

Seeing this post by Ron over at From the Warp got me thinking about this again.

When I saw the Apocalypse Bloodthirster Bloodbath formation, I thought:  That would be an awesome formation to field.  Just imagining the spectacle of 8 Bloodthirsters suddenly appearing on the battlefield, led by Forgeworld's Bloodthirster Ann'ggrath is just fantastic.  While Ann'ggrath is both huge and expensive, I can almost justify getting him...as the centerpiece to my Bloodthirster Bloodbath.  The problem is, I hate the current GW Bloodthirster.

The current one is dated,  expensive...and limited.  I really wish GW came out with a new Bloodthirster model, preferably a plastic one.   If GW made a new model, that looks better than the current one and in plastic with options to provide some variety, I'd have a very hard time resisting picking some up.  The temptation to field a Bloodbath would just be too great.

I dislike the current model enough that I got a fantasy model instead to represent a Bloodthirster, Bel'Akor the Dark Master: 

In the meantime, the closest substitutes for Bloodthirsters are:

• Soul Grinder - This is something of a stretch, with its Defiler lower half, but the upper half has possibilities.
• GW Daemon Prince - Also a stretch--the model has a great head & claws, the but the rest of the model is too obviously a Chaos Space Marine to really work as a Bloodthirster in its own right.
• Forgeworld's Daemon Prince -Great model, and would serve just fine as a Bloodthirster.  Only downside is that it's somewhat expensive, about ~$100.  If he was $50, this would be a no brainer.

All three would need conversion work to give them wings.  But I do like the idea of each Bloodthirster being unique and having its own "personality."  But it looks like I'll have to wait...sigh.

By Request: Epic Pictures

By popular demand, I took some pictures of my various Epic scale forces. Some of them are in a state of disrepair, and I caution that the paintjobs are woefully out of date, but here they are.

Back in my days of playing Space Marine with some fanaticism, I collected and fielded an entire chapter of Space Marines, my homegrown chapter, the Nightblades.Now the chapter is somewhat depleted, as I cannibalized some of them to paint up other Space Marines from other chapters.

Back in its heyday, the Nightblades' usual foe was the Eldar from the Yriel-Dyann craftworld:The Eldar were formidable opponents, and the superheavy grav-tanks, the Tempests, and the Eldar Exarchs caused me untold amounts of frustration. As did the Eldar Phantom Titans, which unfortunately got lost in the shuffle, so I don't have pictures of them. Suffice it to say, one of them was armed with twin Pulsars, and pretty much vaporized my titans with ease.

Speaking of which, here they are, Bellator, Pugnator, and Venator:
As you can see, they've seen better days, and are due for some attention from the Adeptus Mechanicus.

My Space Marines were on occasion aided by various other forces, including the Imperial Guard:
Imperial Knights:
and the massive Imperator Titan, the Iustus Potestas:

Occasionally, my Imperial forces ended up fighting the forces of Chaos, represented here by one of their Titans:

The Ork forces never got to see battle, but I still started building a force anyway. In the future sometime they may still take to the field.
The Orks, of course, had to have some heavy support.

After Epic 40k was released, I started building forces using the new strip bases. I ended up cannibalizing some the Nightblades to make my Ultramarines force:
Also, as an experiment, I wanted to paint up squads from other chapters, so I did up a squad each of Dark Angels, Space Wolves, Blood Angels, and another homegrown chapter, the Sea Warriors.The Sea Warriors were an experiment of mine, even their name wasn't set in stone. Their symbol was similar to that of the Dark Angels or Blood Angels, but instead of a winged sword or blood drop, the Sea Warriors had a winged trident.I had not developed the chapter background all that much, other than that they had a nautical theme.