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Blood Angels 3rd Company (ish)

Greetings Bunker Dwellers! Unless you have been living under a rock, blindfolded, with noise cancelling headphones and singing an old timey sea shanty, you will have noticed that a new edition of Warhammer 40,000 is upon us! With it has come something of an upswing in enthusiasm for the bolter-flavoured version of Warhammer among our little band. You see, the previous edition of 40k, (while I am sure was fine for many, if not most) had for one reason or another all but killed 40k as a game among us Beard Bunker-ers, it just wasn't an enjoyable experience for us. The more we heard about the new version, the more excited we became and now... it's here!

Knowing that I was going to be looking back at some older projects with a view to sprucing them up and getting them all new-40k-ified, it suddenly struck me that some of them are of sufficient vintage that I haven't really shown them here practically at all. As a result I have resolved to reintroduce some older-but-still-good armies, talk about where I'm going with them and what had gone before. We start with my favourites, my Blood Angels:


That right there is the best part of the entire Blood Angels 3rd Company. They're missing a few folks here and there (we'll get to that later) but the vast majority is right there. I'd decided from the off that this was going to be very much a tactical company, despite the Blood Angels somewhat creative reading of how the Codex Astartes works. Unusually for me, the army is led by a special character straight out of the rulebook: Captain Erasmus Tycho. There's a reason for this, and to find out what it is we kinda have to do that thing where someone plays harp scales and the screen goes wobbly.

My well loved copy of White Dwarf 139, a little foxed, bordering on badgered...

The year is 1991 and a twelve year old Jeff has just picked up White Dwarf 139 from WHSmiths. Although most of the issue is all about Space Fleet - the precursor to the excellent Battlefleet Gothic - there is an article by Andy Chambers and Tim Prow all about this new studio Blood Angels army that they've made. They go through inventing unit markings, deciding colour schemes to denote sergeants and the different tactical roles... and they roll up (yep, in Rogue Trader you randomly generated characters) a character using the existing "Blood Angels Captain" model. They called him Tycho and that random roll was where his combi-weapon, digital lasers and all the rest came from. I was hooked. No-one had shown me how armies were made before, I thought you just got all your dudes and a lego technic guy standing in for a giant and had a fight.


In later years we saw Tycho's story grow, all through the pages of White Dwarf, he was killed in a fight with a Ork Weirdboy but they decided that he survived and got disfigured. Sure enough when a proper model was made of him, there he was. We saw when he finally fell to the Black Rage in the defence of Armageddon. We watched a whole mini-series about this one dude and his army. It left something of an impression on me. Of course, being a callow, fickle youth, Space Wolves appeared and in 3rd edition I collected them instead, an army of 15 space marines and every special character in the range of course... But the Blood Angels never really left me, there was something about the tragedy of their situation, the nobility of Sanguinius and his fall. I liked that they were flawed, that they weren't goody-goody. Finally, about seven years ago. There was a new release with all new awesome plastic bits and I saw the sign. It was finally time to collect 12 year old Jeff's army.


I made a slightly crazy decision with this army. I chose a slightly simplified version of the colour scheme that Anja Wettergren had detailed in an 'Eavy Metal Masterclass article (this really is The Army That White Dwarf Built if you hadn't picked up on the theme!). This led to some hellish long batches being painted, the red alone is like 8 stages. But the finished results were that dark, dangerous looking red that the Space Hulk terminators have rather than the nineties dayglo orange. Very nice indeedy. The picture above is of the tactical marines of the 3rd company. If you check out the kneepads, they're all properly assigned to squads, very old school. I decided to have the Veterans of the army being the first Assault squad and first Tactical squad of the army. The Tactical Veterans were of course Sternguard. The Assault Veterans....


Of course became Vanguard Veterans. Joining them are the other fifteen Assault Marines forming what I tend to think of as the Ca-Caw Corps of the army. Almost two dozen lunatics dropping from high altitude transports onto you can really spoil your day and the Blood Angels excelled at it. We'll have to see how they fare in the new rules but the old playing experience of my army felt like this: deploy a bit of a defensive force to provide fire support, then as of turn two begin raining down nutcases from orbit to mix it up close and nasty. When those are your tactics, you really need some heavy friends who can help out. Good job I brought some:


A pair of Dreadnoughts and their attendant orbital taxis fit the bill nicely. In the picture there is also the fourth tactical squad's drop pod, they're the ones with all the melta weaponry so makes sense to drop them where they can do some hurt. Supported by at least one of the two dreadnoughts (the old way that drop pods worked) they were an unpleasantly adjacent problem for most commanders facing this army. I should mention, while I am going to talk about expanding this army later, very few things on this earth would convince me to paint another drop pod without having a long hard word with myself first. They are the most hateful things to paint.


All that close in stuff needs some boom to back it up and so here we have the big guns of the army. The Devastators, the Terminators (with the lovely, lovely Forgeworld pads) and the Land Speeder fire support. You may notice the helmets on the Land Speeders, Devastator rather than assault. This is part of my Blood Angel head-canon, there is no reason to consider a Land Speeder an assault unit except for it's speed. Given that the entire Blood Angels army is built around going fast anyway, this is not a unique feature. I see them as highly mobile heavy weapon support. I.e., as Blood Angel Devastators. Plus the blue helmets look really cool and I had loads of yellow ones in the army already.


Speaking of going fast, those tactical units up there need their taxis. No Blood Angel worth their salt is going to walk when they could be being hurtled there in a turbo-charged APC. The four razorbacks up there belong to the first three tactical squads and the command squad (later) and are ably supported by the Baal Predator. I've got a few variant turrets for the Razorbacks so I can swop out the assault cannons for more lascannons if I'm up against heavy stuff and a heavy bolter turret if I'm feeling cheap. I'd always planned to fabricate some round hatches with some sort of remote firing storm bolter to fit in the sockets for the razorback weapons and turn them into rhinos for if I needed the whole squad moving. Then the 40k malaise hit and the project was abandoned... time to go for it I think!


We've run out of the "normal" Blood Angels now and are into the nutcases. This merry band were originally intended to be deployed by Stormraven so there's another dreadnought and the assault marines to bail out and slaughter things. They're led by either Chaplain Lemartes or "Just Some Chaplain in a Jump Pack" depending on how I'm feeling. What's that? Over there on the left? Why yes, that is a second Tycho (I've got issues) this time in his "fallen" mode. I painted him to look greyer, older than his younger self (coming up next) and always intended to paint up a squad of non-jump-pack-Death Company to keep him company. They're upstairs, assembled, they just need paint. So expect to see them soon-ish too.


For his younger self I went a bit off piste for Blood Angels, most people paint the characters in blingy gold armour. But it's the one bit of Blood Angel design I wasn't keen on. I thought that just having his heraldry and artificer armour but in red would be a nice look. I think I'm right, what do you folks think? You'll notice that the torsos of his command squad are those blingtastic roman style ones off've the Sanguinary Guard. Their fancy jump packs went to the Vanguard Veterans, in fact, the whole army is basically comprised of normal tactical and assault marines with the occasional bits from the death company box and the Sanguinary Guard power weapons on the Sergeants. Really helped theme it. Of course, these days there are upgrade sprues and all sorts.


Backing up the captain are a couple of Sanguinary Priests - both conversions - and the Third Company's Chaplain. I'm pretty sure that the terminator armoured one uses bits from the Grey Knights. This army took so long to complete that they'd been released by that point! In practice I tend to think of the third company as having just one Sanguinary Priest who has a suit of terminator armour on standby if he needs it. I do the same with the Chaplain. I don't have both the jump pack one and the one on foot in the same army. When, inevitably I do a Terminator Chaplain it'll just be another outfit for him. Like a terrifying, dogmatic, murderous Barbie.


Finally we have these three, my Techmarine, my converted Librarian, and the new Captain of the Third: Machiavi. You see, when Tycho died, Machiavi succeeded him and the third company became known as the Ironhelms. There's no more lore than that so I invented some. I imagined Tycho's grief stricken First Sergeant, seeing him slipping into the pit of the Black Rage and having to take command. With no time to do any fancy painting he simply stripped the paint from his helmet to help quick battlefield recognition and went to work. He's refused to change it ever since and so the bare metal skin sealing the ceramite innards remains just bare metal. An Ironhelm. Or something, it's the nice thing about vague details in codexes. There's room for your own headcanon to take root. Speaking of which, I really must name everyone, in the intervening years I've gotten much more strict on every unit and character having individual personalities. Must retrofit some to the old army as I renovate it.


So here we are, full circle. I've hopefully done what that old White Dwarf did. I've explained my army, my reasons for making certain decisions. My motivations in collecting in the first place, my own little bits of lore (which I'm starting to like as an alternative name for what I was calling fluff). Going forward, I've got plans. Sadly they have to be somewhat small plans as the paints that gave this army it's exact colour have long since gone. I'll have to do best matching to do any more. But I really want to get at least a few things done:

  1. I've got a second half for the Sternguard to bring that up to full 10 man strength. Need to paint them. 
  2. There's a full ten man bike squad (well, eight and an attack bike) that I'm going to use to represent the sixth tactical squad. Again, headcanon, Blood Angels are fast moving, what's a bike except a faster tactical marine with an extra boltgun... can we all have one?
  3. Scouts! There's no replacements for the casualties my underwhelming generalship will bring. 
  4. I've got a box full of marine tanks (Land Raiders, Whirlwinds etc.) all primed red. Then left. So they need painting too.
  5. Ultimately, I'd like to add the fifth tactical squad and a second devastator squad. I'd like the whole company as I'm so close to it anyway. 
As you can see, the minute I get the keen to paint some more marines there are projects just waiting for me to get the brush on to it.

What do you think of them? Got any fond memories of ol' 139? Or a story of your own inspiration from elderly sources? A passion project from your younger self? Let me know in the comments. Would love to hear your stories.

Until next time gentle Dwellers

TTFN

Comments

  1. Excellent, love posts like this. Lovely looking Force, and interesting evolution of the force.

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    1. Thanks Siph! Writing this has really given me that "fallen back in love with a project" feeling so you'll definately see more. Just need to get the right red...

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    2. Sometimes just seeing something spread out in all its glory will do that :) Looking forward to receiving the business end of that lot soon

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  2. I'd forgotten what a nerd-on this army gives me. We need to have an ork v. bangle campaign weekend at some point, maybe get to use Tycho pre-and-post-rage over a few games.

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    1. Damn straight, it is on somewhat like Donkey Kong

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  3. sanguinary priests now are very good

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    1. Oooh, yay! Been told Dreadnoughts are savage now too so rubbing my little power armoured hands in glee :D

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