The Darkhorse Dark Angels
It has been an absolute ride since I started this blog! The creative outlet is amazing, but the feelings are at times mixed. I have been proud of my work, but I do get to see which posts perform well and which don’t. And “performing well” is certainly a relative idea. When you put a bunch of work into something and you only get one or two views, that can be a bit demoralizing. However, I can also see what does well!
A couple weeks ago my World Eaters Army Project absolutely took off! I am looking at the stats now, and it has 20 views. I made a post yesterday about my Scouring Project, and within a few hours it jumped to my third-most viewed blog post! I have long considered doing Army Showcases of my existing armies, and with as many as I have, looking at my Instagram is a bit scattershot. So, here is my first one!
And for the first? The First!
Lion El’Jonson, Primarch of the Dark Angels
This was one of my favorite models to paint. Sadly, I still have yet to use him in a game!
My first 40K Army
The Dark Angels were my first 40K army, and my first love on many levels. My whole life I have loved knights, and the Dark Angels are the perfect army for that vibe, even more so in 30K! I mentioned in my bio how I caught wind of 30K rules not long after I fully jumped into playing 6th edition Warhammer 40K. Dark Angels didn’t have their own rules for a long time. While I was waiting, I even painted some Emperor’s Children, but it was inevitable that I would do a 30K Dark Angels army!
10 years ago, I started painting that very army.
This was actually the first army where I started mixing in resin Forge World bits with my plastic 40K models. Black Book 6 also came out around this time with cursory Dark Angels rules. You can see from the pictures above how bad my pictures were. Ouch.
Around the release of Angels of Caliban, author Gav Thorpe put out the call for people to send him pictures of their Heresy-era Dark Angels. It was such an honor for him to feature some of my photos on his blog! You can see my pictures progressed to using red construction paper as a background.
Black Book 6 was awesome, but it really offered the bare bones for Dark Angels. In the meantime, I mostly played in the 40K sandbox. And, for a long time, nothing…
Fast forward to Book 9 years later. From the Imperium Secundus storyline in the Heresy novels, we got a sneak peek of the Dark Angels wings. Ravenwing and Deathwing are still around in contemporary 40K, but the other four were lost to history. In one of the novels, we saw the Dreadwing Protocol enacted. I think we also caught whispers of the Firewing. I mined all the evidence in all the stories, but Book 9 gave us the entire picture!
Book 9 came at the very end of 1st edition. This is when I left 40K and dedicated myself to Heresy fully. I learned how to play Heresy with the Dark Angels. I had notes and sticky tabs throughout the lore sections of Book 9. I had plans to be able to run the Rites of War for every Wing of the Hexagrammaton.
Above, you can see early on I was using a white background for my darker armies. It’s fine. I also hope you can see my skill improvement!
Since 2016, my style had evolved quite a bit. I updated my paint scheme, particularly the black. One of my favorite sayings is that I do not paint black or white, just various shades of grey. And that doesn’t consider color modulation. Anyway, I also had all these great decals and color plate references between Book 6 and Book 9. My aim for my Dark Angels was for every model to be bespoke. Not every Dark Angel is the member of a Wing, but several different Wings can be represented within the same squad of Tactical Marines, for instance. The Wing I fell for first was Firewing, so you will see considerable red and Firewing markings across the army.
All the characters in this army are named, and many of them have various degrees of background fluff. I won’t bore you with all of that here, but you can see a bunch of that on my Instagram, if you like!
Eventually, I transitioned to the black background for everything. Much more grimdark!
Why did I choose Martian-style/red planet bases? I wanted something that would contrast with the considerable amount of black. It is also the basing scheme I had used for my second 40K Dark Angels army. I knew it worked. In retrospect, most of my armies use a grey basing scheme. It helps so that I can ally various armies together, but it also matches the majority of gaming tables. I have several gaming mats myself, but still, to this day, I need to buy a red planet mat. You can see in the game pictures that the red Martian basing conflicts quite a bit with the gaming tables. Oh well!
Not everyone gets the lightbox treatment for…reasons. Here are some other shots. The last one is my army board for the Armies on Parade I never entered.
Book 9 didn’t last long before 2nd edition dropped and changed everything! I played my Dark Angels a handful of times in that edition but never felt like I got a cohesive 2nd edition force. We are onto a new edition again. I have no idea how many points I have, but I have a lot to pick from. It wouldn’t take much to update this army, probably some Nuncio Voxes! My White Scars army was pretty much the same. Both 1st and 2nd editions had some extremely meta builds that were quite obvious. That changed over time with 1st edition because of the nature of its rollout. In 3rd edition, there is so much more balance between various units and weapons selections. 2nd edition was the edition of Las and Volkite. You took Las to kill tanks and Volkite to kill infantry. Now, more than ever, each weapon has its place. Anyway, I don’t mean to proselytize about the current edition, this is an army showcase!
Some battle shots, I think all from 1st edition!
