For the Lion: Holding the Line

Hi all it's Neil here with a new post for my For The Lion series showing my latest unit of Intercessors and some pictures from my first game post codex supplement. These Intercessors help build up the core of my Dark Angels force. Intercessors form a good core able to shoot well, fight in melee and control objectives though they're not the best at any being generalists rather than specialists.

For The Lion: Armour Inbound

 Hi all it's Neil here with a new post for my For The Lion series where I'm showing my Gladiator tank to you.  The Gladiator is one of the latest vehicle releases for the space marines and is basically the Predator version of the Impulsor with a turret weapon and two sponsons.  The addition to my Dark Angels give me more anti-tank or anti-infantry options depending on which variant I use.

For the Lion: Interomancy Support

Hi all its Neil here with some more Dark Angels in my For the Lion series.  The latest editions to my Dark Angels force are a pair of Librarians to help interrogate those pesky Fallen once the Deathwing have captured them.  I've gone for a Terminator armour librarian and a Primaris one with Phobos armour giving me two quite different ways to use them on the table.

For the Lion: Shock and Awe

Hi all Neil here with a new For the Lion post about the Storm Speeder I've painted up this month.  Its quite a short post as I haven't done much beyond paint up the model for this project.  I've gone for making the Hammerstrike variant so I can add some more anti-tank firepower to my Ravenwing.  This new addition brings me closer to my planned 2000 point list for gaming again with 8.5 units out of 14 now fully painted.

For the Lion: New Codex Supplement and Painting

Hi all, it's Neil here with a new For the Lion post with some Deathwing reinforcements and following the new Codex Supplement Dark Angels release my ideas for a list to build towards.  This month I painted up a unit of 5 Deathwing Terminators and the Bladeguard Ancient.

For the Lion: The Primarch Himself

Hi all it's Neil here with a new For the Lion post about the Primarch himself today.  Over the Christmas break and into the beginning of the new year I cleared my painting schedule to paint up the Primarch Lion El'Johnson model that I picked up back in about September.  I had planned on finishing the model before the end of 2020 to end the year on a painting high but ended up overrunning into the beginning do 2021.  I wanted to give the model the attention to deserved as a big (expensive) centre piece so I tried to improve my painting in a couple of areas over the mini project.  These areas were cloth, especially the highlighting of it, and bare heads.

For the Lion: Bladeguard

Hi all it's Neil here with a new For the Lion post about the latest unit I've added to my 40k Dark Angels.  This new unit is the Bladeguard from the Indomitus box.  I've painted these up in my Deathwing colours to match my Deathwing Knights.  The Bladeguard are a new unit of Primaris Veterans armed with master-crafted power swords and storm shields making them a resilient melee unit but are slow to cross the tabletop as they lack the jump packs of Vanguard Veterans or the teleport strike of Deathwing Terminators.

For the Lion: REPENT!

Hi all it's Neil here with another Dark Angel's post in my For the Lion series.  This is about my Interrogator Chaplain in Terminator armour, which is using the Commemorative Series Terminator Chaplain Tarentus model that got a limited release earlier this year.   Interrogator Chaplains are a Dark Angel unique HQ who basically a Chaplain with extra morale harming abilities in the game.  In the lore, these are the Chaplain's who have proven themselves and been inducted into the Inner Circle.  They are responsible for extracting confessions from the Fallen who are captured to redeem the Dark Angel's secret sin from the Heresy.

Blood of the Angel Part 4; The armory opens, by Medge

Welcome back to Blood of the Angel - a #BashtheBacklog project chronicling my progress to have a semi-competitive Blood Angels army. 

When this project started 9th Edition wasn't on anyone's radar, yet I write this post on the eve of the 9th Edition Blood Angels Codex Supplement release. 

A lot has changed over the last 12 months for the Blood Angels and until I have the new supplement in hand I have NO IDEA what to expect from the new army!

So what to do in the meantime? Well... guess it's time to catch up on old projects!

Anyone that's followed my Blood of the Angel or Bash the Backlog projects to date will know that I've painted a lot of Blood Angels infantry, but no armored support.

And that ends now! Prepare the Techmarines - the armory opens!

For The Lion: High Speed Combat

Hi all it's Neil here with a new post about my Dark Angels that I've been paining up.  Its been a little bit of a gap since the last one but with the new Indomitus box I've started to add new units to my Dark Angels and have started up doing a Crusade force with them too.  The first unit of new marines to be painted are the Outriders who are part of the 2nd Company, the Ravenwing.

Blood of the Angel, Part 3: A Touch of Character, by Medge

Welcome back to Blood of the Angel - a #BashtheBacklog project chronicling my progress towards having a competitive Blood Angels army, and a slightly tidier hobby space!

In my last few posts I set myself the goal of completing models towards a simple "on-meta" competitive army.

Since my last post we've had a huge amount of new information from Games Workshop about 9th Edition; scenery rules, CP and army build changes, overwatch & tri-pointing/wrapping changes and FAQ's, not to mention the full "leaked" points updates for 9th Editon!

To twist a old saying, "The best laid plans seldom survive first contact with a new Edition" 

Nevertheless, my Blood Angels enthusiasm has never been higher. I was one of the lucky few to secure a copy of Indomitus (thank you to my FLGS for that one!). The Space Marine content in the new box looks great for a Blood Angel player, with Assault Intercessors and Outriders looking to dominate from the start of 9th Edition.

Before I jump into the newer models, however, I wanted to focus on getting through even more of my Blood Angel Backlog.

This last month I've been pretty busy catching up with the Characters from my backlog.

Let's see how I've done...

For The Lion: Summon The Deathwing

Hi all, the Ravenwing have been deployed and located the fallen so it's now time to summon the Deathwing to complete the job.  I have been painting 5 Deathwing knights since the black knights were completed and now have finished these finest of warriors.

These knights have a huge amount of detail in their armor which slowed down their completion a bit (and might have caused a bit of hobby burnout) but they are now finished ready to grace the tabletop when the army is complete.

For the Lion: Knights of the Raven

Hi all,  back again for some more Dark Angels but moving 10,000 years in the future from the last unit to the 41st millenium with some Black Knights ready to run down the fallen.  The black knights are the inner circle of the master of the ravenwing and are privy to the secrets that members of this secretive circle have.

Black knights in game are a fast 2 wound space marine biker unit armed with a mid range plasma weaponry and a decent melee weapon allowing them to threaten large areas of the board and react to whats needed.

For the Lion: Reconnaissance in Force

Hi all, its not been too long since my last post for this project but I've been on a bit of a painting spree at the moment.  My newly completed unit is 3 skyhunters on scimitar jetbikes for my Dark Angels Legion forces, these models are really cool and in game will make a good start to a Ravenwing Protocol force.  I actually bought these models at the Games Day when Forgeworld first released the Age of Darkness game so they've been waiting a while to get some paint.

For the Lion: Leading the Legion of Old

Hi all, it's been a bit since my last dark angels update but I have been painting some more and I now have something to show you for the age of darkness dark angels legion force that I am also painting.  The first model for this is the Dark Angels Praetor in Cataphractii Armour from fw.  This model has Gothic knightly charm in spades with its angular helm, spiked armour, cloak and broad sword.

Blood of the Angel: Part 1. A #BashtheBacklog project by Medge

Well... 2020's been a hell of a year so far hasn't it!

I've been pretty quiet on the blogging front over the last few month; a combination of too many projects, burnout, wedding planning and new job all took the wind from my sails in quarter 1 this year... then Coronavirus hit and everything went to pot!

My brush hasn't been idle in that time, just my keyboard, and I've been working diligently on a few projects, top among which are my Blood Angels!

So welcome to my Blood of the Angel series - a #BashtheBacklog project showing off my mission to finally get a competitive Blood Angels projects running, and clear out a chunk of backlog in the process. 

March for Macragge: Part 6

Hi all, my first Ultramarines post of 2020 and I've painted a few things so far this year.  My new editions to my painted roster this year are a unit of Eliminators with bolt sniper rifles, a unit of 5 Incursors and a Primaris Lieutenant with power sword.

I now nearly have full company of Ultramarines painted with my captian and lieutenants having multiple models so they can be deployed with a variety of different load outs.

Eliminators are good little units that can do good damage if left alone and are resilient while in cover if the enemy decides to fire on them distracting for more valuable units.

Incusors are becoming a favourite unit of mine, being able to forward deploy, bully other infiltrating units, take objectives early and as they ignore to hit modifiers as well as exploding 6s in combat helps them with their role to deal with other infiltrating troops.

My Ultramarines are taking a bit of a back seat for a while but hopefully I will be bringing more updates on my other projects while we're under lockdown.

For the Lion: Air Support Inbound

Hi all, I have been a busy painter recently and have managed to get something done for several projects including for my 40k Dark Angels.  To join my Primaris Lieutenant I have painted up a Ravenwing Nephilim Jetfighter to provide some air cover to my slowly growing Dark Angels strike force.

Tournament Operations: Alpha Game Warhammer 40000 - 2000 points - 15th March 2020

Last year I started off the Tournament Operations post with a trip to Alpha Games near Bury St Edmunds for a 1750 point 40k tournament in June, so this March I am going to return to Alpha Games for a 2000 point 40k tournament.  I will be hoping to do better this year than last as I've had a whole year of gaming plus another event to (hopefully) improve.  I will be taking my Ultramarines along again but this time without a Imperial Knight to support them as I have more Ultramarines units so no longer need it  to make the points level and also this will allow me to use the Combat Doctrines rule that Space Marines have received since my last visit.

For The Lion: New Year New Army; Start Collecting Dark Angels

I am a big fan of the Adeptus Astartes in 40k, especially the loyal Primaris, so when I decided to start a new army this year for 40k as my Ultramarines are nearly "finished", I have picked another Space Marine faction.  This year I will be focusing on some Dark Angels, the First are an interesting army with 3 sub-factions in a way together forming the whole, they have the Deathwing who are terminator armoured heavy shock troops, the Ravenwing who are bike, speeder and plane mounted marines with a good amount of short ranged fire power.  Alongside these two "Wings" you have the battle companies (the so called Greenwing), who look very similar to the normal codex space marines forces though missing a few little bits and pieces.