Space Pirates and renegade Space Marines

Hi, 

The new year is here and I hope it will mean for my part a lot of painted miniatures and lot of slaughter and damned souls fuelling the dark chaos gods, ahem I mean battles of  WH40K. You may know that I obtained the Dark Vengeance starter set with Dark Angels and Chaos Space Marines a while ago and fell in love with the cute small cultist and insanely detailed Chosen marines. I have now decide that the Dark Angels will give in to Chaos and join the other side. The whole pack will apply for Space Pirate jobs at the Red Corsairs Renegade Space Marines under Huron Blackhearts leadership (Link to Lexicanun). My Taus will be in the backseat for a while until my reinforcements arrive with more magnets.

To successfully turn the Dark Angels gone bad I went shopping for Green stuff, Instant mold, red primer spray and sculpting tools. I will tune the loyalist marines with a little chaos bits here and there made of green stuff. To save time I will use the instant mold to replicate bits I need, like skulls, swords etc. To work with instantmold you pour hot water in to any container and drop one bar of the stuff in the water. A few minutes later it is soft and you can press in the master object in to it and let it cool down. Voila, you have a mold you can use then to replicate the object. When the mold is not needed anymore you can just throw it into hot water again. 

Green Stuff, Sculpting tools and Instant mold.

Red Primer

Other people have done similar projects with the DV box and it seems doable. I think I will leave most of the DA emblems on the miniatures and just paint a red X on them at least on the shoulder pads to signify that they are now part of the Red Corsairs. They should probably retain their Dark Angel colours on the armour, but I say that they have had time to paint them with the Crimson and Black of their new allegiance.

I today finished the assembly of the all the DA miniatures, I am really impressed how they were just plug & play and how it was practically  impossible to stick the wrong bits together as the pins would not fit the holes or otherwise not fit. What you see in the picture is all without glue. I calculate that the whole assembly and cleaning of the plastic parts took me around 3-4 hours in total. So if you have a friend or two you could be blasting each other on the battlefield in just a few hours with all the models assembled and quick start booklet. How cool is not that for new people coming in to the hobby!

Krampus and his to be Red Corsair space pirates. Amazingly there is not a drop of glue holding this band of brother together (pun intended)!

How I learned to stop worrying and love the Heretic (i.e. Dark Vengeance unboxing)

Hi, 

This is more of a filler update with nothing new finished. It is more like a preview what I will work on the next months. 

Today after work I took a stroll to my local game store (Poromagia,com) with the intent to by some material for bases, rubble and the like. Tuesdays are gaming days and there were 20 or more people playing Warhammer 40k games at different tables. I watched the games for a moment after picking up the stuff I came for and saw that Tau are quite popular. Then from nowhere the consumer demon possessed me and I picked the Dark Vengeance starter set (7th Edition) with some additional secret boxes of Tau tools of destruction. After spending ten times more then I intended I walked out of the store feeling like Santa with a sack of presents for myself. The staff was very nice in the store and even gave me a free card game in addition to the purchases.

I opened the box and looked through the model sprues in the box. The box comes with about 500 points worth each of Chaos Space Marines and Dark Angels. "Holy cow" was my first impression. The details on the plastic sculpts are insane now days. I remember buying GW plastic stuff over 10 years ago and it doesn’t even come close in quality or detail of modern sculpts. One specific Chaos Space Marine sprue made me fall in love with the Chaos Gods and I let out a mad cackling cultist laughter. You will see soon which one. But here follows an "unboxing" of the starter kit and some impressions. Overall I felt that I got value for my money. Enjoy!

Box Art, a bit bland in my opinion. The newer Dethstorm is much more eye catching

All the contents in one picture

The gaming aids and paper contents of the box. The "how to play" guide is really nice with a simple go-through of the rules a phase at a time with clear examples. Notice that only 6 dice + scatter dice are included...c´mon. You include miniatures worth 100 euros, but only include six dice. Also I see that the horrible measure sticks are the same that first appeared in WH Fantasy 5th edtion box 16 years ago. The templates are nice though. 

Size comparison of the 6th Edition Rule book and the one in the box. A4 vs A5 and ~700 pages vs 208. Nice and handy to only have the rules in one small pocket sized book. It is full colour and the quality is ok. The cover is very soft and will probably look like hell after a few months. 

Comparison between page designs. These ones are almost identical, The design language in the 7th edition feel fresh and striking while the 6th edition is more traditional. I like both .

Then onwards to the first sprue with Chaos Chosens and a hellbrute. This one is absolutely spectacular

These 3 dudes made me fall in love with Chaos. The horns, the horns...and the crazy axe wielding cultist champion. Insane details. Admit it, after seeing them you also want to embrace the dark gods. The left side one with two horns is Krampus himself (Kranon the Relentless IRL)  .

Details of backside of the Hellbrute, I am not a greates fan of the flesh mechanical look, but again awesome details. 

The box contains two of these sprues. Bikes, Space marines and cultists.

Just look at these! They look adorable with their gas masks and spiky periphelia, Would go well wiht the Dark Eldar SM look. 

The Special Edition miniature inside the box, Vrosh Tattersoul, aspiring champion. The miniature is ok I guess, but Krampus sweeps the floor with him. 

Dark Angel Sprue

The Dark Angels are great sculpts with lot of cool details, but... put three horns on the Deathwing terminator in the middle and he would be awesome.  

More details of a terminator with a power sword. I really like the stuff that hangs from his belt (is the spehere a incense burner?)

Details of the bike. The banner pole annoys me tremendously and oterwhise they look a bit meh. If it must have wings I would put them as details from the front wheels going upwards or as covers for the legs.