40K Fridays - Blood Angels 2024

 Despite a lot of other distractions these last few months I've actually managed to make some decent progress on the Blood Angels. In April I mentioned some bikes, a Leviathan dread, a bike chaplain, a a jump-pack captain all as in-progress and all of those except the chaplain are finished and in the case now. In June I talked about some assault marines and a Redemptor dreadnought as in-progress at the time and I am happy to report those are finished now as well - see Mr. Redemptor in that photo up above. 

The biker chaplain is the one that is dragging out in a perpetual state of "almost". This is the downside of operating a home for wayward Blood Angels - part of it was nicely done but a lot of it looked good from a distance while having a lot of sloppy little errors all over the place and those are very challenging to fix when you're trying not to screw up the good parts by adding new mistakes of your own. This mean every little section has to be checked and re-checked to clean up the lines because every time I look at it I see something else. It probably would have taken less time to finish if I had just painted it from scratch myself but them's the breaks.

I took a pause from the Sons of Sanguinius for a couple of weeks to finally finish some World Eaters - more on them in a future post - but there are more coming. Down the road - once I finish that damn biker Chaplain - I am aiming to clear most of the backlog of death company and sanguinary guard. This is of course just in time for GW to release new death company and sanguinary guard. Ah well. I still like the old sculpts better, for the most part and I am trying to edition-proof my main armies so I can go back and play, say, 5th Edition if I want. That said, I do want to build up a modern-looking force so despite the very mixed reception amongst BA players I went ahead and pre-ordered the new army boxed set. 

The new box is death company focused with a bunch of assault intercessors - jump and foot - along with a punchy brutalis dread, the new Lemartes, and the new Astorath. It also has the codex, the cards, and multiple upgrade sprues to kit out the troops. This is what is really stinging a lot of us - death company had unique sculpts before, from the old metal ones through the later plastic set which is still one of the greatest kits they did  as far as bits and customization options. Now they are generic intercessors with an upgrade sprue for shoulder pads and a few helmets and weapons. It's a serious come-down from what we had before. In the earliest days your death company tended to be assault marines painted black and we are kind of back to those days now which is not really something GW can brag about. Regardless, I wanted to get all of this stuff together because it takes me a while to decide how I want to build it and then it takes a while to actually paint it too. As insurance against disappointment I went ahead and picked up two more boxes of the current death company as they are being discontinued in favor of this new set of options. I have some already but I wanted the parts for future use as the helmets and shoulder pads still fit on primaris-sized models and the assorted bling and trim bits will work there too. 

We went from this ...

The new sanguinary guard are getting mixed reviews too and I am not a huge fan - mainly because of the lack of wings! It's a huge part of their look which is golden armor and big white-winged jump packs! The new ones are far less visually interesting, which is especially damning for a Blood Angels units. I'm sure there will be third-party add-ons out there to add the wings back in but I grabbed another couple of boxes of the current kit here too as insurance because it's going away as well.  The old helmets will fit just fine and I suspect the wings will pop in there too - we will see.

... to this. 

I did like the new captain and sanguinary priest models. I will probably end up with a few of the captain - one in red, one in gold, one in black, maybe. The Dante and Mephiston updates that have been out for a few years now are great too so it's not all bad. 

So now the plan is to finish up a few straggler BA projects and then start in on the Great Updating - and try and actually finish it this time.

Anyway - more to come.