Excommunicate Traitoris: ElectricPaladin's Knights of Blood

[ElectricPaladin]

Yeah, I know. I had this thread already. But I couldn't find it, so I've decided to start a new one. This time, I'll post fluff alongside the finished models and Works in Progress, starting with an awesome lot I got in trade...

 

• • •

Brother-Techmarine Paimon lumbered up onto the bridge of Knights of Blood strike cruiser Merciless. Even without his power armor - no Knight of Blood save for Master Baalbelith himself was permitted to go about in full battle dress, less the berserk rage that marked them as Sons of Sanguinius seize them at an inportune moment - he was an imposing figure. He was unusually large for an Astartes, and the servo-arm that rose up behind him added to his bulk. The cluster of circular lenses that had long-ago replaced Paimon's eyes made his expression unreadable as he regarded Brother-Reclusiarch Alastor.

 

"You requested my presence, brother. Why?"

 

Alastor nodded to one of the serfs who sat at one of the various command thrones arrayed about the Merciless's bridge. After a brief burst of static, the image on the screen shifted to reveal a damaged vessel floating in the void. The forward compartment was crushed and open to the hard vacuum of space and the hull was crusted with accretions, more than a thousand years of space dust, but the vessel appeared to be more or less whole.

 

"It appears to be some sort of storm raven," Alastor said, "but I am not aware of-"

 

Paimon interrupted him. "That is no storm raven, brother. That is a storm eagle. A pattern of Astartes attack craft not seen in great numbers since the Scouring and the sundering of the First Founding chapters."

 

"Can she be made whole once more, brother?"

 

One of Paimon's rare smiles split his face, revealing straight white teeth and the extended canines of Sanguinus's lineage. "Brother, I am certain of it. But behold her colors; she once belonged to the I Legion, the Dark Angels."

 

Now it was Alastor's turn to give in to the predatory smile. He placed a hand on Paimon's shoulder. "Did you forget? We are excommunicate traitoris, surrounded by foes on all sides. She served the I Legion once, but she can serve the Knights of Blood now."

 

Alastor gave the order, and the Merciless turned towards the drifting ship, launch bays opening wide to receive her.

 

• • •

 

The actual models arrived today... I'll post back again later with pictures!

 

http://i1383.photobucket.com/albums/ah290/errgin1/Dark%20Angels/DA_StormEagle2_zps8e4b5ce9.jpg

[deathspectersgt7]

Look Forward to some proper Color.

[ElectricPaladin]

Ok, here it goes.

First off, we've got the fast stuff: two land speeder typhoons (bringing my collection to three!) and a biker reclusiarch. Yeah, I know... bikes aren't a super competitive choice in the Blood Angels codex, but I still think that Furious Charge and 5+ FNP on T 5 bikes isn't a half bad idea, and a mobile non-vehicle firebase that can keep up with the tanks will be plenty of fun to play with, even if they aren't scoring.



These guys are going to take some work.

• Chaplain: One of the motorcycle's handles is broken and his backpack has been replaced by some kind of awful rectangular... thing.
• Land Speeders: Woah boy. One of the pilots has got an empty bolter-holding arm. Just sitting there. And one of the land speeders has a broken sensor thing. I'll probably just clip it off - the sensor things are dumb looking and overly fragile, anyway.

And into the Elites department... a new dreadnought!



Do you see that dent on the right side of the front? I chipped off the paint with my fingernail. This poor son of a bitch has been primed white, painted bone, primed black, and then painted green... and never stripped. Poor bastard.

Anyway, I've always loved the whole shape of a Space Marine venerable dreadnought. All of my other dreadnoughts are all glued together - one as a double-clawed furioso, the other as a librarian, and the third as a double-clawed contemptor furioso - so I'm going to magnetize this one so he can be various kinds of furioso and non-furioso dreadnought. As you can see, he comes with a lascannon and a fist. I'm going to do up a milssile launcher (for hellfire!) and a frag cannon. Probably won't bother with a second fist - like I said, I've already got a glued-together double-fisted furioso.

And, as promised, the prize of the lot, the Phoenix itself!



Man is she in bad shape. Luckily most of the places where she's coming apart are clean breaks, and the few places where they aren't - one of the engine pylons and the back door - it's probably fixable with some greenstuff and plasticard or by gluing into place something that could theoretically be movable, but doesn't need to be. The pilot is included -fresh plastic, which is nice! - though I'm mostly going to use him to fix the arm of the aforementioned screwed up land speeder pilot, as part of my chapter's fluff is that they let specially trained veteran chapter serfs pilot most of the vehicles (I've already got plans to use a Militarum sentinel pilot and a spare tempestus scion head to make my own mortal pilot).

The only thing I'm really concerned about is if I can get the lascannons out so I can straighten them out a bit and also magnetize them so they can be swapped with the missile bit (which was, luckily, included in the lot).

I'll post again presently with some fiction.

[Brother Heinrich]

Building up a warband from scavenged parts and salvage? You sir, are a true traitor at heart.

[ElectricPaladin]

Building up a warband from scavenged parts and salvage? You sir, are a true traitor at heart.

 

Come down here and say that to my face, heretic! We do what we must to survive, so that we can continue to serve the Emperor!

[Monstra Sumus]

 

Building up a warband from scavenged parts and salvage? You sir, are a true traitor at heart.

 

Come down here and say that to my face, heretic! We do what we must to survive, so that we can continue to serve the Emperor!

 

 

Hear, hear! 

 

This log, my eye is on it. 

[AndrewChristlieb]

Those are some good finds, though they certainly need some work. I know what a bear repairing those damaged vehicles can be, I just got the bits in to start repairs on an LRC that looks like it's more super glue then plastic at this point . I don't even know how people can do the things they do to these models sometimes . Looking forward to seeing your progress here

[Phantomzero17]

 

Building up a warband from scavenged parts and salvage? You sir, are a true traitor at heart.

 

Come down here and say that to my face, heretic! We do what we must to survive, so that we can continue to serve the Emperor!

 

For the Emperor, for yourselves, however you choose to justify it though it matters very little.  Astartes forced to beg or steal to maintain themselves.  Recovering what treasures you can from scrap heaps and space hulks.  Praying for deliverance from a silent God all the while succumbing to the curse of a father that he passed to his sons.  Struggling to survive and yet with dew on your brow, and rust on your mail you would defend the idols in the temple of Baal?

 

------------

 

Ahem, all looks like good pickups.  Really glad to see some justification for use of First Legion relics amongst the Knights of Blood for reasons I don't wish to specify at this moment.

[Midnightmare]

Looking forward to seeing where you go with these guys - if I didn't do Flesh Eaters, I would do Knights of Blood. I very nearly repainted my BA as KoB; such a cool Chapter with some great possibilities.

Looking forward to your progress

[Slave to Darkness]

Building up a warband from scavenged parts and salvage? You sir, are a true traitor at heart.

Funny you mention that, that's how my current Plague Marine army started, funnily enough from my old Blood Angels as well. 

[helterskelter]

Really quite looking forward to this little nugget! Let us know how the storm eagle scrubs up, might be a way I can save some future pennies ;)

[ElectricPaladin]

I can give a picture-free update on the stripping process.

The storm eagle is stripping very nicely. This is the first time that FW resin's tendency to reject paint has worked for me rather than against me. However, the fragility of the resin is also rearing its ugly head. Not only have certain things that I wanted to attempt to dismantle and magnetize stubbornly refused to fall apart, but any efforts to "work" the joint have resulted in the material beginning to splinter! Luckily, I was able to figure out a way to magnetize it anyone - it involved working my clippers in there to cut the lascannons off at the base, then magnetize just the characteristic lascannon "heads" as well as the missiles... it makes the wing lascannons a lot shorter, but the under-wing assembly is so large that it's still structurally believable.

The chaplain has been almost as complicated, but much less troublesome. Yes, one of the handlebars broke off. No, I can't find it. Fortunately, on the other hand, handlebars are very easy to make. And even if I declared the bike a lost cause and just bought a new one, it's not like they're very expensive.

The land speeder typhoons are stripping nicely. I kind of wish they'd fall apart all the way so painting the dudes will be easier, but I don't care enough to try to rip them apart and risk damaging them - I wish I'd been more conservative with the storm eagle!

Now, the dreadnought... I have no idea what the this guy was painted with. I still haven't worked my way all the way through the green layer, and underneath that there's still a yellow layer, and then a bone layer, and then the white primer. And NONE OF IT IS COMING OFF. It's like he was coated in some kind of enamel. It's coming off, but very very slowly. I may switch him to my next step up - LA's Totally Awesome or Power Clean or Dawn Power Dissolver. On the lascannon arm and fist, I'm making almost zero headway. It's very strange.

[Phantomzero17]

I had some Termies that were like that.  I ended up putting the container with Simple Green outside to enjoy the warm California sun.  After two days and then letting the plastic cool I was able to wire brush most of it off.

[ElectricPaladin]

I had some Termies that were like that.  I ended up putting the container with Simple Green outside to enjoy the warm California sun.  After two days and then letting the plastic cool I was able to wire brush most of it off.

 

I'm going to wait until all the resin is out of the box first. I left some Hawk Wargames resin in simple green in the sun and... it was weird. Bad weird. "Have to re-buy half your army" weird.

[Midnightmare]

To be fair that Dread looks properly hard work!! Good to hear the Storm Eagle is coming along nicely though.

 

*awaits impatiently*

[Phantomzero17]

 

I had some Termies that were like that.  I ended up putting the container with Simple Green outside to enjoy the warm California sun.  After two days and then letting the plastic cool I was able to wire brush most of it off.

 

I'm going to wait until all the resin is out of the box first. I left some Hawk Wargames resin in simple green in the sun and... it was weird. Bad weird. "Have to re-buy half your army" weird.

 

Brother Librarian I can feel my face sloughing off weird?

[The_Chaplain]

 

 

 

 

I had some Termies that were like that. I ended up putting the container with Simple Green outside to enjoy the warm California sun. After two days and then letting the plastic cool I was able to wire brush most of it off.

I'm going to wait until all the resin is out of the box first. I left some Hawk Wargames resin in simple green in the sun and... it was weird. Bad weird. "Have to re-buy half your army" weird.

Brother Librarian I can feel my face sloughing off weird?

more like " brother, where we're going? We don't need faces!" Kind of weird.

[ElectricPaladin]

 

 

I had some Termies that were like that.  I ended up putting the container with Simple Green outside to enjoy the warm California sun.  After two days and then letting the plastic cool I was able to wire brush most of it off.

 

I'm going to wait until all the resin is out of the box first. I left some Hawk Wargames resin in simple green in the sun and... it was weird. Bad weird. "Have to re-buy half your army" weird.

 

Brother Librarian I can feel my face sloughing off weird?

 

 

And also my arm now bends in four places!

 

Basically, the Warp overtook my Shaltari. It was actually really unpleasant - luckily I have a patient wife, who insisted that I take some money out of savings to replace my losses.

[ElectricPaladin]

The stripping continues apace, though family visits and holiday weekends slowed me down significantly.

 

While my recent acquisitions continue to pickle, here's a question - I want to get some sanguinary guard painted up, but I'm trying to decide how to do it. In your opinion, should I...

 

1) use a standard sanguinary guard scheme, no changes.

2) radically alter the sanguinary guard scheme, such as using silver and red, or one of the two and black, to reflect my chapter's semi-fallen status?

3) combine the two by altering the sanguinary guard scheme slightly, such as by painting the wings and loincloths red instead of white, but keeping gold as the primary color.

 

Post with your preference! Photoshopping or finding similar models elsewhere will make your points all the more compelling.

[Slave to Darkness]

Paint them red, add spikes and mark of Khorne, because, traitors

[ElectricPaladin]

Paint them red, add spikes and mark of Khorne, because, traitors

 

See, now you've got me thinking that they should be obsessively freaking perfect. Because we're not traitors. The High Lords are. And also the Inquisition. Shut up, Terra, you can't tell us what to do. You're not our real dad.

[AndrewChristlieb]

I like the third option. I wouldn't want to make them too different so as to avoid any questions of what the models are, but they should still represent your chapter over any others.

[Bryan Blaire]

I'm always a sucker for things not painted like the Codexes, so I say change it up. They would be recognizable as Sang Guard by their armor type and weapons, so do them with jet black armor (with Khorne red highlights maybe) and either dark silver wings or even flaming wings (well, wings that are bright white->yellow at the core and fading out to deep red at the edges, either on a by-feather basis or on the wing as a whole). Red face masks with tears of steel to match the Chapter panoply would be cool too, although alabaster white faceplates with tears of blood red would match the Chapter icon.

[RolandTHTG]

I'm always a sucker for things not painted like the Codexes, so I say change it up. They would be recognizable as Sang Guard by their armor type and weapons, so do them with jet black armor (with Khorne red highlights maybe) and either dark silver wings or even flaming wings (well, wings that are bright white->yellow at the core and fading out to deep red at the edges, either on a by-feather basis or on the wing as a whole). Red face masks with tears of steel to match the Chapter panoply would be cool too, although alabaster white faceplates with tears of blood red would match the Chapter icon.

^^ What he said. Mix it up. Black armor with reddish highlights and Silver facemasks would look awesome.

[sockwithaticket]

Invert the KoB scheme, so do the SG in red with their accents/details in silver.