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Hey guys! A few months back I saw a concept for an army that immediately appealed to me - a Blood Angels rapid strike list consisting of units solely using Jump Packs or Bikes. I didn't really want to do Blood Angels exactly - I'd be far from the first person in town with red dudes, so I looked to the Badab War for inspiration, and remembered one of my favorite chapters, the Lamenters.

The Lamenters are decedents of the Blood Angels, who have a similar but more subtle curse. While cases the Black Rage are fairly rare (but growing in frequency), bad luck and extreme misfortune plague the chapter at every turn. Rather than becoming overcome with Sanguinius's rage from the Heresy, the Lamenters acquired an aura of Sanguinius's despair at having to fight against his brothers. At no battle is this curse more evident than at the Fall of Malvolion.

Malvolion was a jungle planet hosting a regiment of Mordian Iron Guard that came under attack from a tendril of Hive Fleet Kraken. The planetary forces were woefully unprepared for an invasion of that scale, and were being easily consumed by the Tyranids. All hope seemed to be lost until three dozen Drop Pods belonging to the Lamenters came from the sky, and the disembarked marines immediately began pushing back the Tyranids. Initially, it seemed the Lamenters were unstoppable, but casualties quickly mounted and the Lamenters became overwhelmed. The precision strike was little more than a speedbump for Kraken - the last Lamenter died less than 40 minutes after the first Drop Pod landed.

This is the army I want to field.

So far, I've completed this test model of a "Sanguinary Priest". It was for a contest where you had to convert and paint a model that exaggerated a theme - something like an Ork with an obscene amount of guns or a Space Marine covered in purity seals. I felt the Catachan head expressed enough sorrow to qualify.





I felt like the highlights were far too harsh to really look good, so I've changed my technique a bit. I'm going to be using an airbrush to do all the highlights on the marines. It should end up looking better and will be quicker to boot. My first real squad for this army is going to be a full bike squad with two meltaguns and a multimelta:



As a side note, the "Fall of Malvolion" comes from a short story written by Dan Abnett a few years back. It used to be hosted on GW's site but it doesn't seem like they've reuploaded it. I'm not sure if it's be reprinted in any of the Black Library books but I've never seen it there. A few people have it hosted on their personal websites, though, if you just do a search.

Uh, wow, it's been a while. A little while after making this post, my videocard died and it kind of took me a little longer than necessary to get resituated, and my theads went to the wayside. Let's catch up.

I'm kind of a slow painter. It took me about two weeks to make the bases for the bikers. I wanted the tire treads to be visible in Malvolion's mud. I had modelled them once before using milliput on a diorama, but I figured that would be too much milliput to waste beneath the bikes. I decided to use spackle as a low cost alternative. It's not exactly an arts and crafts material, and it took maybe three or four trials before I got everything to look right.



Probably the longest I have spent doing bases but it's totally worth it. It's hard to photograph but I've glossed the bases and they totally look like wet mud, it's awesome.

Next up was the actual models. As always, I put off painting them until the last possible day of the contest, so this is a one day job. I had tried to do the zenithal highlights with my airbrush, but it doesn't seem like the cheap-o Harbor Freight model I have is up to the challenge. I couldn't get enough control out of paintflow to get the effect like I wanted it. I broke down and fixed them up with a mundane brush.




Not entirely happy with the way they came out, but for a one day job it's good enough. As a converse to my original test model, these feel far too flat for me to be really happy with. At least I got a ton of experience with painting checkered fields.

A neat coincidence is that this entry won me a free Black Library book in the competition's monthly prize drawings, and one of the available books was Let the Galaxy Burn, a compilation of 40k short stories that includes The Fall of Malvolion. No way could I pass that up!

Next month was HQ/Lords and Heroes month, but I think this is a good place to leave off. Hopefully I can get some interest this time around.

They're looking pretty cool, the all jump bike combo will be a fun idea to play with.

Youve done a great job on the yellow. My only suggestion painting wise is to tidy up the white squares on the shoulders.

looking forward to seeing the HQ

Pretty good, but seems a bit too "Imperial Fists" and not enough "Lamenters" yellow. Lamenters have always been the neonest yellow chapter.

Wow those bases look nice, mine never seem to work so i give up most of the time. I agree with ph34r they do seem more towards the Imperial Fists but then i dont really care for yellow marines in general (just plainly because i cant paint yellow well at all)
But they look pretty good anyway