Monday, December 31, 2012

The First Legion: A New Hope

Time to drop the Emperor's wraith upon some heretics!
I have watched for signs & portents. I have kept the faith. Long years spent in the shadow of our former glory is about to end. Finally, all of the Dark Angel faithful shall be rewarded with a new (and hopefully improved) Codex. Even though I am nowhere near done with my Chaos forces re-do, I can't wait for the new Dark Angel Codex.

We all got into this hobby/lifestyle/obsession somehow. For many it was watching a game at the local store, or a friend who showed you this cool sci-fi miniatures game. My gateway drug into the Warhammer 40,000 universe was Adeptus Titanicus, the first Epic Space Marine game.
And who doesn't like giant fighting robots?
 It was a fun game, but I was really intrigued by the backstory. I next got into Space Hulk. Now I had the beginnings of my 40K forces and didn't even know yet. I bought some tactical marines to use in some of the missions, and that was that. My local dealer, I mean helpful friend, who worked at the comic/game store assisted me in filling out my growing space marine force into something that could be used in both games. When it came time to paint my first Marines, I had to choose a chapter. Not a lot of history yet for the Big Four Chapters, so I went with the Dark Angels mostly because I like the winged sword icon on their black armor.

Within a year of painting my small force I was introduced to a new phenomenon, the army re-do.
My Terminators turned white! Everyone else went dark green! At least I didn't have to repaint my Chaplain.

A mere two decades later and I have the entire 3rd Company, a chunk of Deathwing, Ravenwing and a Thunderhawk. What? I like the Dark Angels. So yeah, I look forward to this newest Codex. 

And speaking of looking forward (see what I did there Kenny?) 2013 should prove to be a most entertaining year for the Atomic Warlords. We have two mini and one large campaign planned as well as our league. 
I have so much painting to do. Thanks to all for 2012 and have a Happy New Year!


The Emperor Protects
The First Legion more than others



2 comments:

  1. I remember my first exposure to 40K, too. I kept seeing the Rogue Trader book @ on the shelves at the same comic book store your "dealer" worked at. It took me _forever_ to figure out that Rogue Trader was actually the base game. I always thought it was an expansion to just plain ol' Warhammer 40,000 (it isn't). If memory serves, the Rogue Trader book was in the neighborhood of fifty american dollars WAY BACK THEN.

    I finally got the book for my birthday in... '89, methinks. It lasted three days before the pages started falling out. Yep - that book had the shittiest binding of any book anywhere. I ended up tearing all the pages out very carefully (which really wasn't that difficult, considering) and putting them into a 3-ring binder.

    I've never fully recovered - been a 40k addict ever since.

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  2. I had a couple friends who played this weird miniatures game. It was called, if memory serves, the Armageddon Campaign. As I understood it, you spent weeks building and painting little toy soldiers and tanks and then played the game. If the soldier died, you put him up on the shelf and never used him again. To make sure you never used him again, you registered your game results on a website.

    It was a very, very stupid game.

    But then I was instructed a bit more, bought a few of the cheap boxes of models GW was selling off, was given a few more, and then--in the thinnest Chaos Codex ever written--I read two paragraphs about the Legion with a huge Napoleon complex and was hooked.

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