Ben's Blood Drinkers Space Marines - OWAC IX - Intro post

For my fourth run at the OWAC I've finally built up enough impetus to attempt a long-held ambition - completing a Space Marine army for 2nd Edition 40K.  I've had a few goes at a Space Marine army in the past, but never finished off an army I was satisfied with.  I took quite a while deciding what chapter to paint as I wanted it to meet quite a few criteria.  It would need to:

• Tie in to some inspiring oldhammer art - probably Space Marines covered in checks and flames by John Blanche
• Contrast with my blue and yellow Alaitoc Eldar from OWAC VII - so not Ultramarines (blue) or Blood Angels (yellow helmets on assault marines)
• Be a bit brighter than the Relictors (dark grey) and Dark Angels (dark green) I've painted before
• Have chapter symbols I could use transfers for - I've never been satisfied with my attempts at hand painting
• Ideally, be a bit different to other armies I've seen before

I therefore decided to paint Blood Drinkers, taking inspiration from the 40K 2nd Edition box art.  Blood Drinkers are described in the Angels of Death Codex as having markings similar to Ultramarines, meaning the 5th company with its black shoulder pad trims would resemble the space marines in the art, and red/black will be bright and contrast nicely with blue/yellow.  I managed to buy some black goblet transfers for the chapter badge online, and could use my stash of generic space marine transfers for the rest of the heraldry.  

I test painted a couple of models to try to decide whether to paint them bright red in the style of the 2nd edition codex, or darker in the style of the original Rogue Trader illustration of Space Marine chapters, and to try out the Rogue Trader yellow stripe on the helmets. I'm still trying to decide!

 

Test painted models

Should I go for brighter red...

Or browner red?  What about the yellow helmet stripe?

Whichever I choose, there will be flames!

Blood Drinkers have been described as having achieved a measure of control over the black rage that affects the Blood Angels and their other successor chapters.  I thought the army would therefore need plenty of Apothecaries and Chaplains to inspire and monitor their brethren.  I decided to collect a diverse, mobile force with plenty of bikes and vehicles rather than an all-out assault army, to give me a variety of units to paint.  

I've tried to keep it all second edition, with a couple of notable exceptions.  As with my Eldar I've used larger bases than the originals - I think they look better and with modern base sizes I can more easily use them in games across editions.  One or two bits and pieces, as few as I could manage, are from later editions - either where I had the parts missing from purchases in my bits box, or where later awesome models were sculpted in the style of the art in a way that no conversion I could do would match (notably the Blood Angels captain).  

I spent ages drilling all the barrels and trying to get the arms, weapons and shoulder-pads all fitting and coherently posed.  I now think the reason I could never get this to work properly as a thirteen-year-old is that they don't actually fit well at all, and need a fair bit of reposing and filling with greenstuff to work.  I did some minor sculpting and conversion to fix broken or chapter-specific parts.  I had my son 3D-print me a few vehicle parts, and I plan to try to press-mould a couple more missing bits.  The result of all this is I've assembled far too many models - around 5,000 points, with a few more characters, scouts and marines to call up once I can find the time, and all the required arms...

To tackle this I therefore decided I had to split it into manageable separate forces.  The first would be a flexible core based on the opening 2nd edition battle report in WD166.  This comes to 1500 points (once I swap the HQ Captain for a cheaper Medic), more or less covers the minimum requirements for an OWAC season if I don't manage to get any further, and, if it was good enough for Andy Chambers it's good enough for me.  I'm now thoroughly looking forward to putting primer to metal!