Awesome Death Company Paint Work

I was looking through some video tutorials on painting Blood Angel Death Company and came across the following video. THIS is some awesome work and something I'd aspire to get good enough - or close enough would work too!

Incredible work. Plan on buying either a Grey Knight Dreadknight or Stormraven (for my Grey Knights) and a squad of Death Company next time I purchase some 40K figurines. This has me hooked on how rich and detailed you can truly make a Death Company look like. Great stuff!

Grey Knights vs Blood Angels

It is a good thing that I have a new job that pays so well. See, I'm having a moment of crisis. Do I go with the bright shiny new Grey Knights or the Blood Angels? Both are superb armies, but with a definite and different feel to each of them. The Grey Knights are pretty much a short range shooty army with some serious melee abilities and counter-charge. The Blood Angels on the other hand bring a lot of hurt to the melee aspect of the game and has some serious firepower to back it up with.

My decision? Going to go for both! It means that I'll have to stick with casual games for a bit longer and proxy each army as I build both, but in the end I'll have 2 distinct armies built and painted and since I look at armies as stocks - diversify, it means in the end I'll be able to field a couple different GK and BA army lists. In the meantime, it looks like I will need more paint. Darn! :p

Blood Angels Omnibus

I finished reading James Swallow’s Blood Angels Omnibus last night and was astounded by what I had read. I am a fan of Space Opera and it usually fits into 1 of 3 categories: Good, Bad, Ok. The Blood Angels Omnibus (2 novels and a back story short story) created a new category that has previously not existed in my mind: Great.
“The road to hell is paved with Good Intentions” has always struck a chord with me. In my own personal life, there have been many a thing that I have done with the best of intentions and thought were “good”, only to have horrendous consequences. This story focuses on that type of good intentions and while we are aware almost from the outset that this can not end well, I found myself drawn so into the story that I found myself at times thinking that, no the best can come out of this. In a way it does, but in the aftermath of tragedy, both on a personal and on a community level.

The story is of two brothers related by birth, who are also brothers in arms of a Space Marine chapter called the Blood Angels. Though the word is ever only used once in the entirety of the series, they are Vampires. The entire chapter. Colliding with this mythos, is the fact that these Blood Angels are mankind’s protectors in the far off future and the greatest of them, the Primarch (long dead) is in essence, an angel. Thus the whole Blood Angels name. One brother becomes Sanguinus reborn, while the other remains true to his heritage, the Blood Angels. In the end amongst demons, traitors, lies and deceit, paved in good intentions, the Blood Angels splinter amongst themselves and the brothers Akiro and Raven find themselves locked in not only personal mortal combat with each other, but the hopes and dreams of the future for the Blood Angels.

James Swallow has done an excellent job in creating an epic Space Opera, that I totally fell in love with. The like, which I have not read before and hope that I can find again.

** reposted from my Exploring Uncertainty blog.



Introduction of 4K Newb

Welcome to my new blog: 40K Newb. I'm Sam Guss, owner of Samuel Guss Photography and the blogs: Exploring Uncertainty and Classical Newb. The focus of this blog will be adventures, mishaps, thoughts and growth as a Warhammer 40K player.

My first tournament is coming up next weekend. I'll be borrowing my brother-in-laws Space Marines for it and in May I have my own SM army that I am purchasing from a fellow gamer. Warhammer 40K is still very new to me. I've played a grand total of 8 games over the last 5 months, 6 of them Ultramarines and 2 of them Blood Angels. My strategy is to go into Space Marines, Blood Angels and Grey Knights. I'm considering Space Wolves in the future.

The reason I chose Space marines and the various chapters such as Blood Angels, is threefold. First of all, in some cases I will be able to get double duty out of some of my models, since they use some of the same basic models. Second of all, I like the back story of Space Marines, which leads into my third reason: I'm a huge Warhammer 40K Space Opera novel fan - most notably the Space Marines.

I'm 41 years old as of this posting, married with 3 teenagers, 1 of which lives with me; 3 dogs, 2 cats, a car loan and a mortgage payment. I run my own wedding photography business - Samuel Guss Photography where I also specialize in portrait photography and some fine art photography. I work full time in outside sales as well - credit processing and I'm in college earning my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree (majoring in Photography and Graphic Design). In addition to this, I'm a board member of the Unitarian Universialist Church of Birmingham and an avid writer and gamer. Gaming is my hobby and in all of it's forms. I play Magic the Gathering, Warhammer 40K, MMO's (like World of Warcraft), computer pc and Xbox 360 video games, as well as board and other strategy games.

So far, I find myself intrigued and hyped up about Warhammer 40K, thus the purpose of this blog. I welcome you to follow along my journey, give me your 2 cents and together let's have fun with our chosen hobby. Until next time!