Hobby Project: Sons of Saint Arnold

     Another hobby project in the works. My own Blood Angels' successor chapter, the Sons of St. Arnold. Time for a history lesson (according to a combination of our good internet-friend Wikipedia, and the fine folks at Saint Arnold's brewery in Houston Texas):
Saint Arnold, in the Roman-Catholic Church, is the patron saint of hop-pickers and Belgian brewers (why only Belgians, I dunno, but as Belgian ales are my favorite, I'm not too concerned). This guy is excellent to base a chapter around as he was a career soldier who retied to an abbey where he became abbot, and then later after rising to bishop, founded another abbey where he became a brewer of beer. He encouraged local peasants to drink beer instead of water because it was healthier. At the time, the beer actually was healthier than the water because during prep for brewing the water was boiled, killing many of the pathogens in the water.
     So with the Sons of Saint Arnold, what we have here is, a chapter of warrior-monks who brew and consume beer. To 40k it up, all we have to do is make Saint Arnold an imperial saint, a brewer from the agri-world Bel'Gia who provided the populace with the ability to make their drinking water safe to imbibe during the Age of Strife by brewing it into beer. The chapter was a 'Start-up' chapter. An experiment by the Adeptus Mechanicus in creating new chapters without a primarch from the geneseed tithed by the chapters for purity-checking and archival purposes. The chapter was named in honor of the Saint whose agri-world the would-be marines, or Bel'Gians, were recruited from. Little did they know the chapter name would prove quite apt as red thirst of the blood angels was transferred through the geneseed used. However, due to a mutation in the oolitic kidney caused either by mistake from the AdMech while growing the organs, a flaw inherent in the geneseed itself or, as the AdMech claims, a result of local Bel'Gian food and beverage on the processing functions of the oolitic kidney, the Sons of St. Arnold or SoSA Marines crave processed, brewed hops and grains: Beer!
     I love the Sanguinary priests of the Blood Angels and their ability to give Feel no Pain and Furious charge to those around them. I love that the Blood Angels are so gung-ho about assault squads and dreadnoughts (especially the blood taloned ones) as my favorite part of the game is the assault phase. I just never could grow comfortable enough with the emo space vampires to allow myself to consider playing them. And I hate red. Can't stand it as a color. So this gives me a way to use the very cool, very appealing rules set of the blood angels without having to use them at all.
     For an added twist, I'm thinking about making Bel'Gia a high gravity world and converting up my entire army from Fantasy dwarves or Dwarfs as GW calls them. Hey, that's how they originally explained the squats, and what better way to reintroduce squats to my gaming circle than as short, angry, beer-drinking marines.

Hobby Project: DeathWatch

So, the rumors flying around are that the Grey Knights will be coming out in 2011.
I'm looking forward to it. Not because I want to play it, but more because I love the Inquisition of the 40k universe, their organization and the background story and fluff. Ok, maybe I want to play, a little.
     However, the Ordo Malleus 'ain't my bag, baby' so I've gone and got meself an idear. I love the ordo hereticus. Maybe it comes from my first army being Black Templars, but the witch hunting inquisitors are my favorite. I'm not wholly enamored of the bolter chicks of the sisters of battle, but give me a suit of power armor, a tall wide-brimmed hat and a combi-bolter/stake-crossbow and whee... Hours of enjoyment. The mention of the Grey Knight book losing many of the iconic inquisitorial units has saddened me somewhat, but when they finally get around to the ordo hereticus we'll see what we shall see, I guess.
     My focus here though is on the random thoughts percolating around in my brain currently. The spark that popped up at the thought of a new book of marines running around with inquisitors. Ordo Xenos and the Deathwatch! The DW role playing game has just released this year and with it has seen a resurgence in my local gaming circle of people buying deathwatch shoulder pads and converting up figs for their RP games. Back in the day, I pointed up (and started converting) a deathwatch unit for my Templars.  The idea of a specialist unit with different ammo, suspensor-assisted heavy bolter and non-termie lightning claw craziness appealed to me immensely. With the recent trends of 'counts-as' armies, I asked myself, "why can't I do that?" and couldn't think of a good answer in the negatory.
     So it looks like one of my next personal projects (once I finish the wolves; and I promise myself I will finish the wolves) is going to be a Deathwatch 'counts-as' Grey Knights army once their codex hits. There are a few more projects on the project list and hopefully those posts will be up soon. Putting these down on 'paper' as it were, helps me focus on what I need to accomplish these things and actually makes the projects seem more real to me and less a pile of ideas that I'm never going to do anything with.