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Warning: This topic is going to be a heavily narrated trip down memory lane. It is intended as both a personal voyage as well as taking others with it. Of course I am exaggerating. Hi everybody! I am WBRBloom. If anyone ever wondered this screen name is also as old as time, and derives from the Ad&d Ravenloft scenario 'When Black Roses Bloom'. But this is a Warhammer 40k forum, innit? So let's get to it! Our story begins back in the far away 1990. Little WBRB was almost at the end of grammar school (grade school across the pond), it was summer, and he and his family were returning from a day at the beach. They all stopped at a very big super market, one of the biggest back then in Greece, to do some Sunday shopping before heading home. It was about a month before schools started again, and the holiday (Christmas) TV ads were still far away (this is very crucial). The new games were still a few months away from being announced. As he usually did, little WBRB wandered off to the toys aisle. He browsed the G.I. Joes a little bit (they were now being replaced by scale models rapidly), and he was never really interested in car toys and such. He then moved further down the isle, towards the board games. Nothing he hadn't seen before, Ghost Castle, Mysteries of old Peking, the usual. And then, he saw it. HeroQuest. Deep inside another dimension, face battling barbarians and evil magic. HeroQuest. On a quest for adventure in a maze of monsters. It was a wall of HeroQuest boxes, an endless wall of HeroQuest boxes. The rest were history. To speed things up, WBRB got his hands on one of those boardgame copies, played it and killed orcs and goblins, but since he was already involved into scale models he also noticed the painted miniatures that adorned the inside of the box and he learned a (very) basic way on how to paint miniatures that was included at the back of the quest book. Apparently, there was this company that designed the miniatures, called 'Citadel', and it made more games than HeroQuest. Enter 1991 (yeah, things in Greece tend to have a year delay), and Space Crusade. Space Marines. Chaos Space Marines. Genestealers. Orks. Gretchin. Dreadnoughts. Oh my.. It is now 2003. WBRB, fresh out of his Navy service and having one of his first jobs, one that allows him for some disposable income, decides to start actually collecting, and playing, Warhammer 40.000. He had found about that game a few years back, in 1995 or 96, when an older friend of his introduced him into the hobby stores that sell it. He was fascinated but never had the money to buy/play it. But now seemed like the best moment. He went into one of the local hobby stores and browsed around a bit. He picked up the 3rd edition rulebook off the shelves, and looked at the different armies. He remembered an old diorama he had seen in one of the White Dwarf magazines, one called 'Horus against the Emperor'. It had Sanguinius at his feet and Horus was wearing a red terminator armour with dual lightning claws. Scattered across the spaceship's bridge, were the bodies of red armoured space marines (Khorne Berzerkers, he found out later). He wanted that. He liked Chaos. He liked the underdog, the villain, the bad guy. He wanted to be that bad guy so badly, that he did not hesitated any further. Grabbing a few more things, a blister pack saying 'ABADDON THE DESPOILER' the Chaos Space Marine codex a squad of Chaos Space Marines, some paints and a couple of paintbrushes, he walked towards the cashier. These models still exist to this day. Abaddon, painted and stripped a couple of times, has only seen battle a few times back in the day. But the cost of him being the same as a Land Raider, deterred the writer from using him anymore, only on specific missions. He now awaits undercoated, with some basic colour added, to be painted and used as a normal terminator (he will probably be dipped in acetone before long and stripped, then re-painted): I wanted his sword to me reminiscent of the original colours of Drach N'yen, but also have a little bit of its own character. The Chaos Space Marines have been all built, converted or scattered along the four winds of Chaos. I will eventually post pictures of all my infantry units, but I cannot possibly find the original marines from that box (although I do know they exist). Instead, I am leaving you with the pictures of the Hand of Death, one of my original dreadnoughts, painted back in the day. This must be one of the most active units in my army. It has been in almost every battle played since 2003. The banner is freehand (not my best work though). More stories to come.

My husband got me the sororitas army box to build as an advent calendar since it's got 25 models, and of course since I'm me I'm instead going to build them as word bearers' fanatics. I'm a little behind, but got some time to work at it! Here's the first two so far:

Greetings and welcome to my army log! I've been a hobbyist for many years, and am recently back from the longest hobby break since I started painting my first Chaos Warriors at the age of five. The reveal of the Emperor's Children codex is what got me back in, and in this log I will detail my EC-CSM army's transition to a true EC army. No more handicapping myself with limiting my Marks of Chaos, or being miffed that the god-specific keyword had no effect! I've been collecting and playing 40k with my Slaanesh/EC marines since 5th edition, which means that a lot of the collection is outdated, all of my wonderfully converted Noise Marines are now a bit on the small side, their power-fist wielding champions have no place in the army. Many of my old characters have found a perfect match for size and vibe with new units like for example the flawless blades! So I'll start this log with my then-exalted champion, now flawless blade member 1 of 3. I didn't realize just how dusty the model was until I reviewed the pictures, apologies! This guy was converted immediately upon the release of the noise marine commemorative model, but only painted two years later. Very indicative for my usual building to painting speed..! I hope to do better with all the new models, after all I need to get these guys on the table sooner rather than later, having vowed to play no more games with half-finished models. I was inspired by colours of a fresh bruise for this guy, and while I like the usual black and pink for my Emperor's Children, this guy and many of the flawless blades to come will probably come with more individuality in their colouring. To round off my first entry we need some of the new models as well! This is my first converted group of Noise Marines made from the new models. To be honest I was quite disappointed in the uniformity and cleanliness of the new Noise Marines, who to me look nothing like the augmented monsters I had hoped for, they look very factory made to me, more hulkbuster iron man than noise marine. But even if I liked them, I would probably convert them anyways since that is such a fun part of the hobby! And as disappointed I was in the overall look of the kit, as awed was I by the bits and possibilities in it! It is such a beautifully tooled sprue, with options for days, and a proper heavy sonic weapon that did not look like a guitar or something equally silly, wow! The clean lines on these guys also makes it so much easier to cut into! The first changes I made to all of my sonic weapons was removing the fluid containers attached to the underside. This allowed me to cable the Screamer Pistol to the wearer, giving me a compromise giving the small sonic weapon (why would a noise marine ever want a smaller gun?!) some more weight by hunkering it down. I wanted the Blastmasters to stick out a bit more as well, by building the shoulder-mounted cannon and moving the dial to the weapons left side so my marine could still tune it. Both blastmasters also have a backpack with the two weaponized exhausts being reduced to one for a Slaaneshi asymmetrical look. Another part of note is the caped crusader using an infractor head, inspired by talks of caping in Dr Rhuminaus thread. I hope you like them! I will get to painting as soon as possible so hopefully I can post some of these painted soon, together with a rebased Lucius the Eternal, and my then-obliterator-now-Lord-Kakophonist.