Search the Community

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.

You may be aware that I have a keen interest in 3D printing. I still don't have a printer yet (intend to get a Mars 3 Pro) but I thought I might as well make a head start on some things to print when I do. My initial projects have been a bit all over the place. For instance I dove in at the deep end and tried modelling up an entire Hierophant... I later dialed things back a little and started work on a modular goblin kit (which will include 40K gretchin parts)... However, a minor setback from a Blender crash wiping out my work on hats for them got me sufficiently annoyed I decided to take a break from those and instead focus on something else. And thanks to the suggestion of Discord friends that something else turned out to be a Mk.1/Deimos pattern Rhino! Mostly aiming for the shape of the original but with more modern (but not excessive) levels of detail. Will possibly have options for an interior too! Was originally going to give it Matilda II inspired tracks but difficulties with modelling and worries I was overcomplicating the design made me go for much simpler "spiked cleats" instead. Might do some alt tracks though... Unlike the old kit, this has actual full wheels. May do alternate wheels too, for now it has some nice heavy-duty spoked wheels. Doesn't have a full track loop or drive sprockets/idlers as those would not be visible. Also has (non-workable obviously) Christie-style suspension! I'm planning on having 3 different cupola attachments to allow for the same parts to be used for three sizes; "Retro" (same size as the old RT model), "Modern" (same size as the current Rhino), and "Truescale" (not actually true scaled as that would be huge, but a bit bigger than the current one!). It's been a real learning experience and I feel I've gained a lot of knowledge from doing this. If you're a 3D guy I'd highly recommend stepping outside of your comfort zone; mine was irregular organic sculpts and I feel I've massively improved by doing this.

After a year and a bit of painting Guardsmen and starting not Squats (Wargames Atlantics Einherjar) for games of 1st ed I thought Id return to my one true love Chaos (not Kebabs, but they are a close second). After a bit of head scratching on what to do and all the retro feels bouncing about currently due to the 35 years of 40k I started thinking back to the glory days of my younger years and my first proper Chaos army (not including the mish mash of stuff I had from RoC). The army in question was inspired by this John Blanche army in the 2nd ed codex, but back then my idea of painting was literally throw paint at the mini and hope it looks ok, so it looked nothing like what I was trynna achieve. Now at least I understand shading and blending (even though I still throw paint at the minis) so I thought Id have another pop at trying to replicate (shamelessly copy) this army. I have even picked up a Mephiston and Vet Sgt Centurius for this project, and Im currently eyeing some Asmodais on ebay for the Icon Bearer (still trynna find the old Verminlord for the right price though). There are some other influences Ill be 'borrowing' ideas from, some are other Blanche minis shown in WD 150 and Fred Marcarini's minis (painted by some chap called Lorenzo) in WD199. Blanches stuff. Freds. As they are all Khorne marines I think that has dictated what God Ill be following this time around, but I dont want to be locked into World Eaters, so I have decided to combine them with younger me's other interest of Occultism, Demonology and the Esoteric (I used to play Dark Angels and the fact they named the characters after Demons amused me, clearly Traitors). So it looks like Khornate Word Bearers or a renegade chapter that used to have worryingly close ties to the Ecclesiarchy before they fell. I dont really have much in the way of 'lore' for these yet, and I dont remember what I wrote all those years ago other than they were super edgy and called themselves 'The Damned' (I went through a bit of a dodgy Goth phase before I discovered Black Metal) so I get the fun part of starting from scratch (name will be changed as well) so I guess its time for me to dig out all my old books that would have gotten my door kicked in my Matthew Hopkins back in the day and start bashing ideas together into some form of background.