Watch This Space (Crusade)...

Oh, hello.

I've been collecting miniatures and playing Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 game on and off since 1996. Twelve years. There's something remarkable about that twelve-year span (well, maybe only remarkable to 40K nerds, but still...). The remarkable thing is that I've never collected a Space Marine army. The closest I've come was some brushes with Chaos here and there (Thousand Sons in the late 90s, Iron Warriors in the early 00s), but never Loyalists. They just never appealed to me; too shiny, too heroic, too "1337." I started with Tyranids in 2nd edition, then played Orks for 3rd and 4th, finally settling on the Vostroyan Imperial Guard two years ago. I like hordes of grunts: regular joes squabbling over some unimportant backwater, only to die alone and unremembered in a ditch. After all, what better way to demonstrate the idea that "the Universe is a big place, and whatever happens, you will not be missed"?

Of course, somewhere around painting my 60th Vostroyan, my mind's eye began to wander. I had been planning on restarting my Orks, but I was in the mood for a more compact force, something resilient, something reliable. I wasn't about to start Necrons, so the only other option appeared to wear power armor. The question was, Chaos or Loyalist, spiky or not spiky? Unfortunately, I didn't feel strongly either way. Chaos is outwardly evil, reflecting what happens when man succumbs to his most base desires, while the Imperium is inwardly evil, a repressive totalitarian regime for whom the ends always justify the means, so long as order is preserved and the enemy vanquished. The way most people portray their Space Marines, that last point is usually lost in the Warp.

Something else that's been lost over the years is the image of the Space Marines from their Rogue Trader days. Maybe GW was just more "punk" back then, too fixated on 2000 A.D., but the Marines were a lot rougher around the edges. They weren't sci-fi knights templar, they were futuristic jackboots whose powered armor was adorned with graffiti like "Pray For Death" and "KIL KIL KIL" rather than purity seals and aquilas. I wanted an army that could harken back to that era. Not fixated on venerating the Emperor as a god, but merely on accomplishing whatever bloody task was at hand.

A recent fad among Space Marine players is collecting armies set during the days of the Emperor's Great Crusade and the subsequent civil war known as the Horus Heresy. It's a very interesting trend, since portraying an army accurately often requires extensive knowledge of both background material ("fluff") and modeling skill, as the number of "acceptable" models and "bitz" is quite limited, forcing Pre-Heresy enthusiasts to get creative. It's the closest thing 40K has to "historical" wargaming. Perhaps the most appealing thing about this era to hobbyists is the chance to build a force based around one of the infamous Chaos Legions before they turned coat and gave themselves to the Ruinous Powers. A Pre-Heresy army would be a challenge of my modeling skill and knowledge of the vast Citadel range.

It was decided. More than any other, there was one group of Marines that embodied the brutal attitude I craved while still fighting for the Imperium. It was my twelfth year in THE HOBBY, and thusly I would collect the XIIth Legion of the Adeptus Astartes, the World Eaters.


None of that red and gold Khornate nonsense for me. I'll take a nice blue and white scheme, thank you very much.

This blog will document the mustering of my World Eaters army: planning, purchasing, building, painting, and finally gaming. It will also serve from time to time as a personal soapbox for my thoughts on 40K and gaming in general.

Stay vigilant and stay tuned.