The Crusade Begins
A couple of months ago you may recall that I paid a visit to the Painting Masterclass that was held here at Warhammer World. While I was there I met a couple of guys who had brought their armies along with them and I just couldn't resist getting a few pictures of their miniatures. We've already shown pictures of Harry Wright's Death Guard and Skaven forces, but I also took pictures of a Black Templars Crusade painted by Dan Withers. It took us a bit of time, but we've finally got around to featuring Dan's Black Templar Crusade on the blog.
Now, there's a bit of a story behind Dan and his army. Dan is originally from New Zealand, but now lives in Ireland. He then flew over to England to take part in the Painting Workshop. That's a fair amount of Crusading for Dan and his Black Templars. 11682 miles of it, in fact (that's 18800 kilometres for those of you that prefer a sensible form of measurement). Sadly, by the time Dan got to Nottingham, his Templars had certainly seen better days - apparently they'd fought a baggage carousel at East Midlands airport and lost. His Land Raider had acquired several weapon destroyed results, and a couple of Initiates had suffered a severe case of missing limb. So, in-between Painting Workshops, we grabbed the Plastic Glue, stuck on the frantic-miniature-repair music and fixed Dan's army ready for photography.
When people send us pictures of models, or I take pictures of them here at Warhammer World, I like to get a few words from them about their army - how they painted them, why they chose that army, what tactics they use with them in games, and so on. Really it's to provide context to the pictures that we show on the blog. Because Dan was only over for the day, and because he was busy learning new painting techniques for the majority of it, there really was no opportunity to get any words from him. By the time I was finished taking pictures of Harry's Skaven, Dan had long since departed.
But then, a couple of weeks later, a mysterious scrap of paper (shown below) turned up on my desk. Dan had briefly made contact with one of our Customer Services Team and gave them a smidgen of information about his army, which was then hastily scribbled on the nearest bit of paper and left for me to find. Well, it was a start. Here's Dan to tell you, albeit briefly, about his Black Templars collection.
Dan Withers: I've collected Black Templars ever since the release of their Codex back in 2005. I'm actually more of a Warhammer fanatic, and I'd actually never played or collected Warhammer 40,000 before the Black Templars came out. I found myself instantly attracted to their background, imagery and warlike ethos of: kill them, kill them all! My army is called the Penitent Crusade and is led by Marshal Skomeny and the Emperor's Champion. In smaller games I normally just use the Emperor's Champion as my HQ choice - it leaves me with more points to spend on units.
My favourite unit is my squad of Assault Terminators. When they're upgraded with Furious Charge and the Accept any Challenge no matter the odds vow from the Emperor's Champion, they are, in my opinion, one of the most fearsome units in the game. As you can see from the pictures I've added quite a few conversions to the unit, and some parts from Forge World. It's these little additions that I think really give each model their their own personality and individuality.
Original Dan: As always, if you have an army that you would like to have shown on the blog, then why not send us some pictures of them and a few words to tell us all about them (in an email is fine, you don't have to write it on a tiny bit of paper).
In other news:
In this month's White Dwarf we mentioned that later in May some Space Marine miniatures will be released in Citadel Finecast. Well 'some' is a bit of an understatement because we're actually releasing 40 kits, from the Legion of the Damned box set and the Thunderfire Cannon, to individual miniatures such as Chaplains, Librarians and Apothecaries. There will also be a few resin upgrade packs available to order, including several Shoulder Pads sets. Make sure you pop into your local Hobby Centre this weekend or check the website on Saturday to see what we've put on advance order.
