u/BeatsAndSkies

Just in time for it to be Legendsed! ;)

Not that it matters to me if it does or doesn’t: I’m more interested in playing 3rd edition. Where this isn’t really usable either. But cool model, at least now that I’ve rectified the aspects of it that I wasn’t too keen on. But I’ve had fun building it, and thats the main thing. Next up: a very battle damaged and grimy paint job to help disguise some of the more lop sided aspects of the conversion!

It was quite late at night by this stage, so a great time for making sensible decisions (and taking decent photographs for that matter). This morning, though, I think I still like the idea? After all, speeders are being dropped out of the sky and are zipping around a few meters above the battlefield so there’s a reasonable chance that anything they want to delete will be underneath them.

Of course, doing this means I’ve a lot of figuring out what to do with the top of the model. The top gunner was/is gone no matter what, but it still leaves a big chunk of flat space. Maybe the spoiler from a Tempest would fit up there? Hmm.

I think the Penitent Blades are absolutely perfect for the units included in the Marine half of the 11th box. Personal opinion, of course, but also I’m posting this to open up a bit of discussion so rebuttals and alternative takes are very welcome.

So the wiki page:

https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Penitent\_Blades

Which the above screen is taken from.

>They hail from a world with a landmass that is composed of thousands of smaller landmasses, suspended kilometers in the air above acidic oceans. How this phenomenon occurs is a mystery, but it has ensured the Penitent Blades are aerial combat experts. This has led the Chapter's 2nd Companyto have four oversized squads providing gunship pilots, rather than the two in most other Unforgiven Chapters.

And that’s basically all that’s on the wiki about them. Are there other sources? Maybe. But even that little blurb gets me thinking. Aerial combat. Gunships are mentioned but when I first was looking through the various successors Jump Packs seemed obvious: I started brewing up a fluffy list in my head straight away!

Because us Dark Angels types tend to favour bikes and speeders I don’t think Jump Pack troops get much of a look in. So it’s pretty cool that there is a flavourful, canon, successor where they make total sense and might even be the *best* option. From a super-fluffy perspective at least.

So I think Land Speeders are probably still a reasonable option in a Penitent Blades army. And coincidentally there’s also one in the 11th box! Sammual, or a kitbashed equivalent to run as a “counts as” feels ok too. Maybe you could use heresy jet bikes or the new white scars dude as a base for a small support squad. To be run as Black Knights. But (wheeled) bikes are out. Which is fine cos we’re doing jetpacks anyway!

I think the main thing I’m not fussed about is the colour scheme. I don’t mind a quartered scheme, though that might be a negative for some. But the blue and gold is a bit of a departure from the usual colours we see with the unforgiven. Maybe if you were to paint the gold more muted so it bordered on a bone-ish type shade? The blue could be seen as representative of the sky and I don’t object to successors doing something different: we don’t want to get too *blood angels* where everything is just slight variations of red and black. In fact, red might have been a good colour to have used given it’s a fairly common accent in unforgiven chapters and also ties into the high number of techmarines/pilots.

Of course, a with a custom successor you could do whatever you liked. But I do really like the idea of taking an established chapter with only minimal concrete lore and using that as a jumping off point.

In writing this I’m reminded at what an absolutely clunky app this is — I didn’t originally intend to go to this length— so I’ll end it here and hope to read some other thoughts about it! :)

I’ve been pouring over this screen from the reveal to get an idea of how the model goes together, and also how it could be Ravenwinged up some. Thought others no doubt would be interested: clearly most Dark Angels players will be zeroing in on this sucker.