Space marines

I felt it was time get rid of a big box, so I decided to assemble some Space Marines.
I've had the Dark Vengeance boxed set with Dark Angels and Chaos Space Marines laying around for ages. From what I have been able to find out my box was released back in 2014, and I guess I must have gotten it about then as boxes like these usually sell out quite fast. Seems like the base sizes for some of the units have changed since then (from 25mm to 32mm bases) so I will have to fix that.
For some reason they are on slotted bases and not just bases with holes to stick their legs in, so I will have to do like I did with my Night Goblins and cut the "taps" off them and glue them on bases that aren't slotted. Luckily some of the models like the Terminators and bikes for the Dark Angels and the Chaos Cultists and the Chaos Hellbrute can use their original bases.

It seems like the Chaos Space Marines are followers of Khorne originally, but I figure if I just paint them up in the same scheme as the rest nobody will need to know. They will just look a bit blood-thirsty. I don't think I can explain that my Chaos army has a third faction, it was hard enough comming up wtih a story explaining why I have two so different types as the regular Chaos Marines and the Nurgle stuff so I don't want to even try to explain why some are red and worship Khorne. So I will paint them the same dark green as the rest of my regular Chaos Marines and just say they are blessed a little bit more by the Chaos Gods. Or maybe it is the other way that the regular Chaos Space Marines have not been blessed by the Chaos Gods (at least not yet). But no matter I will find good explanations why it is so as I would like to use all the models I have. 

One thing that I really like about the Dark Angels in this box is that they have printed shoulderpads both with the Dark Angels symbol and the unit designation. There are two small problems though. The first is that the shoulderpds are molded on to the minis as they are snap/fit and monopose. The second probleem is that I don't have a Dark Angels army, so I will either have to cut it awway, explain why there are regular Dark Angels in a Ultramarines successor chapter, or run them as Dark Angels. The Dark Angels I have in my army todayhave given up their colors to have their armor painted like the Gatekeepers. This is in agreement with the current leaders of the Dark Angels and is a rather complicated agreement that I will try to explain in the back story and it has to do with The Fallen and where these Marines were at the time when those events took place. But even though they might have a shield or a weapon with Dark Angels symbols on them, they look like Gatekeepers in most matters. This will not work with the Dark Angels in this box though. It would be a shame to cut away the symbols as they are excellent. I will not think too much about that at the moment as I am sure it will take some time before I get around to painting them and things might look different by then. I guess they could be a separate Dark Angels army just fighting alongside the Gatekeepers on the same battlefield or something like that. Well see when we get there.

I have built my Aspiring Champion for the Chaos Marines today, he was the only model in the set that was not snap/fit, and I believe he was a special character added to the box to give it more value and give the box something exclusive. I know they did the same for the 2012 version of the box, when they added an Interrogator Chaplain. I remember getting him off Ebay as it was awesome. Now you can get them in the regular range though, but back then you couldn't. Next up will be to build either the Chaos Cultists or the Dark Angels Terminators or Bikers as they will go on the bases that are in the box. The main reason for this is that when my wife has to go to the office we get up a bit earlier than when she can work from home, and then I have some time from I have walked the dogs to when I have to log on to to my work, and I have found working with miniatures in that time is a good way of getting stuff done.