Angels of Darkness!

I actually have a bit of love for the Dark Angels army.  I'm not talking about loving their story (which is awesome!) or their models (which are pretty good and started the 'chapter-specific' boxes all over again), or even their rules (those just suck, but that's what happens when your codex was already outdated by an edition, and now two editions behind).  No, my love is simply based on memories.

You see, I began serving the Emporer in '01 and very quickly moved up to Squad Leader.  Well, I can't load my Thunderhawk with the same warriors I'd been fighting with for a decade already, right?  So my Ultramarines were finally retired (years later, that 10k points was sold and traded away) and I had to choose a new army.  I chose Dark Angels for two reasons:
1.  The Ultramarines are the largest and most powerful Legion, then the most powerful Chapter.  If I can't be the most powerful, can I at least be the first?  Yeppers.
2.  I had a buddy that I grew up playing whose Dark Angel army was inspirational to me, and I really liked the robes so BLAM! choice made.

I built and painted that entire army in the month of Jan '02.  The next month I had a shop to open and staff to train.  Both those tasks were more fun just based on the idea that I had a new, well painted army that took me no time to do.  In fact, this was my first 'ARMY IN A MONTH' and the reason I punish myself all these years later (next came IG, then Black Templars, then Blood Angels, and now Word Bearers).

I went on to play in a few tournaments with that army and took home a couple more trophies, elicited oohs and aahs outta crowds all over the northeast, and generally transformed into the competent hobbyist I am now.  And all thanks to that original Dark Angels army.  I eventually gave that army away in a shop raffle to a very lucky hobbyist.

Here I am, ten years later, rebuilding and painting that army.  It's not exactly the same, but I find myself drawn to the same unit selection.  No worries, my goal is to make the army look good and whoop up on some Chaos once in a while, so uniqueness isn't a factor.  Most importantly, I'm having happy-fun-time memories of that original force and enjoying doing these new ones.

Without further ado, here's the first of the units I finished last week...

Power Fist, Plasma Pistol, Plasma Gun, Plasma Cannon...  We need more plasma over here!

Of course, the three most important guys in the squad.