First Post!

This will be short and brief.  Just setting stuff up and all that.  I have this grand vision in my head that I'm going to have a fully painted army that I can stick with and keep adding towards until I feel I'm done.  Now, I've said this about my Templars and my Grey Knights, and due to various issues, such as being tired of the paint scheme (Templars) or annoyed that local players hate the new GK's so they have been shelved till something new comes out and makes people scream with rage to the new brokenness.

So what to do?  Funny story, but a friend of mine decided to do a small Star Phantom force for Kill Team games and possibly the Combat Patrol tournament at Adeptacon.  He'd asked what codex to use as we both agree Codex: Space Marine is rather, uh, well, not great.  After reading their stuff online, I posted back that Blood Angels might fill the "strike first" mentality of the chapter.  He ended up deciding to go with Space Wolves, but after that, I realized that my Badab War Poster had been yelling at me for awhile:  STAR PHANTOMS!  So, I decided then and there to start up Star Phantoms.  Thankfully my buddy liked the older scheme with the turquoise and smoky grays.  I liked the new Forge World schemes and have decided to run with them using the Blood Angel's Codex.

Now, before the Puritian's out there decide to burn me at the stake, I've wanted to do some Angels for awhile.  I LOVE assault marines, but unfortunately none of the codexes I own can do them all that well.  Of course the BA's make them troops and give them just enough tools to be dangerous to just about anything in the game.  So after that, I struggled with the right chapter.  I just don't want to paint red.  There's just no way I'd be able to paint a whole army red.  The article on the batch painted Flesh Tearer's in WD375 also really inspired me to look for something I could manage.  So the SP's win there again.

The final nail was the ease at which I was able to paint up my test model.  I got the whole thing done from unpainted miniature to finished product in about an hour and fifteen minutes, which for me is something amazing.  And to top it all off, I was actually happy with the figure!  Gone's the days (months) where I paint one Templar Squad and labor over the tiny details.  I completed my first jetpack equipped assault squad in two weeks (and it would have been shorter had school not been starting) while I did up a five man Devestator squad in two days.

While I have no photos at the moment, I plan to fix that once one of my friends comes through with decals so I can truly finish the 21 marines I've just about finished up!  Stay tuned!