A cardboard box, with the Black Library logo on it, underneath a Christmas Tree

This year’s “Mega Edition” release from Black Library is the new Blood Angels novel from Guy Haley, Darkness in the Blood. I don’t know much about the plot yet (the book flew under my radar until very recently), other than it follows on from Dante and the events of Devastation of Baal, and features both Dante and Mephiston – two of my all-time favourite Warhammer 40,000 characters.

The Mega Edition is very reminiscent of last year’s Spear of the Emperor1: a sturdy, themed, presentation box contains a gorgeous hardback copy of the book, and packed in under the book is a whole set of goodies. From the design printed on both the box and the book cover, the main theme is of Dante and Mephiston as reflections of each other (or them representing the two sides of the Blood Angels themselves?) – Dante is the virtuous, golden-lit angel, while Mephiston is dark, sinister, and somewhat daemonic. Either way, it looks cool.

As far as extras go, I personally think this year has even more value than last:

  • There’s a thick, hardback, leather-bound journal, featuring a similar cover to the Limited Edition version of Dante.
  • A badge in the image of Dante’s death mask.
  • Bronze, silver, and gold coins (perfect for in-game objective markers). There’s a different design on each.
  • Some very pretty Blood Angels-themed dice in a small bag.
  • A big, metal, bookmark in the image of Dante’s Axe Mortalis. I think this might be more effective at it’s job than last year’s purity seal bookmark.
  • A sand timer for some reason? I haven’t timed it yet to see how long it runs for, but it’s pretty and ornate, featuring chapter badges and red sand. Part of me wonders if it shows up in the story.
  • An art card, featuring the cover art from the regular edition of the book (which will be available in a few month’s time)

Like in all of my recent book unboxings, I’m impressed with the high quality of both the materials used, and the overall presentation from Black Library. This box set feels special in a way that a lot of “special editions” across most media don’t nowadays. Everything has a weight to it, and as I mentioned in my Solar War unboxing, it’s all very “tactile”. Take a look at the pictures below for an idea of everything crammed into the box. Unfortunately the photos don’t convey just how nice all this stuff is to hold.

I can’t wait to dive into the story now!


  1. It appears I haven’t uploaded the photos from that particular unboxing. I should fix that – it was lovely. ⤴️

Mixed up 2 big pots of custom shades for a Blood Angels project.

Left: 1:1:1 Mephiston Red Khorne Red Lahmian Medium.
Right: 1:1:1 Khorne Red Incubi Darkness Lahmian Medium.

Ok, so I did manage to get a small session in. It was mostly spent trying to figure out the iconography of the Knight/Household, and painting tiny little candles.

Listened: S2, E2: Take A Step Back — The Best General, A Warhammer 40K Podcast

“In Season 2, Episode 2: Adam gets back to competitively play after some time away from the table and learns to deal with another loss, while talking perspective, fatalism of all things, and taking a step back with ITC Champion Brandon Grant.”

Glad to have The Best General turning up in my podcasts feed again!

In Season 2, Episode 2: Adam gets back to competitively play after some time away from the table and learns to deal with another loss, while talking perspective, fatalism of all things, and taking a step back with ITC Champion Brandon Grant.

Still plugging away at this Imperial Knight. There’s been a lot more edge highlighting than I’d planned to do. Shoulders, shield, and last of the trim left to do.

Work in progress Imperial Knight

The first batch of Primaris Space Marines are just about finished, with just a few details and the decals to finish before basing.

One of the choices I had to make was what secondary colours to use for contrasting and spot colours. The main armour is fairly monochromatic, being essentially black and bone-white. The main contrast would come from the gun casing, for which I chose a fairly bright orange. Orange isn’t a colour often seen on Space Marines, so this in itself helps the models stand out. To offset this, purple was added as a spot colour, used  on lenses and purity seals.

I decided these marines would be from the 3rd Company, so red was also added to the palette. Each marine  will get a red trim added to one knee (still to do), and the shield of the Ancient was painted red to match this.

The Lieutenant was given some basic freehand on his tilt-shield, also integrating the red of the company. I’m not happy with the blade of the scythe, so I plan to repaint it.

The Intercessors finally received their helmets. Once the shoulder pads are added, I think these will look quite intimidating on the tabletop!

With the first batch nearing completion, I needed to start preparing the next wave! Needing a break from Intercessors, I decided to build something fun – a Redemptor Dreadnought. This kit was a joy to build, going together in just a few hours. Many of the parts are designed to remain unglued, so they can be reposed. I didn’t bother with this, as it would make things more difficult to paint. A couple of parts are unglued for now so I can paint them seperately.

With the Dreadnought assembled quicker than I thought it would be, I moved on to some Hellblasters. I have to admit I think I prefer this kit to the Intercessors. I might swap some of the bodies around between the two kits.

With these built, I just need to build five more Intercessors and I’ll have everything for Armies on Parade assembled. I might make these from the models found in the 40K starter sets, to add some variety. My plan for the wider army is for each ten-man Intercessor Squad to be half multi-part kit, half “easy to build,” so there is a better mix of poses throughout.

The first of many updates on the progress of painting everything for Armies on Parade.

I finally managed to get hold of a can of Zandri Dust spray, so I was able to finish the base colour of the board. Everything was sprayed lightly from above, leaving the grey showing in recessed and in random areas of the walls and roads. The important thing was to make sure it wasn’t uniform, for a more natural appearance.

As luck would have it, the sun was setting as I took a picture of my progress, giving me this shot of the building glowing in the sunlight:

From the other side, things looked a lot more washed out:

The marines started to get their base coats and initial airbrush highlights.

At first I wasn’t too happy with how things were looking, but after sleeping on things, and adding in a few more highlights to the characters, and spots of other colours, I’ve come around to how they look.

I’ll be giving them an all over wash of black ink, to give more shading, contrast, and richness to the colour. That should help a lot, even before I add the remaining “main” colours.

Over the weekend I plan to build the remaining marines (5 Intercessors, plus 5 Hellblasters), and the Dreadnought. If I can get the black armour finished on everything in the next few days, it frees me up to concentrate on other details and finishing the board.

Only 36 days to go!

An important milestone has been reached in my Armies on Parade entry – the majority of board construction is finished, and painting has begun! It’s still only a few layers of paint, but every bit counts when there’s only 39 days to go!

I primed the main building separate from the rest of the board, so I could reach tricky areas easier. I then glued it to the board.

As the Sector Imperialis boards have a tonne of moulded detail, I had to find a way of hiding gaps between the walls and the ground. This was done using a combination of Polyfilla, textured paste, and various grits of sand and gravel. I managed to enlist a couple of small helpers with this, asking them to take some of the grit and (literally) throw it around the building — something which they quite enjoyed!

Once this initial layer was dry, I added some larger dollops of filler, and pressed a variety of objects into them: leftover floor sections, pieces clipped from spare wall sections, plastic H-beams, and a number of skulls. These then received the same shower of grits. These represent piles of larger rubble which have been pushed out of the way to make the building somewhat usable as shelter or storage.

The next morning, once the filler had dried overnight, all of the grit was covered in Terrain Fixer and left to dry for a couple of hours. Then, it was on to priming! The pictures below show the board from all sides, so you can see the details.

Yes, I intend to fix that gap…

Priming the rest of the board finished off the can of Chaos Black I’d started with the main building. With the undercoat dry, I started the first layer, based on Peachy’s Kill Team board recipe, by spraying everything Mechanicus Standard Grey. Oddly, this only took about a third of a can.

With the main board making progress, it was time to move on to the other elements. the barrels, crates, and barricades all received a coat of Mechanicus Standard Grey, apart from two of the barrels which were sprayed Corax White.

But an Armies on Parade board needs an army, doesn’t it? I finished assembling the first Inceptor squad, before priming them along with the Lieutenant and Ancient I’d previously made. The shoulder pads and helmets are separate for now, as they’ll be primed a lighter colour.

I laid out the rest of the scatter terrain I envisioned, and used some stand-in miniatures to approximate how I wanted the army itself to be displayed. All in all, I’m pretty pleased with how things are looking. Now I’ve just got to finish everything! But at least I have a plan to work to…

I’ve finally filled in the missing corner. Everything has been cut, glued, clamped, and filled… I’ve just got to sand everything down to size.

Last, but not least, the main building feature is 99% complete. I might add a couple more bits of broken columns, and there’ll be some rubble added to the floor on the board, but otherwise its ready for the next stage.

It’s bigger than I realised during assembly, running nearly the full width of the board, even when set at a diagonal. It’s almost amazing how the scale seems to change as soon as it’s placed on the board. Suddenly it becomes this huge, looming, monster towering over the battlefield.

I’ll be adding rubble and scatter terrain to break up the rest of the board, and make it look more “lived in”. Everything will be integrated using texture paint and extra grit and sand for variation. That’s the next task.

44 days to go.

I’ve been slowly chipping away at my Armies on Parade board over the last few days (when I’ve resisted the siren song of Warcraft…). The army itself is another matter, but that’s for another day.

Basic construction of the base has been finished, apart from that one empty corner. I’ve got a couple of ideas of how to fill it, I just haven’t settled on an option yet.

I started off by gluing the section cut from the Realm of Battle board to the plywood, and clamping everything together. Once the glue dried, I covered the sides and holes in the board with a hefty amount of Polyfilla.

After leaving everything overnight to cure, I used an electric sander to smooth everything off and trim off the excess plastic. A new floor for the main building area was created out of textured plasticard.

Time to check everything would fit into the case, and to see how tall I could make the buildings. It turned out I had 11.5 inches in height I could use, which was plenty. The new Sector Imperialis buildings are ~5 inches per level, so I could comfortably fit a two-story building into the case.

Now it’s on to the fun stuff – the buildings! I started by laying out a rough floor-plan, to see how many sections I needed per side. I ended up not using all of the sections on the left side.

With two sides built, things are starting to take shape. I removed the door built into one of the wall sections, to give another “access point” to the building.

Here I’m test fitting the upper floor, to make sure everything is square. As I’d been using a spare floor section to try line-up the wall sections throughout, things were pretty good.

By this point I was starting to think about the walls on the upper floor, but it was time to pack everything away for the night. Shortly after taking this picture, I realised I had to rip the column tops from the right-side wall as I remembered I was going to extend the floor out that way.

This is the mess from just from scraping off mould-lines in one sitting. Time to get the vacuum out…

My plan is to finish construction of the buildings and ruins this evening. Providing I get the missing corner filled with something, I might manage to get the first layers of paint on the board by the start of next week. I really need to get the board finished soon, so I can move on to painting the army. There are only 45 days to go until Parade Day!