Heresy Era Dark Angels – Vortigern’s Lost Lions army planning

With the successful sale of the Thousand Sons and Spireguard, I had some funds to spend on a new Heresy project. Initially I had planned to do some more Imperial Fists, but thought it would be a better exercise if I tried a legion I've not dabbled in before. After reading Black Legion, I figured it could be entertaining to build a force around the idea of Vortigern's Lost Lions, a group of the Fallen that survive the heresy and end up joining up with Abbadon following the scouring and the Legion Wars. Figured I'd do a force representing his warhost during the heresy, but generally run them as traitorous Calibanite DA. Not a whole lot done beyond planning and the first few test builds so far, but I have a whole raft of packages arriving over the course of last week and this week!

The plan - Keeping things fairly generic while awaiting the actual book drop later in the year (fingers crossed), in the interim I figure one can't go wrong working on the basic troop types while waiting to see what specialist units the new book will bring:


Knowing that the Dark Angels are known for using a lot of old, dangerous and esoteric weaponry, I did figure on doing a couple Tactical Support Squads, one with Volkite Calivers and one with the DA-only Plasma Repeaters. In order to differentiate them from the ordinary plasma guns, I figured I'd use the recent Primaris Hellblaster guns. A little trimming was required but they fit onto the Mk.III plate reasonably smoothly. The addition of some FW shoulderpads and heads and the first squad is coming into focus!


I'm leaving the backpacks separate for painting as a change, and am scheming on doing some experimentation with some new painting and weathering techniques on the force - Haven't fully decided on what exactly, but may try out some weathering powders and/or some of the technical paints from GW for mud and slop. Also scheming on doing some greenish-tinged black with the hope that it won't go full Necron/Tron on me. I rather liked the look of the end result on the youtube tutorial here and am looking forward to giving it a try! ...Well as soon as the weather yo-yo's back up a bit warmer, got a lashing of snow and cold over the last few days. Ah well, more time to build stuff, right?