Heretics!

Part One

What?! The foul forces of chaos on this blog!  How has this happened?  Is this blog now under the unspeakable influence of the fallen?  Even now the Ravenwing are zeroing in on this location to cleanse the cursed stain of the heretics.  I will save the inevitable long story for after the jump, fortunately there are lots of pictures of models to space out my overly wordy explanation of my descent into the renegades of chaos...

Most of these models are from the 3rd edition plastic Chaos Space Marines box.

It's not easy to see from this angle, but I love the CSM power fist with the skull on the top of the fist.

When I signed up for the Nova Open for the first time in April, I was looking for 40K games in the Narrative campaign.  I'm not an ultra competitive player and I was uninterested in the grand tournament.  However the story focused missions of the narrative campaign that fed into the overall 40k story of the gaming weekend sounded right up my alley.

Unfortunately, by the time I finally got the idea in April and started searching for tickets for the gaming weekend, open slots for the individual narrative games were already sold out (I learned later that tickets first go on sale in February).  However there were narrative campaign doubles games still available at that time.  A player could either team up with someone else in advance who bought tickets to the same game or you could be matched up with a partner at Nova.

I'm too much of a loyalist Astartes player to resist at least a squad number to tell them apart from the hordes of red renegades.

I was fortunate to be able to talk my primary 40K opponent of the last five years into also signing up for the same two doubles games that I had signed up for.  Knowing that I would be playing alongside my friend's Death Guard army I debated whether to field my Dark Angels army.  The rules of the doubles game did allow for unlikely allies so that discordant armies could play together as long as they were on the same "side".

I found some really great Red Corsairs/Astral Claws transfers from a third party seller on eBay.

There was a large evolving story for the Narrative 40K games that progressed as opponents played out the many missions of the narrative campaign.  When playing your first game of Kill Team or 40K you would choose the side of "Virtue" or "Humanity".  Any of the 16 factions of 40K could play on either side as long as they played on the same side for all their narrative games.  All that aside, my brain that has been immersed in the lore of 40K since I was a teen just could not bring myself to play my Dark Angels next to the forces of the traitor legions!  What would I do?  How could I solve this insurmountable problem caused not by the rules but by my own slavish adherence to head canon?  Tune in to the next installment to find out...