Brother Thanatos Honoured-Ancient of the Deathwatch

The Red Hunters a Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes with a long, proud and mostly unremembered history. Some of the stories place them among the second founding chapters, and even in those accounts their ties to what would oneday become the Inquistion are clear. Where as the Grey Knights and the Deathwatch are Space Marine chapters that fight as the military arm of a certain Inquisitorial Ordo the Red Hunters will gladly serve any Inquisitor with a task that requires an Astartes level response.

Red Hunters in the Deathwatch

Due to their extensive Inquisitotial duties the Red Hunters are perhaps called on to serve in the Deathwatch less than other chapters. And due to other chapters' mistrust of their extensive Inquisitorial ties the Red Hunters are perhaps found in command posistions amongst the Deathwatch less than other chapters.

Those Brothers that do serve  however excel, the Chapters long experience with Hypno-Training and Deep-Core Psycho-Indoctrination means they learn the tactics and weapons of Xeno slaughter well. Infact few of those who do join the Long Watch return to Montsegma again.

Brother Thanatos

Such Is the case with Honoured-Ancient Brother Thanatos. On M40.039.855.3 Veteran Brother Thanatos, having served a century with the Red Hunters was selected for service in the Deathwatch. After his Killteam succeded in their six mission to assassinate an Eldar Seer Thanatos went on to join a new Killteam on a new mission.

Eighty years and many missions later Thanatos was torn apart by a Mechaniod from the Xeno 'Binary Conclave'. However, much of his torso, spine and head was able to be recovered. This allowed him to be implanted in one of the Deathwatch's Dreadnought sarcophagus'. Now, almost 1000 years later he continues to serve, his zeal for slaying Xenos in the Emperors name undiminished. 

This is #Dreadtober

This week marks the start of Dreadtober, I wasn't part of the 2015 event, but I see some lovely models were built and painted, this time round I am in. Joe at Broken Paint Brush is organising this year, and he's got us off to a lovely start. A few e-mails to keep us upto date on where we should be, some articles on his own blog outlining the goals and structure of the (slightly long) month and so far a couple of links to advice for getting done what we need to get done. There is a Facebook page for the event, but most of the action seems to be taking place on Twitter, follow #Dreadtober to see it all.   The big picture point of Dreadtober is to get a model done, a Dreadnought or similar sized model, and show it off to a larger community. By all joining together to do it hopefully we'll motivate each other to finish. The nails and tacks up to the minute goal for this week is to make a plan and declare what we want to get done. So here are my goals for the month, a little on how I have arrived at them and how I hope to achieve them.   

•  Build a Venerable Dreadnought with LED's in, copying from taking inspiration from Bruno Massa's recent AoBR Dread. 

     

Bruno Massa's recent Ultramarine Dreadnought    

• Completely finish painting said LED filled almost dead Space Marine hero. 

• A little (sort of) side goal of mine is to get some paint, perhaps even finish the three Angels Sanguine dreadnoughts that I built and undercoated in July. 

Brotherhood of Ancients

 

When it came to deciding what Dreadnought to build I first thought about what I had lying at home, two Ven. Dreads and a Contemptor from B@C, the Venerables lended themselves nicely to the LED idea so job done. A quick poll to my Twitter followers gave the the answer that it should be my first model towards a Deathwatch force rather tgan Dreadnought #6 for my Dark Angels, 100% of votes actually. With this in mind I needed to find a Chapter, I didn't want to go for anything I already collect (Dark Angels, Mentors or Angels Sanguine) and decided that I'd like to avoid any of the Chapters with pads in the DW Veterans box as we'll be seeing enough of them. I hit the Lexicanum pages and went a-browsing. It didn't take long for me to find the Red Hunters, with a nice simple and clear Chapter symbol, a few colours that could be used nicely with Deathwatch black and a background full of Inquisition and reasons to be interesting they were a pefect fit for a model I'd want to show off. 

 

I then briefly played with the idea of using a Dreadknight's sword for his CCW, but I decided that it wasn't the right scale for a MK.IV Dreadnought, also it looked to be a nightmare to make LED's work well. Then I questioned the WH 40k Deathwatch group on any tips for a weapon to go next to the CCW. I didn't want a Plasma Cannon as I'd just painted so many for my Dark Angels, the suggestions and thoughts helped and we ended up deciding on an Assault Cannon as I've not painted one on a Dread before and it's a nice in your fave weapon for a Dreadnought that'll be up close supporting his Battle Brothers. 

 

Next up I'll post a small piece of fluff about my Red Hunter Deathwatch Battle Brother. 

We Do Still Play

Well I last posted in March, we're almost in October, by my maths (math for Americans) that's over half a year! So appologies, excuses and reasons abound. We hope to do a little better in the future, let's call this a wip.

In the past almost seven months there has been a lot of gaming and modelling though. The Highlights include Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, Sushi Go Party, over 6000 points of 40k built, and about half of that finished painted and based, some AoS & 40k has been played, the Marvel Super Hero game was tried out and we've completed all four scenarios in Mansions of Madness 2nd. Ed.

On top of that Mari's broken a finger, we've been to Disney World, Sweden, Cornwall and Stavanger. Life has been great, and now I'm just starting on my #Dreadtober and Tim has recently gifted me Destiny to try out (Level 17 Titan already).

I'll be in touch again soon, some details about all of the models I've been building and painting and a few photos of some of the games played.