The Dark Angels

I thought I'd give a quick run down of the first of my current 40k Armies: The Dark Angels.

Everything on the left is painted, everything on the right is not.

I spent most of last year expanding my Dark Angels Army. The Dark Angels appear in the current starter set, called Dark Vengeance. As a basic force you get:
A Chapter Master
A Librarian
5 Deathwing Terminators
3 Ravenwing Bikers
10 Space Marines

Which is just enough stuff to make you realize you need more stuff, hence the Starter Set. Good Old Games Workshop.
I was able to do some rummaging through some old boxes of Rogue Trader era stuff my parents had in their loft and was able to bulk out the Marines. I also had a old copy of Space Hulk, which was missing too many bits to be playable, so I stole the Terminators from that. It's really interesting to compare the quality of the old miniatures to the quality of the new miniatures. They are barely recognizable. The miniatures produces now are amazing quality, with tons of crisp detail. Back in the early 90's, there wasn't really much detail at all.

So, over the past year or so I've managed (mainly through ebay purchases) to expand the force significantly. I now added:
25 Terminators (10 from Space Hulk, 15 from eBay)
About 27 Marines (Scavenged from old stuff, and one Devastator Squad that I bought)
1 Dreadnought (paid for with vouchers I won from a painting competition)
1 Scout Squad (that I bought legitimately, from a local games shop)
2 Rhinos (That a friend gave to me from his parents loft, and I've scratch built Whirlwind Missile Turrets for)
2 Predators (eBay)
1 Belial (a birthday present)

So now I just have to try and finish painting it all. In the picture above, everything on the right either needs to be finished or started. I'm pretty slow when it comes to painting, mainly because I'm too pedantic (what if someone picks up this guy and judges my painting based on it!). I need to get over that and speed paint through the Marines. I reckon I could get them all done on one solid Saturday. I need to finish one squad of Terminators, they're almost done. Finish the Scouts, again they're almost done. Start the Ravenwing Bikers (never painted a bike before) and start the HQ Guys. Most of them can be sped through, but the HQ's will be painted to a high level, so will take a while...

Hopefully I can get this all finished by, say, Christmas. As long as I don't buy anymore stuff...

I'll be posting painting updates, so stick with me and we'll see how far I get.