The Blood Angels Legion demi-company is the first formation I’ve assembled and painted for Legions Imperialis. Consisting of a command detachment (although two units happen to be shown in the photo), two core tactical detachments with plasma and missile squad upgrades, a legion Dreadnought support talon, dedicated Rhino transports and a detachment of assault marines. There are also a couple of Blood Angel Terminator detachment upgrades thrown in for good measure.

Part of the demi-company formation, but operating independently are the assault marines. These take up one of the ‘optional’ support slots along with a single Thunderhawk Gunship. This gives me the flexibility to deploy both detachments separately, or board the assault marines onto the Thunderhawk for some fast fly-by deployments.

Painting the demi-company

My intent from the get go was to get this formation assembled and painted as quickly as possible to be game ready. Mainly to start learning the rules with, but also as a fun starting point for my Legions Imperialis journey. I focused only on the basics and left the finer details like lenses and weathering for a later date, when I have the luxury of more time.

The red is Blood Angels and Flesh Tearer contrast airbrushed over a grey to white greyscale pre-shade. These are so tiny, straight top-down zenithal was I did, applying the blood angels red from above and he flesh tearer red from below. They were then gloss varnished, given an oil wash of burnt umber before a final satin varnish to deal it all in.

In review, this was just too many steps and didn’t give my the result I wanted. So I adapted.

The assault marines in particular I kept the zenithal pre-shade step, but switched to only blood angels contrast which I applied by hand with a size 2 brush rather than airbrush. I omitted the gloss varnish and oil stages, simply applying a satin protection at the very end. This wasn’t only quicker, but produced a nicer result in my opinion. Lesson learned. Airbrush for vehicles, but manual brush for the infantry.

Transport

One of the aspects I hope to tease out as I work on more legions, is to give each their own characteristic theme. For the White Scars it is lightning strikes and mobility, the Fists garrison and bastion formations. For the Blood Angels I wanted to build the formation to reflect their assault and surgical strike aspect. If they are not onboarded to a Thunderhawk or Storm Eagle, then Rhinos will suffice. Until the assault transports arrive that is, looking forward to painting some Land Raiders and Spartans in IXth legion colours!

To introduce a little variety, I picked out a few extra marking on some of the Rhino. Like a command variant for the HQ, support markings for the specialist support squads, or just a typically IXth legion flourish on the panels.

With a legion armoured company formation, this neatly rounds out 1k points with room to grow as the core detachments and support aren’t fully taken up yet. With that in mind I probably won’t create a second demi-company for the Blood angels just yet. That give me the opportunity to pivot onto some Imperial Fists detachments once I complete the Blood Angels heavy armour,