The Blood Angels and Me, part 1

If you'd met ten-year-old me, you'd know there was no way
I wasn't going to be super into this.

In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history – well, in 1990 to be more factually accurate – my sister and I were round at our friends' house, one of whom had just acquired a new board game called… *drum roll*
Space Crusade.

For anyone unfamiliar with it, due to not being the necessary combination of old and a huge dork, Space Crusade was a game produced in collaboration between MB and Games Workshop, set in the 40K universe, involving everyone's favourite power-armoured space bastards, the Adeptus Astartes, shooting the crap out of the usual alien suspects, in a slightly more kid-friendly format than the 1st edition of 40K. I'm planning to do a more involved post about it at some point, but for now I'll leave it at saying that I suspect it served as a gateway hobby drug for many an addict of a certain age. It certainly worked on me. 

I'd totally forgotten about this advert until I started looking for pictures to put in this post.
But I think we can all agree it's basically the greatest thing ever.

Space Crusade featured dudes from three chapters of marines: the Ultramarines, the Imperial Fists and the guys I ended up playing with – the Blood Angels. I can't remember whether I actively chose to use them in that first ever game, or whether I had them foisted upon me, but I was pretty much sold on them from the get go. Best colour? Check. Coolest name? Check. Awesome chapter badge? CHECK.

For me, this is like THE piece of Blood Angels artwork.
Think it may well have been the first appearance of both the Death Company
and Captains In Gold Armour.
NB the Terminator with hazard stripes on power fist. 

For the rest of the Rogue Trader era, when it came to Space Marines, the Blood Angels were My Guys. I never really achieved anything resembling a complete army back then, but the handful of marines I got out of blister packs (from Alien Encounters in Guildford, in the days before GW stores were as widespread as now) were painted up following the Blood Angels section of the old Space Marine Painting Guide. I even made myself a BA logo
t-shirt at a screen printing workshop I went to with Scouts, and when I wore it to Games Day at the Derby Assembly rooms in 1991, some member of GW staff told me it was "cool". [Insert joke/comment here about how these days I'd have been thrown in some kind of copyright infringement dungeon, etc.] Sadly I don't think any photographic record of this shirt exists. But next time I visit my folks' place, I'm going to see if I can find some of those old Space Crusade and Rogue Trader figures and get pictures of them.

Although my attitudes towards the Blood Angels would change throughout my involvement with 40K (more on that next time), they were the first guys from the 40K universe who were My Guys, and that meant they always retained a bit of a special position in my hobby affections.