When I started 40K, I jumped into Grey Knights/DH (as detailed in Episode 13 ). I then went Sisters of Battle/WH, and then Black Templars.

In late 2008, Endgame in Oakland (home of the Ordo Pacificus chapter of the 40K Fight Club) hosted a "Finish an Army Challenge". The idea was to either begin a new army or finally finish an existing army in 750 point blocks. You got points each period for the amount of progress you made. At the beginning of each block, you brought in your 750 point block and had it's start recorded. At the end of the block, you brought the 750 points back and we had a mini-tournament. We did 750, 1500 & 2250, each time adding 750 points. The goal was for everyone to have a fully painted 2250 army.

I decided to Simple Green and repaint my Black Templars (and other random figures) into "The Dark Knights" using the BT Codex and losely based on the comic book character.

It was a fun project and my army actually took 2nd in a small tournament run by Doc Dragon (remember him from "The Grand Waaagh" epidsode?) at his gaming club in Cotati, CA.

Here are some photos (all clickable thumbnails) of the army & the progress:

Troops with their Cinematic Effects from Armorcast:


The Neophytes were based on Robin:


The Emperor's Champion (The Dark Knight), using a Brettonian head:


Two Land Raider Crusaders. Guess which one belongs to The Dark Knight:


Razorback & Rhino:


The army at the end of period 3 (2250 points):


Part of the Army enroute to a 2nd place finish!:


I used different colors on the edges of the shoulderpads to indicate different squads. It was cool to be able to field huge troops units. This is the army before a special scenario event:

Love the Armorcast flames on the bolters. It's nice to see that. /Starts looking for some steel wool to make "smoke" out of.

You going to abide by the "Hunt the Joker" rule?

That was a cool idea. I agree with paranoia, and like the Armorcast flames; ...Going to look into those. I also like your custom movement trays. The ones I have group my BT’s way too close together and the whole squad gets annihilated from one large blast template, hence they have been discarded.

The movement trays are from Gale Force 9. Litko Aerosystems also makes some. You can also have custom ones made by Litko.

I tend to use the trays to display the army and to make sure I have all my guys. I rarely use them as movement trays, especially if my opponent has templates of any kind.

"Hunt the Joker" would be a Dark Knight/Dark Angel build. I considered that, but DA suck. No, seriously I really like the Black Templar "crusader" theme, and I thought using the Emperor's Champion as "The Dark Knight" was kinda cool. I also already had a bunch of bp/ccw dudes, so that was easier. My son has a Dark Angels army, and I have the Cypher model, so that did cross my mind.

Cool, I’ll look up Gale Force 9 too. EC as the Dark Knight… a must. I just checked out the Cypher model and the EC in my opinion is a better call for you D.K. idea. If you are good at using green stuff, you could have a field day with dressing up your EC as "The Dark Crusader."

Yeah, I looked at the various Heroclix versions, and they're too small... Drat!

My internet handle didn't come from 40K, but when I started playing this game and saw that one character wields "The Black Sword" then I *knew* I had to collect Black Templars.

So.... This happened.....





I plan to use it as a Land Raider for my Black Templar army.

No I didn't build it.

Going to a team tournament this weekend with Doc Dragon. We're both playing Black Templars. It's a heavy "comp" tourney. Here are our armies (first mine, then Doc's):






I figured I should bump my hobby score by basing my army (I typically had just painted bases). I got rolling and *BAM* every one of the models got based, not just the ones for this weekend: