“First Claw in my inbox? Let’s see thi– OH, FUCK A DUCK.”

I won’t ruin this with too many words. Besides, there are 300,000 words about these guys already out there.

This is the first time I’ve seen them and had a genuinely gut-punchy emotional reaction. Not just “This person gets it” or “This really captures them perfectly” – or even “They look better here than in my head”, the last of which is true with surprising frequency. Not even “I love that my characters meant so much to someone”, which is about as perfect a feeling as an author can get.

In this case, I mean an actual wrenching internal lurch that made me feel – just for a moment – the same way so many people feel when they tell me they miss First Claw. It was the first time that seeing them again actually made me miss them, too.

TALOS

CYRION

XARL

MERCUTIAN

VARIEL

UZAS

Here’s Augustus’ thread if you want to see more of his work.

Dreadnoughts

Since Forge World released the Contemptor-pattern Dreadnought, I’ve been extremely well aware that one of them is absolutely going to be a major, major character in my next Horus Heresy novel, Betrayer. I was originally tempted to try and get him on the cover, but in the end I wimped out and went with something reliable (and, I’ll add, absolutely brutal in the final showing).

I also want one or two of them for my slow-growing Chaos Marine army because, hey, Forge World is totally cheap, right? And it’s not like I have a baby on the way in 4 weeks, is it?

Anyway, on a break from work just now, I saw this on B&C’s Post Your Dreadnought thread, by GuitaRasmus:

Now, using an age-old style of hobby craftsmanship that we call “copying”, I’m going to try and do that wickedly cool Skaven wrecking ball on my future Contemptor.

Of course, seeing rad stuff like this just makes me despise the people who have armies looking that good, but whatever. Let’s all be friends.

No bitz sites had any spare bits, but a couple of people on my Facebook page (go click Like, ta) have already offered a helping hand on that score.

Here’s my formula for success:

…plus…

…plus…

…equals Fucking Awesome.