A blast from the past and a stake in the ground

I've made a decision.
I'm going to paint 8 more Blood Angels models, that will bring me up to 2000 points  and then I'm going to call that army done.

And then I'm going to take a new attitude towards 40K models.  I will only buy and paint things that can be used as Arbites, and everything I buy and paint WILL be painted as Arbites!  I've already got some ideas in mind, and a few started (really excited about Arbites robots and Arbites Ogryns!) but I also wanted to haul out my older Arbites/Enforcer stuff and figure out what I have so far.

In my basic Arbites squads there are a few unpainted Proctors because I had originally gone with different models and then changed my mind back to the 'proper' model.  At some point I'll just sit down and get these done and then re-base the whole force and I should be in pretty good shape.

I had always wanted to do an Arbites army when I got into 40K but the model that in my mind finally made it a real possibility was the multi-part Necromunda Enforcer.  I had tons of models with shotguns and grenade launchers but the Enforcer models gave me what I felt like had really been missing, riot shields.  Years ago at the second to last Canadian Games Day I ran a table with Darren from Strategies Games & Hobbies in Vancouver that featured Arbites vs Zombies.  The shotgun equipped squads roamed the streets laying waste to the horde but it was the Riot Squads that formed the proverbial thin-blue-line in front of the precinct house until help arrived.  These models hold up for me as some of my favourite models in my collection because they feel like they truly represent the look and feel of the army.

I've used an assortment of different rules sets over the years to represent this force and after the Enforcers came out a lot of unofficial rules used the Cyber-Mastiffs as a quick assault unit.  I like the Mastiffs and they are one of the things that for me really makes this feel like a 40K force rather than just another pseudo Judge Dredd thing.

Last but not least a small selection of characters.  Again depending on what rules I've been using these have represented several different types of characters over the years but the one constant has been the Inquisitor Coteaz standing in as my judge.

There's no real urgency for me in terms of when this stuff is going to get done (I'm not actually painting it FOR anything) but my slow steady pace on my Blood Angels really changed how I saw collecting and painting 40K and brought me back to my younger days.  This will be my attempt to catch that same lightning in a bottle again.

Wish me luck!

-Jay