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Watching Patrick Willems’s latest video about “content,” I realized that I don’t use YouTube like most people. I never, ever use autoplay. I don’t go there to find videos that are suggested to me. For me, it’s a destination video site: I watch the video I planned to watch, then I close the window. Here’s how I use it.
- I don’t stay signed in to any Google products in Safari. I haven’t used Gmail as my email in nearly 20 years. I’m always logged out. I’m sure Google keeps a cookie to try to track me some—my sidebar definitely shows stuff I’m sure it thinks I want, but Safari’s anti-tracking measures help me some here.
- No ads. I use the Vinegar Tube Cleaner extension in Safari. This tricks YouTube into using HTML5, and thus Safari’s built-in video player, on all videos instead of YouTube’s own player, which means YouTube doesn’t serve me ads.
- RSS. If you to any YouTube channel, and copy the URL of the videos tab (youtube.com/username/videos), you can paste that into an RSS reader (I like NetNewsWire). Instead of relying on YouTube’s subscriptions and notifications—which wouldn’t see because I don’t ever log into YouTube—my RSS reader keeps track of new episodes for me.
- Chrome fallback. I do subscribe to one site to get its member-exclusive videos. For that I use Chrome, where I do stay logged-in. In fact, the only reason I ever use Chrome is when I need to use a Google product or when I need to use Zoom on the Mac, which doesn’t work as well in Safari.
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The Deathwing: History and Complement
The Deathwing are the Dark Angels’ first company. Like most first companies, it is comprised of veteran battle brothers. The Dark Angels are unusual, however, in having a large enough supply of Terminator suits that they can outfit the entire company in them. But recent changes to the rules and storyline have seen power armoured marines join their ranks. With 10th around the corner and the Leviathan box including Sternguard Veterans, I thought I’d take a look at the history of the Deathwing’s development, and spell out exactly who should be wearing bone white.
TL:DR, these units are part of the 1st company and so can/should be painted bone white *:
- Deathwing Terminator Squads
- Terminator Squads, Terminator Assault Squads, and Relic Terminator Squads
- Deathwing Knights
- Bladeguard Veteran Squads
- Sternguard Veteran Squads
- Vanguard Veteran Squads (probably)
- Dreadnoughts †
- Land Raiders †
Characters:
- Belial, other Captains in Terminator Armour ‡, and arguably a Primaris Captain with Relic Shield, especially if he’s leading Bladeguard Veterans
- Deathwing Strikemaster
- Primaris Lieutenant §
- Chaplain in Terminator Armour
- Deathwing Command Squads, comprising Apothecaries in Terminator Armour ‖, Ancients in Terminator Armour, and the Deathwing Champion
- Bladeguard Ancients
Librarians and Interrogator-Chaplains are members of the Librarius and Reclusium, respectively, not the 1st Company, though they are part of the Inner Circle.
A Brief Deathwing History
The Deathwing as a distinct part of the Dark Angels were introduced in the Deathwing expansion of Space Hulk. Alongside the game Games Workshop released a short story by Bryan Answell and William King that followed a small group of Deathwing Terminators who return to their home planet to find it has been infiltrated by Genestealers. Not expecting to survive, they repainted their black armor bone white, which represented death in their culture, and were able to defeat the cult. All Deathwing Terminators adopted the bone white color scheme in recognition of this feat.
This story has been retconned in two ways. First, the battle brothers in the story had a culture taken very broadly from the American Indian peoples. While a few Dark Angels models still depict feathers, a lot of this has been walked back. Second, the entire story is now considered to be apocryphal. There may not have been an actual squad that saved its home world in this way, but the story of righteous Dark Angels crushing an uprising of people they had thought to be loyal to them is now used as a fable to teach newer Dark Angels about treachery as they are prepared to learn the truth about the Fallen.
As I’ve noted in previous articles, Games Workshop wouldn’t fully develop the Dark Angels storyline until the runup to 2nd edition. Nearly a year after Space Hulk: Deathwing, 1990’s White Dwarf 129 shows Deathwing in power armour (pgs 26–29).
The mandate that members of the Deathwing only ever wear Terminator Armour is stated plainly in Codex: Angels of Death (1996):
Note that members of the Deathwing always fight in Terminator armour, and are never fielded as Veteran squads in power armour as is the case with most other Chapters.
The following page (37) spells out the organization of the entire chapter. For the Deathwing, its members are: Master, Chaplain, Apothecary, Standard Bearer, 20 Terminator Squads, Dreadnoughts, Land Raiders.
Deathwing Knights came along in 2012. Belial was also promoted to the head of the Deathwing, and the story from “Deathwing” is now listed as an “Apocryphal Tale.” Company Champions are a new character type around this time, getting a model in the plastic Deathwing kit.
A few years later, GW began to greatly expand the Horus Heresy-era lore, inserting the Deathwing as one of the six wings of the original chapter, many of whom were veterans who served as honor guards. With the “Deathwing” story out of canon, the bone white color scheme was given a new origin: a battle brother who took a blow meant for another was allowed to repaint that part of his armor white.
Through 9th edition, Dark Angels lists were explicitly forbidden from taking Sternguard Veteran and Vanguard Veteran squads, but the new Bladeguard Veteran and Bladeguard Ancient units were given the Deathwing keywords. At the time GW was keeping Primaris and firstborn units strictly separate. Terminators were firstborn, so there was nowhere for Dark Angels to stick their Primaris veterans. Thus, the Deathwing for the first time was able to field models in power armour.
(There was also a matter of practicality here. The Bladeguard models came in the Indomitus launch box. GW’s choices were either 1) forbid Dark Angels players from using the models they’d just bought, 2) make BGV company veterans in green, or 3) allow power armour in the Deathwing. Option 1 doesn’t make commercial sense and would feel bad. Option 2 probably would have been fine. GW went with 3 and changed the lore.)
In 10th edition, GW has decided to relax the Primaris/firstborn distinction, and has outright said that Primaris marines can wear Terminator Armour. Meanwhile, Sternguard Veterans are included in the Leviathan box, with Deathwing transfers for their left shoulders and the Crux Terminatus for their right. No in-story explanation has yet been given for this change.
There hasn’t been any word about Vanguard Veterans, but the Dark Angels index doesn’t forbid them. Organizationally if Sternguard are in the 1st, it makes sense for Vanguard to join as well. Jump pack Primaris models are expected to be coming with the 10th edition Codex: Space Marines. It’s possible we’ll see updated Vanguard squads then.
* Unless you’d rather paint them in a different color scheme. They’re your models after all! See also my piece on successor chapters, which don’t all put their veterans in special colors. ↩
† Dreadnoughts and Land Raiders can, of course, also serve other companies, in which case they’d be green. ↩
‡ Belial is at present in charge of the Deathwing in GW’s storyline, but that shouldn’t stop you from using a different model if you want to. It’s easy to imagine him putting someone else in charge temporarily. Also Dark Angels call their captains “Masters.“ ↩
§ As with the Primaris Captain, this model can lead Bladeguard Veterans, so it’s easy to imagine he might be a member of the 1st. Note that in 10th edition, any Primaris Lt can lead a Bladeguard Veteran Squad, not just the Indomitus model with the storm shield. ↩
‖ See here for more on apothecary paint schemes. My preference is that the Apothecary retain the cold white of his office with a bone white shoulder pad, but you could paint him all bone white if you prefer. ↩
More Dark Angels stuff I’ve written:
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Dark Angels 4th Company, "The Feared"
Issue 195 of White Dwarf magazine came out in early 1996. I had recently started playing Warhammer 40,000, and this issue was a big deal in two ways. First, it had a cool cover featuring Asmodai, and I had recently started playing Dark Angels. Second, on page 81 there was a feature showing the entire chapter of the Ultramarines. This seemed absolutely mad to me—over 1000 Space Marines!
Well, I’m not there yet, but I’m excited to now be able to show off an entire battle company that I’ve painted. Allow me to present the Dark Angels’ 4th company, “The Feared.”
(Click images to enlarge)
The Feared are entirely codex-compliant: six battleline squads (40 Intercessors, 10 Heavy Intercessors, 10 Infiltrators); two close support squads (10 Inceptors, 10 Assault Intercessors); two fire support squads (20 Hellblasters)
They are led by Company Master Larathiel Adellum and his two Lieutenants, Astrovel Soriel and Yofiel Seraphus, made from the Dark Angels Captain kit, the Dark Angels Lt kit, and the Warhammer Day Primaris Lt (kitbashed with the shield from the Forgeworld Dark Angles Praetor and a few other bits).
The command squad consists of a Company Ancient, chaplain, champion, apothecary, and five Veteran Intercessors.
The Company Champion is last year’s limited edition Primaris Champion kit. The wings on his helmet were carefully shaved off the piece from the firstborn upgrade sprue. The sword comes from that kit, too.
The Ancient has a laurel on his shoulder, which comes from the Dark Angels veterans box, and has a Dark Angels sword, too. The traditional heraldic device for a marine fourth company is the chief (half and half top/bottom). The Dark Angels bling theirs up with some checkers. You can see it on his banner. The gem at the top is green, a nod to the traditional color of the 4th company. Purity seals throughout are transfers from Forgotten Chapters.
Yes, this did mean hand painting over 100 knee checkerboards. Some look better than others. (Ska may have faded with the 90s, but the two-tone army is still here on my table! Though Dark Angels would hate ska—they only listen to emotional hardcore.)
Every model has a crusade badge—the red sword with a skull—on the right greave.
Sergeants have bare heads and flowers on their base. Everything is organized around 10-man squads. When I field them in a game, squads are usually broken up and grouped as five, so each set of ten has a battle brother with a sword on his helmet who leads the second squad. This let me use all the sergeant poses. The bare heads are also (nearly) all from Dark Angels-specific kits.
Dark Angels don’t recruit from any one particular world, so I worked to vary their skin tones across the army. Most everything is done with Contrast paint, from armor to robes to faces.
Excepting the dreadnoughts and tanks, the whole company fits in one full-size Table War case.
Using current point values, the company comes to 3855 points.
Not pictured are several thousand more points of Ravenwing, Deathwing, the entire Phobos army I took to NOVA last year, Aeronautica Imperialist Dark Angels, and some Heresy models I’ve started. My “pile of shame” is shrinking but I still have a bit more to finish. Up next is the new Azrael model.
More Dark Angels stuff I’ve written:
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Dark Angels Successors Chapters
I’ve written before about heraldry and markings for Dark Angels Space Marines in Warhammer: 40,000. Today I’ll go over successor chapters. There are a number of named chapters that Games Workshop has developed, so you’re free to use one of those, or make up a new one entirely.
Organization
Some Dark Angels successor chapters are going to hew closely to how the parent chapter is organized and operates. Some could be totally different. There are even brand new Ultima Founding chapters that don’t even know anything about the Fallen and just go about doing normal Space Marine things.
By default I would recommend that your chapter follow the Codex Astartes, or a modified version like the Dark Angels use—ten companies of 100 marines plus command personnel. Whether you use colored helmets and company colors or Dark Angels-style heraldic devices is up to you.
Note that successor chapters that use Dark Angels-style kneepads to designate their companies tend to use the model’s right kneepad (not left).
Your chapter can have Deathwing or Ravenwing analogues, but it doesn’t need to. Perhaps your chapter master distributes knowledge of the Fallen throughout the companies to trusted veteran sergeants. In-game you’ll still only get the Deathwing keyword on the appropriate squads, but the story is yours to make up. Likewise with the Ravenwing. You can have the bikes be part of normal companies, not all grouped together in the 2nd.
Colors
Successor Terminators and bikes can be the same color as the rest of your army; they don’t need to be different like with the Dark Angels. If you do want to give them their own color schemes, I recommend picking your palette with this in mind. Use the secondary color on the main troopers as the primary color on the veterans. Or just mark your Deathwing-equivalent with, say, gold trim instead of black. There are plenty of ways to distinguish them.
The Unforgiven
2nd edition Angels of Death codex:
The three Space Marine Chapters shown here and the Dark Angels Chapter comprised the original Dark Angels Legion before the Second Founding. […] Collectively the four Chapters are known as the Unforgiven. The Angels of Absolution, the Angels of Vengeance and the Angels of Redemptionm share the ancient secret of the Dark Angels and that Chapter’s mission to reclaim its honour and eradicate the terrible shame of their part in the history.
The three Chapters follow the Dark Angels’ pattern of organization closely and each has its own Inner Circle. They all have formations which are similar to the Deathwing and Ravenwing companies although they are not named as such. The Chapters of the Unforgiven coordinate their activites in regard of their secret mission and it is not unknown for the Supreme Grand Masters of the four Chapters to hold summit meetings on the Rock.
Angels of Absolution: Accoding to Angels of Death, “all of the Chapter’s warriors wear bone-white armour.” This would include its Deathwing and Ravenwing analogues. Their robes are green. Their backpacks are black in earlier codex art but white in some. Their inner circle is called the Hidden Brotherhood.
Angels of Vengeance: “The First Company wears black Terminator armour and the monkish robes of the Inner Circle are jet-black.” Some GW studio models have red tabards. Squad markings are inverted from Dark Angels—white with red numbers. “The Angels of Vengeance use a Terminator-armoured company known as the Dreadwing and a mobile Raptorwing to carry out the hunt for the Fallen (8th ed codex, page 45).
Angels of Redemption: Red Robes. “The Angels of Redemption have the Redwings, their 1st and 2nd companies” (ibid).
Other Named Successors
Guardians of the Covenant wear red robes. Their bikers use the same silver colors as their battle companies, with some red panelling. Very monastic in their styling—probably hard to do these days without Primaris-sized robes but one could maybe use Black Templar pieces. Their inner circle is known as the Secret Order.
Consecrators used to only wear MK VI armor but now have Primaris members. Their robes are red. Squad markings are inverted from Dark Angels—white with red numbers.
Disciples of Caliban’s Terminators wear the same green and black as their battle company do. They have lots of relics so I’d recommend some cool ancient conversions. White/bone robes.
Angels of Defiance have quartered black and bone armor. Black on the models’ upper-left and lower-right, bone on the top-left and bottom-right. Green robes.
That’s just a few of the ones GW has made up. If I were starting over I’d probably so a codex-style chapter with black armor like the Heresy scheme. For ease I’d likely also try to use regular SM models so that I wouldn’t have to source chapter-specific parts.
More in this series:
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Finished up The Expanse last night. I’m glad I went back to it after finishing the novels, even if my feelings about the casting never really changed. Great space combat, though.
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Listening to Apollo 18 on shuffle—the correct way to listen to *Apollo 18*—which required ripping it from a CD because Apple Music puts all of the “Fingertips” suite into one track.
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Teammate was in development so long I had a Twitter handle in the contact section of the about window.
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Here’s thing Twitter never quite did right: I see an article somewhere. I want to share it. That publication probably made its own tweet about it, which I’d like to retweet rather than writing my own, separate tweet. How do I quickly find that “canonical” tweet?
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While Twitterrific for Mac still works, I’d always said that I’d stop using Twitter rather than use its awful app. As such, I can be found on Mastodon here: mastodon.social/@davextre…
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I made a new thing! Teammate: Kill Team Spec Ops Aide is an iPhone, iPad, and Mac app for managing narrative campaigns in Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team. Download now for free.
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I might not have known that Mac OS Ventura added a Weather app at the same time iPad OS did.
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Also, Our Flag Means Death aired this year and was good.
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Reading Polygon’s “best TV shows of 2022” list reminds me that 1) there were several good shows this year but 2) I’d totally forgotten about House of the Dragon. Like, I watched every episode and liked it a lot, but after the finale I haven’t thought about it since.
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Creeper updates this rhyme: “You’re cheap and you’re haggard.”
I appreciate the effort but it loses the bite of the original. I think maybe I’d just rewrite the couplet entirely.
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Apple’s music app is infuriating in a dozen small ways. Why can’t the miniplayer show both the song title and the play/pause controls at the same time? I have a huge screen and the window is resizable.
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Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. 👍🏻
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Christmas Playlist ’22
I’ve been carefully building a Christmas playlist for over two decades, adding one track a year. There are now twenty-two songs on the list.
- “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” by Darlene Love
- “Hallelujah” by Jeff Buckley
- “The Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues
- “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” by Judy Garland
- “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” by Brenda Lee
- “A Holly Jolly Christmas” by Burl Ives
- “White Christmas” by Bing Crosby
- “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” By Dean Martin
- “Christmas Time is Here (Instrumental)” by Vince Guaraldi Trio
- “The Christmas Song” by Nat “King” Cole
- “Sleigh Ride” by Leroy Anderson
- “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” by John Lennon
- “Step into Christmas” by Elton John
- “I Wish It Could be Christmas Everyday” by Wizzard
- “Christmas Wrapping” by The Waitresses
- “Here Comes Santa Claus” by Elvis Presley
- “What Christmas Means to Me” by Stevie Wonder
- “All I Want For Christmas is You” by Mariah Carey
- “What a Wonderful World” by Joey Ramone
- “Peace On Earth/Little Drummer Boy” by David Bowie & Bing Crosby
- “Father Christmas” by The Kinks
- “Merry Xmas Everybody” by Slade
I typed up this year’s post a week ago with another song on the list, but then Elton John played his last US show and I realized that “Step into Christmas” needed to be the pick. I’m not quite sure what saves this song from being—I don’t know—a bit too top 40?—like it totally is, but I dig it.
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I’m finally working my way through The Expanse. I think the key was not in getting over the fact that Holden is so different than the book, but in finding other ways to like the series despite the scenes he’s in.
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I’m only in a couple of Discords and keeping up with them feels like work.
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I painted up a Blitz Bowl team in W&M Tribe colors. Turns out the actual team is really good this year, even!
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Without Twitter how will Megan Amram notify us which day is the day Donald trump finally becomes president?
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At some point recently Apple removed the awful “playback speed” button from the Apple Watch “Now Playing” screen. Hitting this by accident was basically a destructive action.
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I have a slight concern people are seeing Andor and thinking what we needed was “adult Star Wars” and not “good Star Wars.”
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As people on my timeline set up Mastodon accounts I’ve been following them, but using any such service without a client like Twitterrific just isn’t as pleasant.
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Black Panther Wakanda Forever: mid-credits scene-only. No post.
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