Sachiel: Eighteen Years in the Making, a Retrospective.

 

Sachiel: Eighteen Years in the Making

So, he is finally named. The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that the title of this piece refers to the URL of my humble blog, Sachiel Returns, which I started back in 2017.

But the character himself goes back much further than that. Sachiel (Sah-Shee-El) has had several incarnations over the years, always as a Dark Angel, ever since I first fell in love with the Chapter in my early days in the hobby..

The original Jes Goodwin-sculpted Asmodai leapt off the pages of the World of Hobby Games pamphlet that Games Workshop used to hand out in stores when you bought something in the late 1990s.

Thirteen-year-old Lewis thought he was the coolest model ever. Black, skull-faced armour and bone robes, even amongst the tanks and Knights that festooned the pages of that little treasure trove of hobby goodness.

The featured Dark Angels army on the rear cover of White Dwarf 223 was another major inspiration during those early days.

I always remember the ‘Master of the Ravenwing’ conversion here, which involved chopping a metal miniature in half. The idea seems like madness now.

(I wish GW would present hobbyists armies in this manner again it's all very slick and professional nowadays, it loses some of its charm).

Fast-forward a few years to 2008, when the fourth-edition Dark Angels Codex was released.

Twenty-three- or twenty-four-year-old Lewis (I can never remember exactly which) now had a career, was renting a house, and finally had his own hobby money. Naturally, I fell in love with the Chapter all over again.

This time, it was specifically the Chaplain in Terminator Armour that caught my attention. Released around this period, he inspired the creation of a 1,500-point Deathwing Assault army. Sadly, that force has since been lost to time.

The first incarnation of Sachiel was that very Chaplain, and he graced tabletops throughout fourth and fifth edition Warhammer 40,000.

He even made the jump into Dawn of War, becoming my username on the game's servers during its heyday around the Dark Crusade expansion.

Years later, I planned to bring him into a Horus Heresy 2.0 Dark Angels force alongside Corswain. 

Unfortunately, that project barely had time to breathe before Games Workshop changed the edition and rules, leaving the plans gathering dust.

But Sachiel wasn't quite finished yet.

Here we are, then, with the Interred Horus Heresy Captain, entombed within a Dreadnought and finally realised on the tabletop once more.

From a teenage hobbyist staring at a picture of Asmodai, through a Deathwing army and countless hours of Dawn of War, to a character who has survived multiple incarnations and editions of the game.

Eighteen years. Several iterations. One Dark Angel.