Mercurial Orbits

The planet Mercury has been in the retrograde portion of its orbit for a period of time now, I believe for the majority of this month in fact. This has of course been causing all sorts of astrological tumult and wreaking havoc upon the lives of us mortals here on Earth. I suppose in my own life there has been a certain degree of disharmony but overall I'm still hanging in there alright. But so as to not push our cosmic good fortunes, my wife and I are going to be laying low for the remainder of this portion of Mercury's celestial path. We plan on just working around the house and not signing onto anything significant.

I find it interesting that in this particular time of chaos I should of course become serious again about collecting Chaos Marines. Seems kind of appropriate, no? I've decided to go ahead and theme my Chaos force as a Black Legion warband operating on its own, far away from the Eye of Terror (and thus there will be no Abaddon in my army). As mentioned before, I am usually reluctant to choose an army with a lot of established background and fluff as I like to have as much space as possible in creating a setting for my games. But in this case the color scheme works for me as I fancy having a try at painting black power armour, and the history of the Traitor Legions allows for quite a bit of latitude in devising my own niche in their more than 10,000 year existence. I'm also keen to make use of the metal Black Legion shoulder pads on as many figures as I can and have tailored my lists somewhat with that in mind. I have now worked out a 1500 point list with which I am happy and will begin placing orders for the miniatures tomorrow. Finally I am also considering revising my initial 500 point list to be more mobile as I am leaning toward using a mostly mechanized force so as to represent a marauding Chaos Space Marine raiding party. What follows is my possible new starter list:

Chaos Space Marine Lord (125) Plasma pistol, power weapon, meltabombs.

9 Chaos Space Marines (200) Meltagun, Aspiring Champion with plasma pistol and power fist.

Chaos Rhino (35)

5 Chaos Space Marines (90) Plasma gun.

Chaos Rhino (50) Havoc launcher.