I appreciate the compliment, Mostwanted. I definitely fall in the "parade ground" group of painters.

The problem with Veteran Assault squads is that there really is no definitive picture of one. In our codex, such as it is, there are two pictures. The first one shows an assault marine with the 7th squad marking on his knee. However, the second one appears to be the same exact marine, with a plain black kneepad. However, I'm skeptical of this model, as it bears no visible veteran markings. The model is conspicuously angled so that we can't see the right shoulder pad, where the 1st Company badge should be. I'm convinced they didn't have a model in the studio, so they just used a normal assault marine. I don't know why they removed the lightning bolt from the second model.

Going back to the 3rd Edition codex, there is one picture that is definitely a Veteran Assault squad. The white skull on the right shoulder is clearly visible. This squad is lacking any squad markings, but so are Tactical and Devastator Marines throughout the codex. There're also 2 pictures of Terminators with army badges on their right knee pads, which is just confusing.

In the 2nd Edition Codex, there's another picture of a Veteran Assault squad. In this case it's Dante's retinue, and while it has the white skull, it also has white chapter insignia (I've never seen this anywhere else) and gold helmets. This was before the Honor Guard was it's own unit, so this is apparently the prototype. This squad is also lacking squad markings.

In the Index Astartes, none of the marines are shown with squad badges. Interestingly, the Terminators with an army badge on the kneepad make another appearance.

As there are no definitive answers for Blood Angels, I move to Codex Chapters. Both Index Astartes and How to Paint Space Marines show codex veterans and terminators with squad numbers on their right shoulder pads, just as they are on non-veterans. This suggests to me that veterans have the same squad markings as any other squad.

Terminator squads are specifically mentioned as being named after their Sergeant. This goes back to 2nd Edition. I always figured that this was because, by the codex, Terminator squads are 5 strong. This means that there would be 2 squads fielded from each Veteran squad of 10, so the squad number wouldn't be able to designate them. I imagine this carries over to squads that have combat squaded, though it's never been stated.

So there you go. GW has never provided a definitive answer to Veteran markings, in some cases being contradictory. It's up to us to decide how we want to handle it, but based on what I've seen of Veterans from Chapters that are better documented (i.e. Ultramarines), I decided to go with squad markings. I hoped that was helpful.

I actually got the old jump packs from GW back when they had a more complete bitz store. I got 11 somehow, and used 10 for my first Veteran Assault squad and this last one for the Chaplain. I've searched around and can't find anywhere else to buy them. I'm hoping GW releases them as a bitz pack.

Thanks for the compliments on the freehand. I guess after so much time staring at them, trying to get the wings to work out, I just really see the flaws. I appreciate the compliments on the yellow, though again I can see your point about the yellow detracting from the blue armor.

I have started a test model from my next Veteran squad, which will have dark red robes. I know I can pull of the white robes, so this will be a test to see if I can pull off dark red robes. He's been moved down the painting queue because of my Space Hulk Terminators. I'll see about getting it finished and posting it soon.