Ravenwing Squad 1 + Techmarine

Playing a bit of catch up here.  These have been painted for a while but I wasn't really super happy with these photos, even though I used my lightbox (or especially because I did?) but anyways I want to post about them before the year end so these will have to do.

Once I finished the roads/flocking of the display base, I felt it prudent to start gluing the bikes on to help motivate me to keep painting....  It hasn't really worked - I'd already finished the second chunk and now was just tired of doing line highlights on black.  I will probably try to mix in some of the landspeeders or the nephilem I picked up to pique my interest again in the new year.

19 painting points.

Squad 1 - bare sergeant and flamers

Squad 1 attack bike - on the display they are an attack squadron with a landspeeder

Techmarine

Ravenwing Week - day 2

Here's a character model I decided to build just because I wanted one.  I especially don't see any issue since a techmarine doesn't take up an HQ slot, you are allowed to purchase for for every HQ you purchase (barring command squads) so he's easy to include as long as points are available. He also has access to special issue wargear which is very interesting. There's also no option for artificer armour in special issue wargear so barring 3 special characters he is the only other 2+ save and is the only one who can be customized.  He does only have 1 wound, but considering he's on a bike (in my army at least) that's T5/2+, he could be better equiped to withstand being rapid fired to death.

To build him, I took a torso from the standard rhino vehicle sprue, and used standard biker legs, along with the techmarine helmet from the ravenwing sprue and a couple shoulder pads with mechanicum icons.  This was all pretty standard and still has me contemplating adding some more "techno-bling" to his armour - maybe with some thin plastic card.  Opinions?  His armour does look pretty basic.

view from left, some decent mechanicum icons, but armour is very flat

The cool/fun part of modeling this guy was converting a servo-arm backpack out of plastic bits.  Thankfully I had remembered to bookmark an excellent tutorial posted by Mike (devised by a second Mike) over at Constantly Risking Obscurity. It involved using a backpack, 2 flamers and 2 combat knives which would result in one servo-arm backpack and a couple hand flamers. As I started to work my way through the tutorial, I found a melta bomb and thought it would make a good replacement for the fuel canister from a flamer.  So then I figured I could avoid chopping up a second flamer if I could find something else to replace the second "arm" portion. So I plucked the landspeeder antenna bit from a ravenwing sprue and voila - servo arm complete and only one flamer chopped up.  It's also nice that the two arm pieces look different.

plastic servo-arm goodness

Finally, as I was assembling all the pieces into the final model, I was debating what to put in his hand, I didn't want to arm him with anything that cost points so if need be he can be as basic as possible.  A bolt pistol wasn't filling me with excitement though.  While reading through the new FAQ, I spotted that he technically was also armed with a boltgun, so upon review of the wargear list I saw I could replace that for free with a chainsword.  Chainsword it is!!

view from right side

If anyone is planning to run a techmarine on bike in their Dark Angels list, please share what your thoughts are.  Do you plan to use him as a roving repairman? Just a 2+ save ablative wound for a ravenwing command squad?

Space Sharks: Scratch Built TFC

Ever since the Thunderfire Cannon model came out, I knew I would never purchase it.  Small complex metal models that will break easily are not for me.  I knew it could be done, but it wasn't until Andy from Eagles View posted about his scratch built thunderfire cannon that I went and bought some volley gun bits from a bits site to have a go.  You can tell by the date on his post that this item has been sitting in the backburner for a LOOOONG time.  I built the volley gun bits and the tracks pretty quickly but the actual body was giving me problems.  A recent land raider acquisition came with lots of spare bits and I had some leftover sentinel parts so when I got some inspiration I built this.

Sorry for the crappy iphone photos, I didn't bother to show the other side as it's basically identical.  The only thing I see left to do is cover up the bare "axle" holes on the 2 rear most small wheels.  Questions for you lot are - 

Do you think it needs anything else model wise?

I was considering some ammo racks in the open space, might it be prudent to leave the space open for the techmarine to stand in so he can get a cover save?

Finally.. does anyone know if the techmarine that comes with a thunderfire cannon means you can take a squad of servitors, and if they can still be joined by him if he is operating the gun?

finally updates... pt2

Well so far the troll photos aren't turning out so hot. I'll give it one more go in a bit. I did however get a couple decent pics of my techmarine conversion. He'll need some green stuff work but again enough to get playing with. He'll be my Space Sharks techmarine. I may still need to add a beaky helmet in there somehow - anyone think I should replace the head with a beaky?

I cut up an extra techmarine backpack to provide the extra bits for the conversion. The servo-arm I pinned to the middle exhaust vent, the wires I pinned to the bottom. For the laser cutter I combined an old and newer plastic plasma pistol, for the flamer I just used an old hand flamer. I didn't bother with any other weapons as the servo harness gives enough power for a support character and he has a bolter slung under his shoulder so he's both WYSIWYG and a nice round 75 points.