Black Knights part 1 + Chaplain

Following up to my last post, I had also finished this second chunk of the Ravenwing army and have gotten them based and some poor photos taken.  The plasma talons OSL needs a bit of work IMO.

14 painting points.

5 Black Knights, 1 with grenade launcher

Chaplain

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

quick "in progress" paint update

Been spending some time on these, so I decided to post up some pics - they aren't the greatest but at least show I have not been idle. I have broken out the ravenwing into 5 chunks of effort.  I still plan to put these on a display base as I think it will really make them look fantastic.  Next up I have 5 ravenwing black knights and a bike mounted chaplain already on the painting table.

squad 1 (flamers)

Chunk 1 is a ravenwing squad and a bike mounted techmarine.  They are complete as far as I intend to take the entire army at this point - which is one level of highlight for everything bar the bike line highlights (bikes get two) and characters will get an extra level of highlight for their "colour" (ie. red for techmarine) and coats of nuln oil which I am really pleased in terms of it's type of "dirtiness" - which suits the bikes well.

techmarine

What I have left out is the headlights and screens.  I think some OSL will look really good on them but want to get them to a playable point.  With a new DA codex dropping sometime within a month or so, it might be nice to get a game with them or even (gasp!) take them to astronomi-con (don't mention to SWMBO!). If that doesn't happen I could also consider selling them off at that point, need to see if any final stuff should be added to the army or not.

Raptor Legion scouts

Got the Raptor Legion scouts finished up. I used Iyanden Darksun foundation on the holsters and pouches - I think it works well as a "coloured" fabric. The yellow helps to keep the number of colours down and it worked with a single wash of Devlan Mud.

Added the usual decals - I found some old one's from the imperial guard chimera sheet - they will suit for the right hand shoulder pad to identify the squad (even though I doubt I will ever do any more scouts for this chapter).

Technically they need a quick swirl of coloured wash on the bases and sealing but that will get done when the humidity drops a bit - lots of rain here the past few days! 5 more painting points - definitely on a roll this year!

WIP Raptor Legion CC scouts

One of several projects I have ongoing at this time is getting these Raptor Legion scouts painted up. Our house is quite dry and I am starting to find paints dried out - I didn't want this to happen with the last of my gryphonne sepia so I decided to get these guys painted sooner rather than later.

One difference from the rest of my Raptor Legion marines is these guys have some cloth - to keep a limited palette I decided to use dheneb stone for the cloth similarly to the weapons.  They are also covered in holsters and pouches - this is where I need your help.  Should I do those dheneb stone as well or add another colour to the mix - a leather type is my thought.  Opinions?

playing with the FOLDIO & green background (green screen)

Just for fun I tried setting up a "green screen" type shoot with a few figures. I used the FOLDIOs green background and just poured extra flock that matched the bases all over the figures. Then I used photoshop to remove the background and just googled some images to put as the new background. Not that pleased but being my first attempt I'm not overly fussed. The horizon is clearly off as are the colours comparing the two layers.

first attempt

Things I figured out are 1) the FOLDIO material both the box and the background are made out of have a natural attraction for flock and the like, so they will need some quick cleaning before being used again. 2) Finding the correct angle to get the "horizon" right but still show off the miniatures is tough. 3) I probably need to use some kind of filter tool in photoshop to get the colours to look right.

Any tips or good websites to check out?

Space Hulk - suicide mission!

Been doing pretty well on the gaming front recently.  From some Talisman & Citadels in December to even getting a game of 40K and now Space Hulk in.  My brother came over last night and we each took a turn as the terminators on the first Space Hulk mission.  Didn't mess with timers this time around, I need to get that Space Hulk app re-installed on my phone.  I didn't take enough pics for a proper battle report - we were just getting used to the rules again anyways.  A couple nice snaps below.

Here is the best pic I got from this angle - the original and then I did some quick editing using the google+ photo editor to try and make the second a bit more interesting, by focusing on the marines/keeping them sharp while making the genestealers a bit fuzzy.  Also used a filter called "Moody"

original

edited & filtered

This was the only pic I got from this angle - thankfully it turn out OK.  I like the "tunnel" view of proceedings, and tried to do the opposite of the first, keeping the genestealers clear & sharp and making the terminators look blurry.  I used some filters too "Dark 2" or something like that.  They look pretty good for 30 seconds of editing!

original

edited & filtered

I hope to play this game much more this year.  It's pretty quick to setup and now that I have both sides painted up (neither by me I will mention) it just looks fantastic.

40K 6th ed. 2nd game (first with new marine codex)

Got my second game of 6th edition in, vs. Leo of the previous game. Around 5 months between games shows how little I actually play 40K at the moment.  Leo brought his Eldar from the previous battle bolstered with the new wraithlord monstrous creature thing, and a bunch of wraithguard that counted as troops along with the essential psykers, dropping the crimson hunter and fire prism but keeping the obviously strong wave serpents.

my deployment

Having recently finished my novamarines assault terminators, I was tempted to bring them, but at 1500 points there just didn't seem to be enough space, and without a valid way to get them into assault without a land raider, they seemed a bit of a liability.  I brought Tigurius to try and combat his psykers, a 10 man terminator squad, 2 tactical squads in drop pods, a scout squad with Telion and another scout squad in a land speeder storm bolstered by a thunderfire cannon.

Leo's first move

Leo took a bunch of pics of my deployed units, and I tended to take a pic a turn, so here are a bunch of pics of my scouts and terminators then some in game pics.  We played the scourging game with 6 objectives.

scouts on the firebase, terminators behind

close up of scouts

terminators and thunderfire cannon

I dropped the first pod and whiffed with both meltaguns on a wave serpent, while Tigurius gated with the terminators and they destroyed most of his guardians.  Thunderfire missed even with prescience.

end of turn one

another shot before turn two

Turn two and Leo focuses on my terminators - who at first seem invincible, but then begin to drop like flies.

Leo turn two

My turn two I gate away from combat and focus a lot of fire on the wraithguards without template weapons, causing a lot of wounds and killing everything but one and his farseer.  His other wraithguards whiff trying to kill my scouts in the firebase.

end of turn two

Other drop pod with tactical doesn't really do enough - I was torn between bolstering where my other units were or providing a distraction and challenging for objectives.  In the end they didn't do any damage and just got shot up.

begin of turn three

I crucially failed at all to user the ultramarines tactics (Tigurius meant I often used prescience on an appropriate unit, but I probably needed one more drop pod so both tactical squads could land at same time and take advantage of the rerolls.  I also misunderstood overwatch and didn't realize his wraithguard with template weapons could overwatch at my charging terminators - which meant they died before reaching combat.  That about sealed it.

I've learned this army really doesn't have any "punch" to combat the creep of other codexes.  That plus space marines becoming a flexible/finesse army and losing combat tactics means a serious re-think about this army.  Lots of troops is great, but the terminators are pretty expensive for what you get.  Not sure what I can easily add to make it competitive so it may sit on the back shelf for a while, or could go up on the block in the future.

Novamarines terminators

First painting points of 2014 - yes it's kind of cheating because most of the painting was done in 2013, but I'm not going to not collect the points!  6 terminators, a squad of assault terminators with thunder hammer and storm shield (note the shield bears the novamarines icon) plus a terminator with assault cannon who I also gave a deathwatch shoulder pad due to not having any normal pads left.

assault squad - love the shields!

I'm not going to bother trying to get good pictures until my lightbox from FOLDIO shows up, so just some quickies to show I am done.  FYI I had forgotten about transfers but since these pics I have added the army badge and shoulder pad veteran skull transfers I have been using on my novamarines.

assault cannon with deathwatch honours

This guy I converted with a pair of lightning claw arms and a land speeder assault cannon.  I think he looks pretty decent and it's kind of cool that all the terminator heavy weapons are conversions in this army.  All these guys need now is a coat of varnish to keep them protected.

magnetized chainfist

EDIT: Oops I forgot I also got this chainfist arm painted up.  You may recall I magnetized the arm of my second squads sergeant so I could have a full 10 man squad. Well I figured I may as well give myself the chainfist arm option, always handy to have an option to use up 5 points :) No painting points for this though.

04/24/2014 EDIT
Some FOLDIO lightbox pics

Some painting finished earlier...

I mentioned in the previous post I had managed to get some painting done in the build up to the family addition.  This raptor legion tactical squad had been assembled and partially primed for a while, so I tidied up the old primer grittiness by scraping with an exacto and gave them another coat.  Then I followed the same pattern as my older models using mostly washes with a bronze metallic and some dheneb stone for details with a touch of metallic-y yellow.  They still look great IMO and are super quick to output.

test photo from within display cabinet

With the latest codex release, the Raven Guard have their own Chapter Tactics that have altered slightly from the stuff previously implemented with Shrike.  Forge World have also released some chapter tactics for the badab war chapters and it gives rending to boltguns/bolt pistols if they don't move (classified temporarily as heavy to ensure no crazy combos with the dark angels salvo banner - damn!)

I am pretty torn on these guys - I have 5 assault terminators that I think I can get assembled and painted before the year is out (I still have aspirations of beating my target of 100 painting points) and along with the models already done that would be right close to 1000 points of marines.  A squad of scouts or something would put it near that level.  At that point I am wondering if it's really worth hanging onto or if I should look into trading/selling it.  I need to cut back on the marine armies as it's obviously a bit overkill and I would rather keep armies that play differently (like the Ravenwing army) instead of tons of tactical/assault squad based armies.  Any thoughts?  Or suggestions on the one thing to add to this to bring it around 1000 points and maybe make it more appealing?

First game of 6th edition (yes took that long!)

Had my first game of 6th edition last night.  Yes it's been a while since I have played 40k - a combination of our blood bowl league being full steam ahead + some lack of desire to start learning all the changes mean it has been out a while before I got a game in.

Played against a new opponent Leo who lives about 10 minutes away and we used smallish (1250pts) armies to ensure it didn't get too messy and we were able to (mostly) finish in an evening.  I brought some of my lately acquired Flesh Tearers since I just wanted to use them in a game.  We played mission 5 (the emperor's will?) and diagonal deployment.  I put my objective near him because even with the jump packs I knew he would have me outclassed for speed so I just wanted everything pretty focused.  Fortunately I rolled the warlord trait that gave me move through cover so my land raider was immune to dangerous terrain tests (Leo seemed confident this was correct, please let me know if that's wrong!)

My army had;
* reclusiarch in terminator armour
* 2x sanguinary priests (one terminator armour, one jump pack)
* 6 terminators with a cyclone missile launcher
* 10 assault marines with jump packs, 2 meltaguns & power fist
* 6 death company with jump packs, infernus pistol & 2x power weapons

His army of Eldar had a farseer, 5 warlocks, an autarch?, a couple guardian squads in falcons? wave serpents? (whichever one has that dirty new force field that it can choose to shoot with) a fire prism and the crimson hunter.

Below are some pics and a bit of description - hope you enjoy!

autarch? & warlocks flee

Probably the turning point of the game, first psychic power goes off, but 2nd his Farseer perils and he spent his last token to save himself (some helmet wargear item).  Then immediately another warlock perils and dies (no save anymore?) and being in a squad of 4 they take a morale test - fail - and flee off the board.  First Blood to me! (+1VP)  Lesson learned for Leo, keep a minimum of 5 guys to start in that squad so 1 perils doesn't cause that morale test.

land raider advances to fire on transports & death company use as cover

Leo also zoomed his transports over near his objective, near where I was setup - so I moved my land raider forward and jumped the death company in behind to hide them from his fire prism.  I left my assault squad in cover deep in my deployment zone as the fire prism LOS to them was blocked.  The land raider missed with the multi-melta and while the assault cannons hit twice they failed to glance.

land raider blocking LOS and attacking fire prism

A dismal round of shooting for both Leo and I meant not a lot happened, at this point it is after my land raider stunned his fire prism which it shook off with some piece of wargear.  He then moved all his vehicles around to focus on my land raider - after the crimson hunter caused some glances, his fire prism lanced my land raider and blew it up - all the terminators inside survived.

terminators destroy the fire prism

So in my turn the terminators duly charge his fire prism and wreck it without even needing to resort to power fists!!  Go go Reclusiarch Crozius!  The cyclone did fire before charging but missed with both krak missiles (never hit once all game with krak missiles!)  No consolidate move?  Yikes!

assault marines fail charge roll - damn difficult terrain

I had also decided to finally charge my assault marines into battle.  Perhaps failing this charge actually turned out to be beneficial as I think Leo was still more worried about the damage possibly caused by my terminators.  Oh and my sanguinary priest was the only one to fail a difficult terrain test, and he promptly failed both armour and feel no pain to die outright! D'oh!

transport explodes, terminators in the open

This photo looks quite a bit later in game, so I'll try to fill you in.  His crimson hunter flew over and shot at my death company, missing with 1/2 it's shots.  Then my assault marines blasted it out of the sky with their meltaguns (fortunate they both rolled 6's to hit!)  Leo disembarked his Farseer and guardians from 1 transport and used it as cover and shot at my terminators - who lost a couple guys.  His other transport fired at my death company and killed 1.  Now this looks like right after my terminators charged into his transport (I cared less about his squad and more about their ability to move, they are nearly 1/2 the table away from the objectives at this point) I blew up his transport and in his turn he shot a bunch at my terminators who tanked without any casualties.  His second squad tried to battle focus to get within range of my assault squad and shoot them, but I rolled every save I could (a couple shots were AP2)

eyes on the prize

In my next turn I turned around and focused on that second guardian squad with my assault marines and my terminators, gunning down something like 6-7 of them and they failed their morale test and ran off, they would continue to fail and flee for the rest of the game.  I also assaulted his second transport and wrecked it with my death company.

death company can assault vehicles rear AV10 pretty well thanks to furious charge

This is nearing the end of the game (we had to finish on turn 6 which was lucky for me, as in turn 6 his guardians basically wiped out my terminators except for the sanguinary priest - which allowed them to charge him and a possible turn 7 could have seen a battle go on for one of the objectives) that's slay the warlord for Leo (+1VP) so I decided to jump my assault marines into the furthest objective to capture it (+3VP) and jump my death company to the nearest one to deny it and that's where we had to stop - which left me winning.

If we had the time to go to turn 7, it was very probably that Leo would have been able to capture the nearest objective to his guardian squad with farseer (unless my lone sanguinary priest could have held them up) thanks to their battle focus they could have probably consolidated from assault, moved, ran, if within range of objective - shot up my 3 remaining death company - if outside of range wait and assault them and thus move close enough and capture the objective which would have given him the tie (we both got the bonus VP for Linebreaker.  So I felt pretty good that the worst I could have achieved was a tie.

That was completely down to being smart with my one scoring unit and I think a combination of poor dice luck and perhaps a bit of getting caught up in killing units by Leo.  He probably should have been more cautious with his movement early so he could have gambled a bit more later.  All in all a pretty fun game but man did it really feel like a 5th codex vs. a 6th codex.  His eldar seemed really awesome for the points cost - especially those transports and I'm pretty sure if his warlocks hadn't fled off the table in turn one that would have changed the complexion of the game entirely.  Codex creep seems alive and well!

one little objective

Literally... Just a quick one today to rack up my first completed painting point for 2013.  I have a number of projects all ongoing at the moment, which is a little different to the usual - but that's ok. I originally built this up thinking of an old necromunda scenario where you infiltrated into a spyrer lair and it was all booby trapped!  This has a bunch of little lasers from an old epic model and then I just hacked together some electronics/power cells and hid the whole bunch behind a little piece of ruins. I used the shaft of an old power axe to act as scanner.

40mm objective

It sat in that state (primed black) for a long time, I was thinking it count also count as an objective for my space sharks, but I recently thought it might suit my raptor legion and so started painting it up and based it similar to those figures. It was fun to paint and gets me off the mark.  Although I've just noted that I haven't painted the laser barrels - better fix that now!

Ravenwing Week - last day

Call it 5 or 7, this will be the last post about the ravenwing until I either start painting or sort out the bases/display base.  I plan to use the laser cutter like I did for my goblin team, but with a basic plywood sheet.  The bikes bases will be a very simple dirt mix.  Just a couple final pics because I hope you find them interesting.

black knight grenade launcher

I've just used some scout bike grenade launchers bits for my ravenwing black knights.  I do like the new grenade launcher bits but I probably won't be dropping $60 on 3 bikes plus bits.  I'll need to score one more set of these bits to fix up a couple more bikes.

stripping station

Here is my stripping station.  It's an old brita water filter tub, which I filled with simple green.  The aquarium pump I will leave running for several hours at a time when I am sitting in the hobby room.  Keeping the simple green circulating helps with stripping the figures I find.  Still takes a few rounds of scrubbing with a toothbrush, especially depending on what paint was used.

Ravenwing Week - day 4.. I mean uh.. 6?

Sorry for the delay, got caught up and didn't have any photos of the standard bikers.  I still need to get three sergeants done as well as a couple more basic marines on bikes to bulk up the flamer squad.  I did rip off the basic front flaring from the attack bikes I picked up and replaced them with the feathered ravenwing flarings. I've got a bunch more bikes sitting in simple green to strip the old paint off them.

I'm just going to show off some of the dark vengeance bikers I plan to keep using as standard ravenwing assault squads.  A friend convinced me with a bunch of plasma on the black knights which includes twin-linked (thereby decreasing their chances off taking "gets hot" wounds from 16.7% to 2.8%) that I should include some more melta in the list to have a better chance to deal with vehicles.  So I have 2 squads with 2 meltaguns and 1 squad with 2 flamers.  I have converted a few of the plasmagun wielding bikers to flamers/meltaguns and mixed it up a bit converting a bolt pistol biker to meltagun and plasmagun biker to bolt pistol to mix up the poses a bit.

squad with meltas

Am not sure how I plan to show sergeants for my standard bikers.  All the robed bodies will be my black knights/command squad members, so am debating a simple red stripe on the helmet or even a full red helmet to distinguish the sergeant.  This differs from the usual dark angels paint scheme but I don't think I mind that much, it will be nice to have some differences from everyone elses ravenwing.  I am keeping the sergeants arms pretty basic, though they will all have melta bombs (even though they have hit & run, they could still fail their initiative check if I don't have the ravenwing banner) so this should ensure they can do damage to things like dreadnoughts and not (frequently) get stuck in combat.

squad with flamers

I saw some nicely painted ravenwing the other day - am not a fan of the green bike body for standard bikers, but I did like that he used green for the feathered flarings and such.  Am debating doing something similar with red to make my ravenwing look a bit different. Thoughts?

Ravenwing Week - day 3

For today I am going to post a few black knight conversions.  With the new dark vengeance box having a sweet set of ravenwing bikers, there was no way I was going to pay $60 for 3 black knights.  I knew this before I even knew the price!!  Through trading and some purchasing off bartertown ($11 a set of 3!) I have 6 sets of DV ravenwing.  Some will be actual standard bike squads but most of the sergeants will be converted into black knights - simply by chopping the barrel off their bolters and cutting out a rectangular piece from the bottom of a bunch of plasma pistols and gluing them on top.  These are the first three I've converted.

banner guy, will leave hole open for a banner or a corvus hammer

First one I was debating between making him a command squad standard bearer or using my cheapo corvus hammer conversion from the ravenwing feathered banners.  I've been reliably told that using that as a corvus hammer looked like crap so I am going to revert to him being the banner.  I haven't glue the weapon so I will just make a few banner poles.  I am debating how to do the banner, currently I'm thinking of printing something out on sticker paper (and also debating having a plain white space to write what banner it is) - thoughts?

using the dark vengeance captain helmet

Second one I started to convert a basic "captain on bike" for which I used the captains helmet from the DV figure.  Unfortunately dark angels can't take a standard captain on a bike, so I proceeded to convert his bikes weapons to plasma talons as well so he can at least be a ravenwing captain/huntsmaster.  Using the helmet worked really well, and I just used a robed body from the ravenwing sprue mounted on a DV sergeant bike with robed legs.  Will need some green stuff to fill in gaps, but he looks really good IMO.

dark vengeance sergeant converted to black knight

Third one will just be a standard black knight, whatever I end up finding to use as corvus hammers will probably just get glued onto the bikes siding somewhere with some simple straps made of plasticard or
something.  I don't want every black knight to be wielding the corvus hammer, might make it awkward to get into tight spaces.

Does anyone have any suggestions for suitable "pick" like weapons to use as the corvus hammers?  Only requirement is that they be plastic.

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?