The Ravenwing Project

The Ravenwing Project was something that just happen on me one day while I was at the battle bunker. I won a free Master of the Ravenwing on his Jetbike during an event. I had no intention of ever playing with the character in any of my armies when I got it. I thought it was a cool model and one day I would get around to painting it. I did get a copy of the current Dark Angels codex back when it came out, mostly for the pictures and fluff, as well as knowing your enemy kind of thing. Although since the new marine codex came out I had been thinking about starting a marine army, several choice were on my mind...Crimson Fists, Space Sharks, Black Templars, Imperial Fists, and Dark Angels. In the end I got Kantor and went with the Crimson Fists for my nilla codex marine army, but I still liked both Templars and Angels. I've had some incredible battle against Black Templar armies in the past, but since I went Crimson Fists and I tossed the idea aside since I have a fist army from Rogal Dorn's legion now in the works. So the DA was there waiting to strike out. I got to thinking what DA aspects do I like, not the Deathwing since too many of those are roaming around now anyways. I'm a fan of the color green so I could have done a nilla DA list, but I have Crimson Fists mostly for that now. Ravenwing was interesting but it never pulled me enough to get on it, until I won that free model. I began researching it a bit, and with the black paint scheme it seemed like an easy army to paint up, like my nurgle army. So here I am now, as usual I made an army list with the goal of building to tournament size (2250 Points) Raven Wing force.


Ravenwing Strike Force
Total Points: 2250

HQ +205

HQ
Sammael Landspeeder


Troops +1240

Ravenwing Attack Squad
1 Sgt Bike w/Plasma Pistol (+PF)
1 Bike Apothacary
1 Bike Company Banner
2 Bikes w/Meltaguns
1 Bike
1 Attack Bike w/MM +50

Ravenwing Attack Squad
1 Sgt Bike w/Plasma Pistol (+PW +MB)
2 Bikes w/Meltaguns
3 Bikes
1 Attack Bike w/MM
1 Landspeeder

Ravenwing Attack Squad
1 Sgt Bike w/Plasma Pistol (+PF +MB)
2 Bikes w/Plasmaguns
3 Bikes
1 Attack Bike w/MM
1 Landspeeder


FA +470

Ravenwing Support Squad
1 Landspeeder w/MM
1 Landspeeder w/AC

Ravenwing Support Squad
1 Landspeeder w/HB
1 Landspeeder w/TL (+Tornado Launchers)

Ravenwing Support Squad
1 Landspeeder w/HB
1 Landspeeder w/AC


Heavy Support +335

Heavy 1
Predator (+TL-LC +LC Sponsons +HK)

Heavy 2
Vindicator (+Xtra Armor +HK)


The idea is to build a solid core of Ravenwing, and possibly add some DA additional forces to make it a more effective force. The model count is low, but expected for an army made up of bikes and landspeeders. Oddly enough I did take the Master, but not on his jetbike so the model will stay unpainted for now. I took advantage of the company banner and apothecary for a squad, and I packed all the assault cannon goodness I could. The attack bikes are all build for anti armor; after all I have enough bolters and heavy bolters already floating around with the other bikes and landspeeders. So it would be MultiMelta hotness for my attack bikes. The regular bikes take a mix of Melta and Plasmaguns for the special weapons slots. Meltas are always good, and at least some plasma to fit the theme of Dark Angels, who seem to enjoy their plasmas a lot. Finally the Landspeeders were also a mix bag of assault cannons and heavy bolters. They will sit back and watch the fun from a distance to unleash loads of fire on the enemy, while the bikes close in and raid. I broke them down into 2 speeder squads in case of immobilized death to some. Finally I added an all Lascannon Predator and a Vindicator from the DA Armory to give the force a bit more bite at long range and close range support.

This will be the blueprint of the project, and will of course change as I go on or not depending on how I feel, more updates to come....well that's all for now! Enjoy!

Alpha Legion Obliterators

Obliterators are by far one of the best heavy support choice available in the CSM codex. There is never a list that I currently run where I'm not running at least one of these beast. The ability to swap between various deadly weapons and have an awesome save makes them worthy of taking. I have stopped entire rhino rush armies in one turn of shooting with these guys in the past, forcing marine players to walk to engage my army and taking a ton of fire from my troops. They are a fun unit to use in any chaos army. With the new Planetstrike expansion, I have used these guys are assault troops deep striking along with my terminator forces, making for a very devastating force to open the walls of any defender wide open.

These Oblits are part of my Alpha Legion force. I got these guys thru a trade a while back, and I found out these were the previous Oblits used before the current metal ones. So I got 3 of them in the trade, making for a full squad in the codex. They were already mounted on 25mm bases, and the current Oblits use 40mm, so I rebased them onto 40s with the 25mm bases on there to add a little more height and size. Something these guys lack compared to the current line. I gave them a simple base coat of blue and drybrushing of bolter to finish them. Since AL force don't employ daemon type forces when possible, I took an idea from Star Trek and themed these guys to look somewhat like the Borg. With the grey skin tone, and all the sensors they fit the look real well, so the Borg Obliterators joined my Alpha Legion forces!

That's all....enjoy!

Arkos The Faithless

Arkos the Faithless, Scion of Alpharius, and Captain in the Alpha Legion is the top dog of this Warband. The first real Special Character released for the Alpha Legion thru Forge World's Imperial Armor 5. When I saw this and the cool renegade models I was sold on the Alpha Legion as my choice for Chaos Space Marines. So began my trek into Chaos, and while I hopped and hopped that FW would release a cool resin model of Arkos it never came to be. So this left my new warband leaderless for a while, until a year later when I chose to convert my own version of Arkos out of existing models and bits.

I found that the Chaos Lord with CombiMelta fit the body style well, and it also came with a cool banner back pack. The head choices were much more limited, till I looked in my bits collection and found a fitting head from the Deathwatch upgrade kit, there was a head with a cyber eye, which also fit the description of some of the wargear on Arkos. The last piece was the sword, which had me stuck for a while, until a friend offered a fatasy chaos blade bit that worked perfectly. Along with a few other random bits I was off to build my own Arkos the Faithless model!

Here are some shots of the model before I primed it and after intial construction.


The Head and Blade both fit the Chaos Lord body perfectly with a bit of shaving some of the extra metal on the arm for the gloved hand.


After looking at Kharn's cool skull backpack, I was inspired to do something similar for Arkos, but I used two of the Dragon Head bits from the Chaos Vehicle bits sprue. The dragon heads add that extra bit that makes it look like a Hydra the main Icon of the Alpha Legion.


Standing on a rock raising his Dark Blade to inspire his troops on to victory, Arkos leads the way!


After a bit of paint work here is Arkos prior to finishing him. You can see the cybernetic detail of the eye on the Deathwatch head real well.



The Dragon heads along with Arkos head make for a cool Hydra effect of the many heads on one body.




Here is a better shot of the backpack and the dragon heads, as well as Arkos cape.





That's all for Arkos now....next will be the rest of his leadership....Enjoy!

Slaanesh Subjugator (Part 3)

Well this is the end of our trip thru Slaanesh Titan Class engines of destruction. The Subjugator is finished and all that is left is to base it, along with some completed shots. The base was simple enough to get. I used the same base type that I used on my Hellblades, a simple wooden base from any craft store. At first I was going to build a tech style hangar base for the machine, but that wasn't going to work out for me. I wanted the subjugator to also fit in with the rest of my Chaos Space Marine and Renegade forces, this meant the Ash Waste for this machine. Since it was the open waste for the base, there wasn't going to be too much terrain around for it to stand on, although I had an old Eldar Jet Bike laying around that I was never going to use, and it also had the old Harlequin face bit on it. How perfect, the two ultimate enemies Slaanesh vs Eldar/Quins. So I worked the bike in as a casualty of war and it came out looking better then I expected with a few bits of color here and there on the bike. I call the final piece "Who's Laughing Now Clown!"

The Eye of Horus has your back!


All the Metallic parts were washed with the new GW Washes, they are great on metal paint. The top half of the body comes off from the legs for easy transport, while the legs are pinned down to the base for stability.


The two dragon cannons on the waist are the Twin Linked Blastmasters in the Datasheet.


What to do with a pink Eldar Jetbike you buy in an army lot, Casualty of course!


Well that's all for this project, for now.....A Big Thanks to all of you who helped me along the way with this project, from start to finish!

Slaanesh Subjugator (Part 2)

Well we now have a built Subjugator and its time to think of a paint scheme. This was my first step into the world of Slaanesh so I had no idea what were common colors to this god. The only gods that I have used in chaos were Nurgle and Khorne, which have simple color schemes. So I did a little bit of research on this, along with taking a break from the project. I found the main color for the Subjugator after the new Dark Elves came out when a friend of mine built and painted his army. He did a real cool mix of metallic with the new purple wash that GW put out. It created a real cool effect on his Dark Elves, that I took the idea to my 40K Subjugator and it worked out perfectly!(Thanks Scooter!) The main color was there, and I took Gold as the secondary color of the model, with a few other colors and I finally had a scheme. I created the scheme simply as I painted the model.



I also dove into my Choas bits box and pulled some icons and other bits to give the model more of a chaosy look. The thigh armor got some Slaanesh icons, as did the feet, and shoulder pads. I also took a Chaos Daemons Bloodletter banner and added it as a loin cloth style banner to the subjugator. It all came together and gave it a much more chaos and slaanesh themed look to the model.



The end result of making a scheme as I painted the model worked out real well. I think I got a good mix of colors that gave the subjugator a very good slaanesh look. I used a few Slaanesh transfers in the end to finish off the model on the banner and arm armor.







The final test facing down an Ork Stompa. The final work on the model was the "High Heels" which I was perplexed as to how I would work them in. I finally greenstuff them and made them into bone heels. After all this is a Deamon Engine, and I was going for a Mega Size Deamonette look, so the bone worked well with the theme. This pic also gives you another good size comparison with GW official titan style models.