Storm Raven Pt 3

I've been having a bast painting this storm raven. I don't know why I put it off so long. Unfortunately, it is a little too large for my light booth, so I am forced to using a camera with flash.

I have most of the model painted now, including the crew, and the magnetized side hatches(more on that later). I am really happy with how the crew turned out. Those last two photos were taken with flash on, which is not terribly flattering. I think the model looks really good when set on my display board, and am looking forward to coming up with a good base for it. I was thinking of putting a wrecked ultramarines rhino, but that might make transporting the model a pain. Who wants to transport a rhino purely to use it a scenery.

I've included some army shots of the SR from a distance as per request. I cropped the photos, but the shots were taken more than 5 feet away, so you can get a feel for how it fits into the finished army.

Is Sword of Baal too cheesy a name? Mine is going to carry death company, so it is a mean S.O.B.

Pre-Shading A Stormraven P2

Once the pre-shading is done with codex grey, a light coat of blood red is sprayed all over the model. It is is important to go a little thicker over the grey areas so they end up looking red, not pink. At this stage the finished looks starts emerging. The photo above with the taped windows shows what the model looks like with the red applied. So far nothing fancy has been done.

The next step involves watering down baal red wash 50/50 with water and spraying it all over the model. I find that this ties the whole model together and makes a much richer red. When I sprayed the wash this time, I noticed that when dry, the wash left a powdery chalky looking residue in some of the crevices. This happened when I painted my Heroes of Armageddon devil dogs as well. I have no idea what is causing this, and would very much like it to go away. It ends up looking like a bit of unintended weathering. The problem is that I can not control when it happens, so it must go.

I painted the pilot using the same pre-shading technique, and think I have found my new goto method for painting blood angels. It was surprising how good he looked for 10 minutes of work. In my rush to get this model done, I should have paused to let the crew dry, but sometimes speed just has to happen, and paint just has to run.

Pre-Shading A Stormraven

I've learned a few techniques since painting my BA tanks, but since I want my storm raven to fit in with the same painting style I need to follow roughly the same recipe. The first step was to paint the interior of the storm raven and then seal it shut for the pre shading. I used an air brush and washes for the interior, selecting a series of browns up to bone white at the edges. I think that will contrast nicely with the red, and will fit this guy into my existing BA.

There are two types of pre-shading that I normally use these days. Basically one can choose to highlight the edges, or highlight the interior panels. The reason this works is that blood red is semi translucent, and when airbrushed on, some of the base coat will show through. There is also

For my Ultramarines I may use the inverse method from this one, though I will need to find a good grey primer. For the thunder-chicken here, I first primed the model black, and used fortress white around the edges of the panels. My goal was to make the lines kind of wide, so my highlight color never touches black.

Painting continues, so I'll keep you posted.

1st game in over a year

I played my first game in over a year yesterday against a really great painter, and an even nicer guy, shawn, over at Glaven.net. I brought the army above(yes in that sexy cardboard and tape movement tray), and he brought 2k worth of demons. I've never played demons, so it was thrilling to get the chance to play one of the essential fluff armies in the 40k universe.

Shawn's army ate mine. It was fun, I learned a lot, but I really think BA are more my style. Perhaps I do have to finish off painting troops so my BA force can be a contender. I was hoping that with the relatively small deathwing force that I was going to be minimizing the trouble of transporting them and then setting them up and playing. However versus 17ish units I just could not maneuver.

Since I was railroaded\d\d\d\d\d into playing in the NOVA (thanks jawa! :) I now have to train. I'd like to think I am Rocky in this fantasy, but really I am just training so my opponents can have relatively fast and fun games. Things I learned from game one of my training sessions.

1. I need to have all special rules and main rule book rules on hand. This includes psychic powers. I am going to make a cheat sheet
2. Just because my army can DS does not mean it needs to. I think I should have castled
3. My bikes are glass, they shatter on everything. Best use them as last minute objective grabbers
4. splitting a bike squad into two units of three, makes a single weaker unit even worse
5. If I can't play to win, I should play for the draw
6. DW are neither hand to hand, nor long distance fire support. I have no idea where they fit.

NOVA Dark Angels Ebay Salvage Terminators

I have my first squad of terminators built from my first ebay 40k purchase. I am pushing through despite my desire to let these guys soak in simple green for a while. I am working on the theory that having one army to play at 2k is better than no army. I'm going to get these guys finished which will give me the option of trying to then put a BA force together, or just go with what I have.

I love how clean my original DW are. These guys just quite measure up. I think the problem is that my focus has been on BA for such a long time that I have forgotten what it is like to paint a hard color.

Should I chip these guys up with chardon granite battle damage?

Painting Recipes Rock

One of the added benefits of blogging is that the blog becomes a painting recipe repository. If I hadn't put my deathwing basing recipe online, I would not have had any idea how to reproduce the bases for the 3 new squads I am adding to the army. If only I had put the recipe for putting the deathwing themselves online!

NOVA BA Jump List and Ebay Buyer Beware!

I am still debating what to play at the NOVA open, which is a problem given that I will likely have to do a large amount of painting before hand if I want a semi-coherant list. After all, as a painter primarily I paint what I like, not what is playable. Rather than make a decision now, why not paint two armies and decide later?

Using that logic, I took my Ebay'd terminators, which had turned out to be poorly put together AoBR terminators, and began the process of dressing them up with new armaments for two new DA squads. Once completed, this will mean my DA army now has enough miniatures to support a 2k list, which gives me some options.

On the BA side of the equation I have been toying around the idea of running an all jump list using 5 assault squads, asteroth the grim, dante, and honor guard. Toss in a a chaplain and a sanguinary priest and it is a pretty sizable force. Who wouldn't want to drop 50 marines out of the sky onto an opponent. At the very least it would be fun....after all, it is raining blood angles.

NOVA Open: What to Play

I bit the bullet while at Games Day Chicago and decided to play in the 40k Nova open. I had a little prompting by Jawaballs. The chance to throw down some games with fully painted armies sounded like fun. So how does one prepare for a GT if one is not a regular player? My last game was more than a year ago against brother captain james. My concerns.

• I've never played a 2k game before, so my painted armies might not support it well. I may have to paint up new units.
• A 2k army can be hard to transport if it is tank heavy.
• I am rusty with the rules so I need a simple army with few tricks that I can start practicing with now

I could play BA, IG, or DA. BA are currently my favorite painting army, but they require a real list, which I am going to get some help with. However, through the wonders of Army Builder, I've put together an alternate Dark Angels dual-wing army list. Could a mostly foot DA list work?

• Belial lightening claws
• Librarian in terminator armor
• x5 Terminator squad
• ravenwing fast attack with bike and land speeder
• ravenwing support squadron (1 land speeder)

There are no tanks, but a lot of teleport homers on bikes. In the past my tanks always evaporated first turn anyway, so why not just leave them home and save the effort. Do I need more troops? Should it be a terminator only army?