Ugh... Back to School

First off, I can't believe that it has been over a month since I've posted. Secondly, I can't believe how fast the summer has flown by. I start school next week! It's so hard to believe. Since my last post, I've made a trip to Baltimore for a wedding, a trip to Michigan to see family, and a trip to Illinois to see my girlfriend, Erin's mom. Previous to the trip up to Baltimore and just before I created this blog, we had made a trip to California to see Erin's dad. While we were out there I got to stop at a cool Games Workshop store. I purchased a tactical squad, to be painted at some point, hopefully during this school year. The coolest part was that judging for Armies on Parade had just happened a couple days prior to our arrival and the winning armies were still on display in the store. There was a pretty awesome Black Legion army on display and two really good looking Imperial Fists armies. I wish I had taken some pictures but my phone was really low on battery. Anyway, spending time at the store really made me wish we had one in the North Georgia area. You see, we used to have one at the Mall of Georgia but it closed down along with my local gaming store here in Athens. So, you can imagine my surprise and delight when I recently read on the Heresy Online boards that Atlanta will be getting a Games Workshop store sometime in August. I am absolutely giddy for the announcement of the grand opening to come. I hope I can make it over for the festivities.

Anyway, about my models... I hate to say it but, I am finding Raven Guard just too hard to paint. I originally thought that painting black models would be easy but it's crazy hard to get it to look right. So, I have put my Raven Guard Army on the back burner. Hopefully I will return to them some day as I have a rhino and scout squad in process. The question has become, what do I paint next? At first, I thought maybe I would paint some Red Scorpions, I really like their colors. Here is an example of a test marine I painted using the Red Scorpion color scheme.

As you can see, his eyes haven't been painted in, I haven't braved the chapter symbol, and he isn't based. I need to come up with a concept for the base... Any ideas? I guess it was when I was in California that I got the idea to try Red Scorpions. I found working with the shades of yellow and Gray to be much easier than working with the black of the Raven Guard, though some of the lessons I learned trying to highlight my RG army definitely came in handy with this guy. I like the clean feel the model has.

Another test I did was Blood Ravens. When I was in Illinois visiting Erin's mom I read a post that Dawn of War III is in development and I started looking at pics of Blood Raven space marines online. I was anxious to try my hand at some red shading so I decided that when I got home I would try some test models. Both models have some rough paint jobs because they had previously been painted with a heavy coat of gunmetal from a couple of years ago when I was trying some Iron Snakes marines. I tried to experiment around a bit. Blood Ravens have darker armor than Blood Angels so I had to mess with darkening shades of red. Here was the result...

I really had fun experimenting with the shading on the models. I took a lot of chances with watered down paint to try and get more of a shaded look as opposed to the hard edging I used to paint the Red Scorpion. While the Red Scorpion has a very clean crisp look to it, these guys look a bit more weathered and dirty.

I had so much fun messing around with these guys that I am going to try and put together a Blood Raven army. I'm hoping in the next couple of days to start work on a black reach tactical squad I purchased on e-bay and conversion work on a Gabriel Angelos model. Should be fun and lessen the sorrow of another summer come and gone...

Bike Squadron is Finished!!

Alright, so here is my finished bike squad and right away I have to say that I'm not entirely happy with the way that they turned out. However, the learning process continues. With this in mind, I thought I'd start this post with a bit of self reflection. First of all, I don't like my highlights. The lines are too thick and they are not straight enough. I think I need to really start thinning down my paint. But how thin should it be? What is the right amount of "thin"? I really feel like this has to improve if I want my models to start looking better. I felt ok about my highlighting abilities when I finished the tactical squad but, the bike squad exposed a lot of flaws in my technique. I guess it goes back to the planning stage of army construction. I looked through the my handy-dandy How to Paint Space Marines book, and extreme highlighting seemed like the way to go. Since then, I've taken a look at a really cool posting of an Iron Hands army over at the official Games Workshop site. The idea was to use bolt gun metal and mithril silver for the highlighting to make it look like paint has chipped or been worn. I also recently read a post over at the Jawaballs blog talking about how hard it is to get black armor to look "right". Who knew? I thought it would be easy. Additionally, you'll notice that I have been trying to freehand all the chapter sigils on my marines and bikes.

At a distance they look ok but, as you can see on the standard and the Sgt.'s bike, when you get close you really notice how messy they look. I think I overshot a bit trying to freehand them with so little painting experience. With this in mind, I'll press on with my collection of Raven Guard marines, but I don't think I'll go too much beyond what I initially purchased for this army.

Maybe further down the road I'll come back to Raven Guard but I really think, I'd like to try some other color schemes. A little while ago, I did a test Carcharodon model and I really liked working with the grays...

1st Tactical Squad

Alright, my first tactical squad is complete. I have mixed feelings about the results. I spent a lot of time looking online for ideas on painting black power armor. I thought about highlighting with Boltgun Metal but changed my mind and went with a scheme I saw in "How to Paint Space Marines".

The method is for painting Black Templar but I thought it would apply to Raven Guard as well.

The book calls for a highlight of Codex Gray and an extreme highlight of Fortress Gray. Instead, I used a lot of Shadow Gray highlights and only used the Codex Gray and Fortress gray very sparingly. The biggest thing I will take away from my first tactical squad, is that highlighting is hard. Straight lines are hard to paint. Still, the practice was good and will hopefully come in handy down the road.

The Black Reach Sgt. was extremely fun to paint. The layers of the pauldron on his extended arm are great. I ended up putting a lot more paint on his face than I wanted as I tried to get the white face mutation correct. I think the washed out faces of the Raven Guard are one of their coolest aspects. Moving forward, I'll have to get this down. Definitely before I paint the scouts.

The biggest inspiration for my Raven Guard came from Aaron Dembski Bowden's "Cadian Blood" novel.

Having completed the Black Reach marines I can't wait to get my hands on tactical squad set so I can mess with the poses a little bit.

Well, there you have it. Next week, it's on to the bike squad.
Victorus aut Mortis!

The beginning...

Well here it is.  The first post of my first ever blog.  The purpose of this blog is to outline the progress of a Warhammer 40k army from the perspective of  a beginner who is new to the hobby elements of 40k.  I have only ever played a few games of 40k in my life and never with my own models, so I am really looking forward to seeing how this all turns out.  I have decided that my first army is going to be a Raven Guard force.  I thought about trying to paint an army of Iron Snakes, as I am a big fan of the book but decided against it because I would rather have a force that follows the codex a little more strictly.  Anyway, to begin with, I will be attempting to paint a bike squad consisting of a bike sergeant with powerfist, two marines armed with melta-guns, and an attack bike armed with a multi-melta.  All together, the full 10 man squad will tally 310 points.  To construct the bike squad, I purchased the Dark Angels Ravenwing Battleforce Box along with a Ravenwing bike squadron box. 

A lot of the Ravenwing and Dark Angel specific bits will be wasted but I'm sure I can use some of those feathery pieces...  In addition, I will be painting the Assault on Black Reach tactical squad in Raven Guard color and heraldry. 

The tactical squad is worth 170 points.  I also purchased the Space Marine Commander set, originally thinking, that I would use his lightning claw to construct a Priad character for my Iron Snakes.  Instead he will be a Raven Guard Shadow Captain equipped with the aforementioned lightning claw and plasma pistol for 130 points.  I will include a scout squad with a sergeant equipped with bolt pistol and chain sword, one scout will trade his bolter for a shotgun and one will replace his bolter with a heavy bolter for a sum of 100 points. 

My ten man tactical squad will select a Rhino equipped with extra armor and a storm bolter as it's dedicated transport for 60 points. 

All together, that gives my fledgling army 770 points.  It's not 1,500 but it should be a good start and enough painting to keep me busy for a while.