Blood Ravens Expeditionary Force Primaris

[Patrick Boyle]

Knowledge is Power, Guard it Well

So thanks to Dawn of War introducing me to Warhammer 40k however many years ago now, I've spent the last three painting Space Marine minis. I don't have a lot to show for that time, as I paint slowly and mostly only when the mood hits me, but I'm finally to the point where I feel good enough to share my work with the world at large rather than just my friends. So here now I'm unveiling the start of my attempt to complete not just an entire Company of marines, but a force even larger than that. The Blood Ravens, being a fleet based chapter, are constantly sending out forces in search of lost knowledge, particularly of their chapter's founding. My idea here is a post-DoW2:Retribution force, where now Chapter Master Gabriel Angelos is leading one such force consisting of the 4th Company, the marines who featured throughout DoW2, elements of the 1st, and then associated chapter command.

So, lets get started, with the first half of the IVth Company, 2nd Squad.



The Razorback isn't quite finished and will feature more in a later post, when I get all of my current transports completed and up to standard soonish.





I really like that there's a whole Beaky armor set in the new tactical box. I gave him one of the Phobos bolters I have laying around to add to the old-schoolness. Aside from that bolter and some purity seals from the Grey Knights box, the rest of those marines are purely bits from the new kit. I really like the newer marine minis, the new castings are so much cleaner than the old box was. [URL="http://www.flickr.com/photos/84497250@N06/sets/72157639664658456/"]There's a few more here at Flickr[/URL], including a shot of just the Sergeant, and a couple heavy weapon tacticals I also did in this batch.

Next on the block is going to be the other 5 marines to finish 2nd squad, as well as final touch ups(finally) on my 3 Rhino/Razorbacks and 3 Drop pods. After that it's a toss up. My Gabriel Angelos conversion is half assembled but I think I want to do a few things differently with him. I have another drop pod partially assembled(I want a total of 5 eventually). I've got a Mark IV Venerable Dreadnought who will eventually be Davian Thule, and I want to use the Sternguard kit I've got to make a Command Squad to go along with my Tigurius counts-as Librarian. So many choices...

[Patrick Boyle]

And here's a few of the Librarian hiding in the middle of that tactical squad, I decided against going with the creepy cherub, and instead fished out a servo skull from the Devastator kit I've had sitting around primed for ages. Rather conventiently said skull has a IV carved into it already, so it fits in nicely. I tend to use this guy as a Tigurius stand-in, given the Blood Ravens are known for having powerful, prescient Librarians. Works out nicely. Really liked how he turned out, especially the glowing eyes.

[SadisticMagician]

love the Librarian's eyes!

[Pauly Addams]

Wow, absolutely stunning work.

All the attention to detail is great, particularly the colour markings on the armour; e.g. company marking on the knee pad (I'm assuming that's what it's for), which a lot of folks seem to slack off on these days. And the full Mk VI armoured Marine.

Awesome, look forward to seeing more.

~Pauly

[Darren Richardson]

I agree, wonderful work and great personal detailing makes these stand out, and yeah, the beaky looks great

[Wolfshade]

Awewsome

[Patrick Boyle]

Woah pseudo necro bump. I mentioned in the first post I paint slow, no? Work, my girlfriend visiting, then the tournament season for X-wing Miniatures and Android Netrunner, and Titanfall, took away from my painting time through most of February and into early March. I'd started a large new batch of tactical marines but they ended up on hold when GW released a certain model, and I figured hey, the Blood Ravens and Mechanicus are supposed to be good friends and form exploration fleets together, so this will be a perfect fit...



While trying to figure out how to handle the heraldry banner I started thinking to myself how ridiculous it was there was a Forge World Metalica; not necessarily obvious(even if were somehow unintentional but come on...) metal reference, but especially why it was for an American band. That got me thinking down a path of how to incorporate some British metal in there and so even though it's pretty much for myself, that's how Lady Edina(get it, eddy?), the "Iron Maiden" got her name, and a backstory to justify my goofy reference. There's only a couple minor references to the band that made it onto the knight, see if you can spot them.





Once again my crappy lighting washes out a lot of the detail. I'll have to reshoot all these guys once I get around to making a lightbox, something else that's soon on the project list. I should really get some photos with the Thermal Cannon swapped on. More photos of the finished product at full size [URL="https://www.flickr.com/photos/84497250@N06/sets/72157644382308334"]here[/URL].

And for the curious, WIP shots [URL="https://www.flickr.com/photos/84497250@N06/sets/72157642299391413/"]here[/URL].

Next up, a bunch of tactical marines, a new drop pod plus cleanup on some outstanding vehicles, then Gabriel. Hopefully before the year is out at the pace I'm going heh.

[ElTanko]

Excellent. Nice crisp paint job too. The librarian is very good. Want to see more of these, that's for sure!

ElTanko