17 - Space Marines - Blood Raven

As promised, here's the second member of one of my planned Blood Ravens tactical squads. Paintjob-wise, he doesn't look all that different from the first Blood Ravens Space Marine I did, but this second one was definitely a lot easier to do. Getting red acrylic paint to cover well is still a pain, but I've learned not to thin it down as much as I would with other paint colors. Based purely on my experience, the colors green (of all hues), white, black, and yellow have a strong opacity that allow me to paint them on over a black undercoat and achieve solid coverage with just a couple of coats while red, grey, and brown seem to take many more coats to achieve the same level of coverage. I've read on many miniature painting sites as well as in some miniature painting books that red is a notoriously difficult color to attain coverage with, so it's really just my luck that I chose the Blood Ravens as my Space Marine chapter of choice. Oh, well, hopefully after my 30th or so Blood Raven, I'll have mastered the art of getting coverage with red paint and can then impart my hard-won wisdom to you!

Again, this Blood Raven comes from the Assault on Black Reach set, so no conversions were done on him. The Black Reach marines are 3 piece snap fits - the body (including legs, torso and head in one piece), the boltgun (with both hands attached), and the powerpack - but the lack of convertability is more than offset by the low price you pay for the almost 50 models (marines plus orks) which come in the set. I do have a Space Marine from the Command Squad set (which allows you to mix and match legs, torsos, heads, arms, etc. to a greater degree) primed and assembled and ready to be painted, so I might experiment with some conversions on that figure. I've also got a fully converted Sternguard Veteran (patched together from Tactical Squad, Combat Squad, and Command Squad sprues) in the works. Either way, my next paintjob will probably also be a Blood Raven. Maybe. Hmm, I just might paint up some of the Warhammer Fantasy figures I've got sitting on my shelf...we'll see.

As usual, click here for more pics. Oh, and I know I still need to put chapter markings, squad markings, etc. on these Blood Ravens. I still haven't decided how I want to do it - transfers or free-hand. I had terrible luck with transfers on my Imperial Guard (which is why they also do not have markings on them) and my free-hand skills do not exist. I'm probably going to give transfers another try though, one of these days...