22 - Blood Ravens Scout

This Blood Ravens Space Marine Scout was pieced together from bits I purchased off of eBay. I had originally thought that by buying parts separately, it would be cheaper than buying the full sets (even at discounted prices), so long as I promised myself that I'd only buy the bits if the price was right ($.99 to $1.04). Well, it turns out my theory was right and wrong. It certainly is cheaper (if you have the patience, of course) to scrounge sets together via buying the bits individually. For example, under the most ideal of circumstances (which almost never exists because bits like legs and the heavy bolter usually sell for far more than the $.99 to $1.04 price range I set for myself), I could've pieced together 5 Space Marine Scouts (with accessories and all of the alternate weapons arms) for around $10. The MSRP for a Space Marine Scout kit is $20 while discount on-line stores like Chaos Orc's Superstore sell it at a 25% discount for $15. Not much of a difference, plus a whole lot of headaches to go along with it.

I guess the lesson I learned from this is that bits purchasing should be reserved primarily for conversions. This might seem like an obvious conclusion for the more seasoned hobbyists out there, but for a beginning collector who felt queasy at some of the high prices being charged for these plastic miniatures (coupled with just how addicting collecting these little buggers can be), I was seduced by how cheaply some bits sellers were auctioning their stuff for on-line.

Okay, enough rambling about the high cost of living. Painting-wise, I was fairly pleased with how it turned out on the Scout. My lines are becoming very clean and neat, the surfaces are smooth and the coverage is acceptable, for the most part. Red, as usual, is still difficult to get full coverage with. I tried Delta Ceramcoat's Opaque Red this time, thinking that the "opaque" in its name actually meant something. And it does, to a certain extent. It certainly covers better than the other craft paint reds I've tried, but it still takes many multiple thin layers to achieve proper opacity, especially over a black undercoat. I'm thinking for my future Blood Ravens, I'm going to try the 2 undercoat technique - i.e., prime the parts of the model that won't be painted red in black, and prime the parts that will be painted red in white. It sounds like a mind-numbingly slow process, but I guess I can try it with 1 or 2 of them and see how it goes.

Highlighting-wise, I used Bridge Grey to highlight the wrinkles in the Scout's legs and arms. I was also far more careful with highlighting his face. Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the parts I highlighted, but, of course, large swathes of the model remain un-highlighted. One day, I will try the layering technique that Simon mentioned in his comment to my Veterans Squad post on my Space Marines' armor.

As for the color scheme for this Blood Raven Scout, I couldn't find any visual references anywhere on the net except for this figure on Cool Mini or Not. It's a really awesome paintjob, in my opinion, so clean and smooth, but the color scheme didn't fit my image of what a Scout from the Blood Ravens Chapter would look like. So, instead I merely shifted the Blood Ravens Space Marine colors around for my Scout - the black trim from the Space Marine shoulder pads became the black of the Scout's pants and sleeves; the off-white of the shoulder pads themselves became the off-white of the wristguards; and, obviously, the red.

Okay, well, this is getting a little long-winded, so click here for more pics.