97 - Blood Ravens Tactical Squad "Contemptus"

Here we have the ten marines who make up my first tactical squad, "Contemptus." The Sergeant is armed with a Power Fist and the two specialists are equipped with a multi-melter and a flamer. The squad will also be mounted in a Rhino (which I have yet to paint). I have a 2nd tactical squad which I've also painted up (to be named "Fortis"). I'll put up a post with them next.

Squad Contemptus is a mixture of Black Reach and Tactical Squad kits. The Black Reach marines are easily distinguished by the molded Tactical Squad arrow on their shoulder pads. I've yet to apply water-slide transfers on my Blood Ravens, mostly out of sheer laziness. Usually, after I finish off a miniature, I just want to move on to the next one and so I neglect things like transfers, final highlights and even decorative bases at times.

At some point, I'm going to dive into painting a vehicle. I have all of the tools ready and at my disposal. I picked up a cheap airbrush from Michaels which I want to try on one of the vehicles. I'll probably also try using a standard spray can as well as manually brushing on the basecoat just to see which technique suits me best.

96 - Blood Ravens Scout Snipers

I told you I had quite a backlog of painted miniatures. In this post, I give you 2 Scout Snipers. I had originally painted up a single standard Scout about a year ago, but after getting my hands on the Sniper Scout bits, I decided to go with a full 5 man Sniper Team for my Scouts. I debated whether to turn one of them into a Heavy Bolter support guy, but I liked the look of the Sniper Scouts so much I decided to go 100% sniper rifles.

The Scout depicted to the left has some minor conversion. His legs are from one of the Scouts mounted on the Land Speeder Storm kit. I added a bit of cork under his right leg to give the impression he's just emerged from a sniper's nest hidden amongst rocky ground. His cloak is also from another kit - some Warhammer Fantasy Battle kit that I can't quite remember right now. It's hard to see with the angle of the photograph but the fact that it doesn't cover his shoulder pads should tell you it's not from the original Scout Sniper kit.

The Scout to the right is pretty much standard Sniper Scout parts.

Alright, up next should be the remainder of the Blood Ravens miniatures I painted up during my hiatus - mostly Tactical Squad Marines. I managed to complete both of my 10 man Tactical Squads during the hiatus.

95 - Blood Ravens Sternguard

Here are 2 more members of my planned 5 man Sternguard Veterans Squad. The veteran to the left is armed with the special bolter which fires 4 different types of ammunition that the unit gets as their default weapon. He's had some very minor conversions done to him; for instance, his right shoulder pad is from the Command Squad kit and his bolter is from the Black Templars kit with a standard storm bolter box magazine glued to its bottom. Again, paint-wise, he's fairly standard for me. I like how he looks suitably decorated - it definitely gives him a veteran feel without going overboard with the embellishments.

The veteran to the right wields the Heavy Bolter. I actually think he turned out really well. I love his pose (which was achieved by using a pair of legs from the new Blood Angels Death Company kit). He certainly has a sense of purposeful motion about him. His helmet is also from the Death Company kit. While not everything Blood Angels would fit well as Blood Ravens conversions, with some strategic scraping off of mismatched iconograpy and choosing of parts, there are enough in the new Blood Angels plastic kits to really allow a modestly-skilled modeler like me the ability to customize a standard Codex Astartes chapter like the Ravens.

94 - Blood Ravens Company Command Squad

As promised, here are 2 members of my Company Command Squad - the Champion and the Meltagunner. I'm pretty proud with the way they turned out. The whites are much cleaner and opaque than I'd been able to achieve in the past and the overall models are just neater despite all the little embellishments they have. I especially like the Meltagunner. His pose is a bit too static in hindsight, but I'm pleased with how the paintjob turned out. Both miniatures are mounted on torn cork to simulate rocky outcrops. Gameplay-wise, I'm not sure how their elevated stature would impact them (negatively or positively - probably both in equal measure), but I felt for models that were meant to represent my HQ choice, they should stand out from the rank-and-file troops. Not much was added to the miniatures in terms of simple conversions, although I did give the Champion the Power Mace from the Black Templars upgrade kit to replace the Power Sword that came with the Company Command Squad kit.

Oddly enough, I've yet to tackle the Captain for the squad despite the fact that he's probably one of the first miniatures I ever bought (he comes from the Assault on Black Reach starter set). I think I'm still a bit intimidated by the amount of fine detail in his design; couple that with the fact that he's supposed to be the centerpiece to my Blood Ravens army and I suspect it'll probably be a while longer before I build up the courage to actually give him a whirl.

Alright, my next post will highlight 2 Sternguard Veterans that I painted in the past year. Stay tuned and thanks!

P.S. Quick shout-out to Bell of Lost Souls for kindly re-adding me to their blog alliance after my year long hiatus. You guys rock!

93 - Blood Ravens Assault Squad

Next up - 4 members of my planned 10 man Assault Squad. Standard paint scheme for my Blood Ravens. At first, I wanted to pin them to their bases with transparent flight stands, but after assembling about 5 of them, I realized I had completely forgotten to do that. Such is life. Instead, you'll have to imagine that these Assault Marines had just touched down at their destination and are about to wade into close-combat with the enemy.

The Sergeant is armed with a Lightning Claw and Combat Shield primarily because I wanted to paint a Lightning Claw (none of my other Blood Ravens are kitted out with Lightning Claws). A Power Fist might've been a more effective kit, but what the heck.

Up next for tomorrow - the first 2 members of my Company Command Squad!

92 - Don't Call It A Comeback!

Or do, if you'd like. Well, that was quite a long pause in-between posts. Let me re-introduce myself:

At one time, I maintained this blog 0n the hobby of miniature wargaming figures on a fairly consistent basis. That was about a year ago. Then I stopped because I thought applying to PhD programs in English Literature would be a good idea. I was wrong (and not because I didn't get into any - well, at least not entirely). Turns out, when your heart isn't into something which takes as much effort and dedication to get right, you usually end up wasting about a year of your life chasing shadows. So, instead, I've decided to follow where my heart was trying to tell me all these years and commit to becoming a high school English teacher. Teaching, really, is what I want to do. Researching and writing journal articles about obscure poets and poems was really the last thing I wanted to do. Thus, here I am, with my own life back and with the time to enjoy life in all its facets.

So, let's get right to it, shall we? Remember that project I was undertaking before this hiatus? The one about painting 365 miniatures in 365 days? Well, I obviously fell on my face with that one, but I wasn't completely dormant over this last year. I actually did get quite a bit painted up and my postings for the foreseeable future will be an attempt at catching you up on that. First up - two Blood Ravens Assault Terminators armed with Thunder Hammers and Storm Shields. Nothing fancy, but I definitely do think they are a step above what I had previously been doing. The past year has actually seen my abilities refined - not necessarily advanced, but most certainly perfected at my level of competency. There's really not much to say about these two aside from the interesting fact that the ink I used to shade them with was NOT GW's Citadel Washes (although I do love them). Instead, I used Liquitex inks (Carbon Black, Transparent Raw Sienna, and Transparent Burnt Umber) which I diluted with Flow Aid in order to achieve a consistency similar to GW's line of washes. The reason behind this was purely economical - the Liquitex inks come in almost triple the quantity for about a dollar more (if you don't count the judicious use of Michael's coupons) and all that's needed to wash an entire a figure are a drop or two of the inks to five or ten parts Flow Aid.

Oh, and the war-torn wall behind these fellows comes from a set of Heroscape scenery I purchased cheaply from eBay.

Well, hopefully this blog is up and running again. Stay tuned for more of my triumphant return!