40k Raven Guard Successor Army WIP Part 2: Paint it black....and purple!

Almost finished the Raven Guard successor recon force I have been working on, the purple iridescence armor has come out alright I think. I was suss on the bases but whatever they seem to work. The stormravens are spooking me with having to wash them due to the large flat surfaces haha, anyway here are the pics so far. Painting with washes and metals is fun but defiantly a new challenge for me and took me out of my comfort zone, would love to try some emperors children or alpha legion with the same technique just for a laugh.

 

Oh and seems this first pic of the Rievers got picked up by GW on Instagram and are now part of the product page previews!

40k Raven Guard Successor Army WIP Part 1: Shiney birds are best birds!

I am addicted to the new Reivers... sneaky skull helmeted crazies chopping and shooting up your backline? yes please! also they look sick, so of course I had to start a new marine army just for them. I experimented a while ago with a 30k Raven guard color scheme based on the purple iridescence of  actual ravens wing coloring. I was please with the outcome but with the failure of 30k heresy to transition into 8th edition anytime before the next ice age I have pulled out of all my 30k projects and will be selling them on as I have no love at all for the 7th ed ruleset and was only playing it for the sweet sweet 30k lore and fluff in light of 7th ed 40k being so unbalanced. So now I wanted a dark purple and black shiney Raven guard army and 40k was the format to do it in.

I really wanted a more purple look on this army instead of sheer black so held back on the 3rd black wash and this allowed me too retain a strong base color coming through. As with most metallic paint schemes you first chuck down a primed layer in this case silver then build up the color tone you want with successive washes. I was able to get it down too 2x purple wash and 2x black wash and then just batch painted the infantry. The two Stormravens with have to be done via airbrush due to their large surface areas so I will attempt that once all the infantry are completed.

 

  

  

Snuck in a cheeky primaris/cypher conversion for a captain model to suit the sneaky theme as well as a basic headswap on the primaris librarian. I am torn on bases for these guys so if you have any ideas please let me know

Horus Heresy 30k Projects, Mechanicum and Raven Guard: Dark Mechanicum Legio Cybernetica Painting Part 3 and Part 1 Raven Guard

My love for killer robots is unending and as such I have got my hands on some new addition to my Dark Mechanicum 30k army.

I couldn't help myself and with a cheeky Myrmidon Destroyer unit for a solid addition to my Zone Mortalis lists, also a Macrotek with some servitors for cheap flamers and a Grav imploder.

The Knight Atrapos is a monster and will fit in very well as the lord of war choice for larger games and the new Vultarax Stratos-Automata is a vehicle hunting, haywire spitting drone of violence.

On the burner as well is an idea for a small 1250point 30k Raven Guard list. One of the biggest things I have learned about ZM games is mobility is king. The ability to forward deploy via infiltrate, scout or outflank is a massive game changer in ZM. Lots of first time players of ZM will bring very heavy slow units that only have a few counter but then due to the objective based nature of the majority of missions find themselves left out in no mans land or out of the action due to slow movement and the inability to quickly redeploy.

  

My idea for a Raven Guard paint scheme comes from the actual bird itself, the plumage of Ravens looks pure black from a distance but up close you will see they have a purple iridescent sheen to them. I wanted to try and replicate this somewhat on the actual marine models to try and move away from a pure black scheme. I achieved this by basing the model silver, then 2 coats of purple wash and then 2 coats of black wash. This was a quick and dirty test model but the effect did come through! with the static photos its hard to tell, but in reality on the table it looks black until a light source hits it and then the iridescent purple sheen shows through! Pretty happy and will now look at refining the process and mass producing a squad or two.

 

With Raven Guard you get all your infantry infiltrating and units such a vets or Mor Deythan squads coming with scout on top of that. In light I want to run a force with the theme of ship to ship infiltration or vacuum combat, think of this army as Raven Guard who conduct sabotage and infiltration of space stations, ships and the like in the cold vacuum of space but in a sneaky fashion. So lots of more heavy armour marks as opposed to the Mk4 to Mk6 you see most Raven Guard forces in and a heavy core of void hardened Mk3 for durability and space combat.