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Oh dear god. Its gorgeous, if a little too clean stop painting these in so damn gorgeous a way!

Great job! Your Tactical Squad has a great feel!

As promised more finished Raven Guard:

Tactical Squad Atanas


Here's the second combat squad:


And some individual shots for some of the better models in the squad:

Fantastic work! I can only echo the sentiments from other posters on this thread! such a nice paint job on these guys, they look spot on as far as muted colours and limited pallettes go, you've done an amazing job, i wish i'd spent more time on the RG in my gallery, but I rushed them to play with then sold them as I wasn't happy with the job...now I regret it :-(

Okay. I have a question: Where did you get that iron halo shoulder pad? I might need a few hundred.

Love the clean and muted colours!

WOW, those make my Raven Guard look fugly :(

Really awesome paintjob!!

Also, did you free hand those tactical markings??

Some very nice, clean, good looking models there.

best looking black I seen

Great work here, OP. I know it's a fine job when it makes me want to start the army.

Awesome paint job. Dont see raven guard models very often but these made it worth the wait.

Holy crap dude thats insane i love the helmets well painted got any more tanks??

That Rocket trooper is awesome, such a great looking model with awesome paintjob.

Ill be keeping an eye on this for the future.

Beautiful stuff!

@Nerdfest, 2PaintPots: Thanks guys, compared to the last army I attempted to paint (Brazen Claws) the muted/limited palette is something of a blessing!

@NumberZero: The Iron Halo insignia pad is from the FW Red Scorpion upgrade set, there's only one in there for the Sergeant so you'll be busy casting if you need more than a handful!

@Grarg: The tac markings, in fact all the decals, are from the FW RG decal set, I've over-painted them white where necessary but other than that, they're straight off the decal sheet. The small tac arrows are actually taken from an assault squad marking made of four of those nice small arrows I've used on knees and a couple of pads. The decal sheet is a blessing for RG players by the way, I can't recommend it enough.

@Maniac_nmt; General Chaos; Manchu; Praxiss; BloodWulf: Thanks guys, I'm pretty happy with the army so far too.

@Jordankeeps: So far just the one RH1NO but the army is heavily mechanised and will have 3 Rhinos, 2 Razorbacks, a Whirlie and a Pred plus a Dreadnought, so there'll be no shortage of armour.

@Knightley: Thanks. The ML is a relatively simple conversion but I'm a better kit-basher than I am converter so it took forever (and a lot of advice from the guys at the B&C) to get it right. Bear in mind though I'm a bit slow so it takes me a while to update this thread with finished squads/vehicles.

SCC wrote:@Grarg: The tac markings, in fact all the decals, are from the FW RG decal set, I've over-painted them white where necessary but other than that, they're straight off the decal sheet. The small tac arrows are actually taken from an assault squad marking made of four of those nice small arrows I've used on knees and a couple of pads. The decal sheet is a blessing for RG players by the way, I can't recommend it enough.

hehe, yah i got that, so much <3 for FW.

Incredibly clean, they look awesome.

Do you have any assault marines with jump packs in the works for your RG?

I must say when their special rules came out back in White Dwarf in 3rd Ed I was sorely tempted to build a RG army as I love their muted scheme and the Assault Marine models.

Great army so far, I've commented on some of the photos in the gallery but was so pleased to find this thread and see the rest of your Raven Guard!

Grarg wrote:

SCC wrote:@Grarg: The tac markings, in fact all the decals, are from the FW RG decal set, I've over-painted them white where necessary but other than that, they're straight off the decal sheet. The small tac arrows are actually taken from an assault squad marking made of four of those nice small arrows I've used on knees and a couple of pads. The decal sheet is a blessing for RG players by the way, I can't recommend it enough.

hehe, yah i got that, so much <3 for FW.

There's no way I'd have attempted this army without the FW Raven Guard love of the last 12 months, that's for sure.

@Maniac_nmt: The planned 1850 list actually has no JP equipped Marines at all. Long story short my army is operating on a ruined refinery world where the atmosphere is so poisonous/acidic/full of particulate matter that JPs and other turbine-like engines (such as Land Speeders) have such poor efficiency they're not worth using. Scouts are a no-no for the army too for the same reason, instead I'll have a full bike squad for recon/assault and will rely on an army heavy in basic Marines and APCs/AFVs.

I do have a couple of test minis with JPs though, I'll see if I can post some pics for you.

@Reaper Man 2020 & sphynx: Thanks guys, working on a Librarian based on Sevrin Loth at the moment and the first bikes, hopefully they'll be joining the army soon to push me to 750pts and some actual table time.

Black is one of the easiest colors to look mediocre, and one of the hardest colors to make really stand out.

You sir, have achieved the latter. Looks great!

I like how subtle and yet forceful the color schemes are on these troops. The bases compliment the figs excellently. Awesome work, very nicely done series of minis.

Wow... fantastic looking raven guard. I've always worried that the plain black and white scheme of the raven guard wouldn't look dynamic enough. But your models look amazing and the positioning really gives them an amazing look.

I LOVE the lenses, most of us go for those suspiciously glowing helmets, but that muted glass-like "realistic" painting of them has almost converted me

@Cottonjaw: Thank you sirrah for those kind words, I've had trouble with black over the years but I'm pretty happy with my RG recipe.

@TRJ: Thank Forgeworld, their RG kit and decals have made the job of creating a good looking RG army much, much simpler!

@Ambull: Thanks, I always worry the bases are too drab...

@Henners91: Thanks mate, though I must confess that the plain lenses is simply 'cos I can't paint fancy ones, my hands shake too much

___________________________________________

OK, now on to my latest finished mini - Codicier Dragomir himself!

The Sevrin Loth mini which forms the basis of this mini is a lovely bit of work and I'm hoping I've done just enough to make Dragomir distinct from Sevrin without ruining the underlying coolness of the model. Obviously he's in black rather than blue and the scheme contains fewer colours over all than most Librarians which should help 'Raven-ise' him . Together with the change of base, thanks to Argos' advice, and a few FW RG bitz I think the result is a decently RG model and one that doesn't look too much like the original Loth model.

The other FW parts are the studded left pad, something I identify strongly with my RG, and the FW RG pad on the left give him a decent Raven Guard identity swap. The RG symbol on the knee, the RG backpack and the use of white rather than yellow as my primary accent colour also help tie Dragomir to the RG and more specifically to Shadow Force Dragomir.

The conversion was very simple, I used the force staff from the =][= Eisenhorn figure with the staff top removed and replaced with a 28mm scale facsimile made from two Iron Halos and a small skull. The base change was a matter of clipping off the stone under the foot on the original model and replacing it with part of the statuary taken from the Imperial Sanctum building. I had hoped to make that statue marble-esque but that proved beyond me in any reasonable sort of time frame.

One of my normal lights died the other day and I need a new bulb for it but here are the best shots I could grab of the completed Dragomir. Note that technically I still have to do the scroll/purity seals but I'm trying to make some decals for those 'cos I suck at free hand but that oughtn't detract too much:



I decided to stop tinkering at just on 11 hours for this mini, I could've kept trying to get the staff skull right, indeed the whole staff is something of a disappointment and may be replaced with the very similar one on the new GK sprues one day in the future when the army is complete. Similarly the bird skull on the right pad is a little flat and could do with some extra work but I have to keep reminding myself that this is a tabletop army.

Tabletop. Tabletop. Tabletop. That's my mantra for this army or it'll never get finished like all my others.

That said I'm extremely happy with the blue touches on Dragomir, I think the highlights are just about spot on and the colour is the one I had in mind for the Librarian elements of the mini all along. You can see the blues nicely in this shot, complemented quite well by the Terminator Honours I think:



Just ignore the staff in that shot. I used the auto-adjust option when I uploaded this pic and the black is closer to real life but it's done horrible things to the metals *shudder*

Tabletop. Tabletop. Tabletop.

All up, Dragomir won't win any Golden Daemon's but he should look good at the front of SFD and should serve nicely as my first army centrepiece

__________________________________________

Next up, 3 bikes, the third and final Tac squad and the Dreadnought. The Tac squad will be done concurrently with the Bikes and Dread, I can complete regular Tac Marines fairly steadily/regularly and that helps give me motivation to keep moving forward. I'm hoping that this will help me keep going now the LPC is done. I also need to start working on the vehicles soon...

Meow... they look good, It can be really hard to paint in black and not make it look like a basecoat, well done to you sir.

Wow. Dragomir FTW. These Ravens are awesome...putting mine to shame!! I love the black that you've achieved and your painting is so neat!!

I also have the FW decal sheet but haven't used it yet. Do you use the decals straight off the sheet or do you use any solution to make them more manageable? also do you use matt varnish after decal-ing your models to take off the shine?? I'd be interested to hear your advice before I start to decal my army!

@Sevenups: Thanks!

@!s.j.mccartney: Again, thanks for the kind words. As to the decals, I prep the model and the decal. I paint the model as normal, when the decal'd area is finished I brush on a gloss varnish over that area. Let it dry thoroughly and it provides plenty of purchase for the decal to be placed there. The decal itself I always trim as close to the markings as possible, the less bare film the better.

I also strategically cut my decals to help them conform to shapes like shoulder pads. For the RG that means using a fresh scalpel blade to slice between the head and wings on each side and also between the two 'outside' feathers of the wings and finally between the claws and tail feathers. That done I soak the decal as normal, plain old tap water, room temperature, for about 20 seconds.

While that's soaking I use plenty of Aero-Set II (virtually the same as Micro-Sol/Set) to wet the area the decal will sit on. Next I transfer the decal to the mini, use a piece of tissue to blot up the worst of the excess Aero-Set and get the decal in the proper place before a final blot to lock it in place. If the decal isn't quite flat I use a scalpel to 'pop' any bubbles or folds and a nice soft brush dampened with Aero-Set to smooth the wrinkles out. Repeat as necessary to obtain a smooth finish.

I then paint over the RG markings themselves with a few coats of really thin VGC Skull White or Reaper Dragon White to keep them really nice and clean and ensure the best contrast with the black (which helps the black look really black as an added bonus). I also make sure to paint over any remaining transparent areas of decal with black, again, it's all to max out the contrast and make black black and white white.

Finally I seal by hand with gloss varnish once more and when that's dry I hit it with the Dull Cote matte spray varnish that gives my RG their 'stealth' coating.

It sounds complex/time consuming but really for each mini I only spend about 5 minutes, maybe 10 if over-painting is particularly tricky (note: I don't paint stuff like the numbers, waaaay too fiddly for these old hands) actually doing the decals. It does take 24 hours to actually take the steps above but that's mostly waiting for varnish or paint from the overpainting to dry before the next step can occur.

Having said all that, get some Micro-Set or a similar product that helps soften decals and mould them to the mini and it's pretty hard to go wrong with decals

Thanks for that SCC, I'll give it a shot!!

Love the idea! Think you should have put more detail on though, not too much so you don't spoil the muteness.