Ravenwing First Days

The last few months of my miniature painting has been devoted to Space Wolves and it's time for me to go back to my first love in miniatures, the Dark Angels. I have never been very consistent in my painting, usually a few miniatures here and there for use in Dungeons and Dragons, or the occassional miniature just to waste some time. When I first got into painting was around 1996, I bought a selection of miniatures at a con, Deathwing terminators. I painted them to what at the time was a decent standard, and have over the years amassed a fair number of Dark Angel and Imperium miniatures. My terminator collection is farily large, tons of basic space marines, devastators, and loads of scouts. I've never really been into the vehicles, but now I am looking towards an actual fieldable army.

For Christmas I got the Ravenwing battleforce, and I am finally done assembling the bikers. The Attack Bike is mostly complete, but I have set him aside to allow the glue to set. The bikers have just been primed, and I should be able to start painting on them tomorrow.

The land speeder is still up in the air, I haven't decided what to do with it just yet. I have two other landspeeders, both of which are damaged. I think I shall make one of each primary weapon arrangement, and the newest one will be a Typhoon class. I am holding off making a Master of the Ravenwing model just yet, mostly because I think I would like to buy the Sammael on this Jetbike model once I am comfortable with my Ravenwing method, and also because if I am going to do a Master of the Ravenwing land speeder I would like it to be on one of the old school models, that basically looks like a sled with an engine stuck to the back.

I spent more time than I probably should have with the assembly of these bikes. I took the option of equipping the bikers with flamers and melta guns, so I had to do some minor conversions. I found that my usual method of pinning with paperclip works especially well with plastic arms, I heated the tip with my lighter and shoved it into the pin hole, worked perfectly. I tend to like to paint the body of the rider seperately from the vehicle so my space marines are only sitting on the bikes, not currently glued down. In the case of the seargents I have left the torso unglued for the moment.

I am not going to do anything ground breaking with the paint jobs, they will be traditional Ravenwing troops, all black with highlights, red and white iconography and festooned with decals. I dont expect to do any free hand on these troops, but I will probably paint over the decals to give a smoother look.

One thing - I love these new battleforce boxes. They are filled with tons of additional bits and components for use with all kinds of Dark Angel vehicles and troops, not just Ravenwing. Of particular interest to me are the dreadnought leg armor sections, which I am going to retask into a Heresy Era terminator armor for Belial, Master of the Third Company.