Painted Raven Guard Legion Squad: 5/10

Number 5 in the Shattered Legions squad features a shin plate salvaged from some traitorous Night Lords erst-while brother. The build for this one can be found here and is fairly standard featuring a few extra pouches, but otherwise is non-special. The base has been decked out with cork and fine sand.

Painting follows the standard approach, with the exception of the Night Lords shin plate which was based in a dark blue and highlighted progressively lighter on the welded studs. Plenty of Nuln Oil later, and this is another complete marine ready to join his brothers in the tactical squad.

Painted Raven Guard Legion Squad: 4/10

Continuing the painting of the Raven Guard Shattered Legions squad, this brother features the Corvus armour with a (dirtied) white helm and knee pads stood atop of a piece of imperial iron beneath his feet. The narrative here is similar to the previous marines in that this is a brother who has survived the betrayal at Isstvan 5 and is now part of a mis-matched group of survivors aiming to flee the planet's surface and make good their revenge on the traitors. It was also one of the first Raven Guard miniatures that I assembled to get a better feel for how this force might look. 

The marine features a standard Corvus armour build with no real variation from the plastic boxed set. The painting has been done to render points of differentiation from the rest of the squad that can be seen in the previous posts within this series, and to tie in directly with some of the depictions in the Horus Hersey black books. The mud and dirt follows the same recipes as previous with two tones of brown to create the look on the lower parts of the marine and the base. On the shoulder pad, an icon for an assault squad member can be seen as well. This is a survivor who has ditched his jump pack and swapped to something new in the quest for escape from the planet, and further accentuates the mixed composition of the squad. 

Painted Raven Guard Legion Squad: 3/10

This brother sports a red highlight around his left shoulder pad, marking him out as a little unusual from his fellows. The narrative here is similar for the other pieces in the Shattered Legions force that I'm building in the sense that this was a member of a different unit once upon a time, and has been re-forged in to a new unit by necessity. The red markings are therefore representative of the old unit he belonged to -- possibly a nod to some of the markings depicted in the black books for Horus Heresy, and possibly from other traitor units even, as a make-shift field repair.

I think the photo shows better than others the slightly off-black nature of the paint that I am using. It is slightly blue toned with almost a matt finish. Battle damage has been picked out in a bright silver colour, but I might go back over it (particular the thigh) with some more black to make it feel a bit more realistic than it currently is. The mud and grime remains the same as for the other marines in this squad and accents against the black of the Raven Guard colours very nicely indeed. For reference, the build can be found here.

Painted Raven Guard Legion Squad: 2/10

The second marine from the Raven Guard for the Shattered Legions features a very muddied appearance, which is in stark contrast to the very new Corvus mark armour. The narrative here is that a large explosion went off to his side, and he got splattered with the mud, and arguably blood.

The paint scheme is slightly atypical for Raven Guard -- featuring both white shoulder pads and arms (plus hands) which the rest of the marine being a muted black colour. The inspiration for this painting scheme comes directly from the images contained in the Horus Heresy black books which feature this variant a few times, sometimes with white helmets. Here, I've adopted it fully and used an off-white colour as the base coat and applied a layer of Nuln oil over the top. Highlights are then picked out in a more pure white colour, as can be seen on the marine's shoulder pads where I've picked out the edges. Battle damage on the top of the knees suggest a lot of crawling around the dirt for this marine, which is a theme that I wanted to carry over to the rest of this re-forged squad. The splatter was achieved through an airbrush using two tones of brown to create the splat along his flank, plus boots area. I like the way the browns offset the otherwise very black colour of the legion myself.

For reference, the build for this marine can be found here.

Painted Raven Guard Legion Squad: 1/10

Painting the colour black is not an easy task. There are a variety of approaches that one can take ranging from a matte effect, through to using greys to build up the colour to pure black, and then there's the shiny black effects. 

For my Raven Guard squad for my Shattered Legions forces, I wanted to do something a bit different. I started with a matt approach and used a very dark blue for azimuthal spray painting from above - in fact it is very almost black in most regards, but just enough blue to take away the absolute nature of the black paint. There's also hints of silvers contained in it too. This approach gives a strong black colour synonymous with the Raven Guard, without it looking too much like that I've just slapped on pure black and not attended to any highlights.

Lowlights were handled with plentiful Nuln oil across all of the miniature. This gives the recesses a reflective look, which I find pleasing. 

The real offset colour here though has to be the dirt. Using two tones of brown, I sprayed the base and legs to give a very dirty feeling to the miniature. This is to accentuate background of the marine having seen plentiful action on the plains of Isstvan 5. Final highlighting was done using silver to pick out some battle damage - e.g., on the top of the knee pads due to crawling through the dirt too much whilst taking cover. Decals on the shoulder pad and white highlights, coupled with red to orange eye lenses finish off the piece. Overall, the miniature avoids the pure black look associated with under painted Raven Guard, whilst creating a work that reflects the survival of the few legionaries on the surface of the planet, and complements that of their cousins in the Salamanders legion. 

The link back to the assembled miniature is here, for reference. 

Thermic Plasma Conduits

Something a little different today: new terrain. It has been a long while since I turned my attention to one of my major loves of the hobby. I picked up the thermic plasma conduits as an accessory to my under hive / manufacturing forge world planet before the pandemic lock down kicked in. And I finally opened it some 12 weeks or so later. Not quite sure how I resisted, but it was one of those items that I thought to myself I would do once summer had arrived in the Northern Hemisphere. Hence the unboxing began!

What I like about this set is the same as what my indecision is about: the modularity!

I really want to generate two to three pieces out of this set and glue them together, rather than leaving it completely modular -- in other words: reduce the number of configurations that I want to worry about. But this is where I'm getting a bit stuck. I think I might assemble a few of these bits as a two-layer horizontal pipework, as per the picture on the boxed set. Then with the remaining pieces, I'm tempted to make a snake at ground level, plus maybe an upright for a bit of variation. I'm not quite sold on that yet, so drop me a line if you have the same set and let me know what you did with yours? I'm basically looking for cover terrain and large areas being covered more than these pipes laying flat on top of walkways. Choices, choices...