Ellie's Blood Raven 5th Company - WIP

[EllieBenelli]

Hello all! An introduction is in order. I'm Ellie, a long-term player of GW games, and an appalling hobbyist. I absolutely love building my models, converting my characters, writing plots and then taking it all to the battlefield. What I never managed was to enjoy painting. With lots and lots of grey plastic models, and no will to paint them, I took a three year sabatical from the game, eventually eBaying most of my armies.

Then, last year I decided to make a Tau army. Once again, I bought all the models, gamed with them, and gave up painting them on the 16th Fire Warrior. I thought the models were so dull and I didn't enjoy the hobbying at all. A long-time friend of mine was offered a job at my local GW store, and suddenly his painting game upped. He's now fielding beautiful beautiful models whenever he plays, and I got somewhat jealous. So...I decided to make one more effort at painting. New army, something recognisable that I can still make mine. Something with enough fluff to build a structure upon before adding my own story to it. Thus, I bought my first box of Space Marines, and two pots of Mephiston Red paint.

The Blood Ravens 5th Battle Company seemed perfect. Most GW-goers have played Dawn of War, and thus know who the Blood Ravens are, but apart from the games and a few C.S. Goto novels, they're a blank slate. On top of this, their rampant kleptomania gives them some silly relics (Custodes armour? Forgebreaker?!). I can make some unique models with wargear from lots of other people and it be canon. This makes me happy.

Many, many, many thanks must be given to BKZer0 and his thread here. Beautiful models, and certainly was a big part of my inspiration in this project. My models don't match the quality of his, but having something to aspire to is awesome.

I decided that I wouldn't post any sort of diary online until I got the first squad painted - I wanted to get started before I started clogging up space on forums with empty promises of progress. I honestly enjoyed painting these models - a first for me - and I look forward to painting more!

Brother Jerome, the first Marine painted. My mommy's been helping me name some of my Marines, it's been great having input from her.

The Sergeant of my 1st Tactical Squad. The new sculpts, such as the reloading arm, are so darn cool.

The squad's plasma gunner. My mommy demanded pink somewhere, and I think it works great against the red armour. My plasma coils/power cells on all wargear shall be pink and glossy.

The entire squad. In the future, I will buy the Forge World transfer sheet for the Blood Ravens. With enough transfers to adorn an entire company, I will leave it until I have more models - currently I'd rather more models than the transfers.

Thank you for reading this far, if you have! Currently I have a half-finished Rhino sitting in front of me, with the first of the next 10 Marines painted up, and half of the bits for my first HQ character - a Librarian seemed fitting. Next update should be the Rhino!

[Nomus Sardauk]

Hail and welcome Ellie, welcome to the Bolter and Chainsword Forums, it's always nice to see new faces around here.

 

I can relate to your apathy towards painting models, I've always gotten my enjoyment from fluff-crafting & model converting but thanks to my perfectionist nature and lack of skill I absolutely loathe the painting stage.

 

I've played all the Dawn of War games (and Space Marine, in which the BR had a brief appearance) and read the Blood Ravens novels too, so I have something of a soft spot for THQ's little klepto magpies. I must say your painting is wonderfully neat and you've perfectly matched the colour scheme from the games, the pink plasma coils is a rather unusual choice but in this case I'd say it works very well.

 

I'm very much looking forward to seeing more of your army once they're done, especially the Librarian. :)

[Disruptor_fe404]

That's a really cool plasma glow!

 

Why haven't I thought of just glossing up the coils before?

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

As someone who's about 90% builder and 10% painter, I know your pain, but you appear to be off to a great start on you Blood Ravens.

[Lephisto]

Very nice work, I am looking forward to more of your stuff,

[deathspectersgt7]

Some nice looking Blood Ravens you have there.

[Aqui]

I've never seen a red/pink Plasma coil glow before. I like it a lot!

Welcome to the B+C!

[EllieBenelli]

Thank you very much guys. It certainly makes it easier to find the effort to paint when people say nice things about it, hehe. Critique is also great - I'm not a great painter at all, and feedback and ideas on what else I could do would be tremendously helpful.

So, today's offering - a Rhino, named Lukas by my mommy.

He looks rather plain at the moment - I plan to jazz him up with some transfers eventually, and maybe a name plate. We'll see - again, ideas would be awesome. Painting him was good fun, it's the first time I've ever succeeded at a tank. I'd always try and use the same techniques as painting my troops, and they'd look like crap when I was done. Sat in Games Workshop for a couple of hours with a staff member learning, and the result has been much better than any other tank I've done before.

Next up is my Librarian...got the remaining bits for him today!

Really excited to work on Brother-Librarian Melchior. Wearing the Holy Armour of Purgation [totally not looted from a dead Grey Knight] and wielding the force axe Prized of the Iron Wolf [one Iron Priest did wonder where they got such a relic from], he's gonna be a totally unique model in my army. I'm looking forward to putting him together.

[Leviathus]

Nice Blood Ravens you've got there Ellie! Looking forward to see Melchior :D

[Wraithwing]

I was only reading up on the Blood Ravens the other day. Nice to see another blog start up.

 

Nice minis so far!

[Dizzyeye01]

Nice start mate. I myself am starting up my own Blood Ravens. Out of curiosity you setting your guys before or after the events of dow2? Either way, can't wait to see the Brother-Librarian in his colours and ready to fight for the chapter :)

[Nomus Sardauk]

I love how you're modelling wargear from the games, very thematic. :)

 

P.S. Happy New Year!

[EllieBenelli]

Thank you all again. Just waiting for the spray paint to dry on Melchior now, hehe.

Nice start mate. I myself am starting up my own Blood Ravens. Out of curiosity you setting your guys before or after the events of dow2? Either way, can't wait to see the Brother-Librarian in his colours and ready to fight for the chapter

In my mind, it's well after the events of DoW II, M43 or so. One, it means that most likely all the named characters are dead and I have space to make my own, not rely on the characters from the game, and two because they had to recover from some serious losses. I doubt there would be five companies left immediately after the events of DoW.

[EllieBenelli]

Well, the spray paint dried on Melchior, and now the rest of his paint has too! [though we've still a few hours until the glue is].

This one I named myself. I was trawling through Biblical names, disappointed that Ezekiel was already taken, until I remembered that I'd played Chrono Trigger. While not a Biblical name, one of the three Magi was later assigned the name Melchior - a wise man's name seemed fitting for someone attuned to the secrets of the Warp.

I'm mostly happy with how Melchior turned out. I love that the conversion doesn't suck - this is the first time I've ordered all the bits, rather than just using whatever I have along with haphazard amounts of green stuff. The axe came from a Space Wolf Terminator, but luckily with just a tiny bit of trimming to the power armour's body glove at the wrist, the hand fits just fine. The blue armour was fun to paint, though a lot tricker than the red - I won't mind doing little of it, hehe. Hopefully the red tabard, the regular left pauldron and eventually the Blood Raven transfer tie him together with the army enough. I also really liked how the force axe turned out, the first time I've tried painting weapons with a non-metallic colour. I didn't try to blend anything, maybe I should have...however, here's a photo of my first ever blending attempt.

I've 9 Marines left to paint now - one more lascannon, two more plasma guns, two more Tactical Sergeants, one Devestator Sergeant and three regular dudes. Then I just need a second Rhino and I have my 500 point list, hehe.

[Dizzyeye01]

Nice Librarian. Can't wait to see what else you will add to your forces. Keep up the good work :)

[deathspectersgt7]

Dang that was quick! Nice job on the Libbie.

[Col.hertford]

Nice start of a force there. Will you be getting the transfers?

[EllieBenelli]

Thank you all very much again!

 

Nice start of a force there. Will you be getting the transfers?

 

Probably once I finish my 500pts army. I was gonna get them later, but now I'm thinking that they'll help the Librarian fit in a lot more.

[Kriegsmacht]

Nice stuff in here. One thing that caught my eye on the librarian(which looks nice) are the purity seals. The blue instead of red is a different look but still looks nice.

[ElectricPaladin]

You're off to a great start! I had a Blood Ravens army for a while, until it was stolen out of my car back in 2008. That was a bummer. They're a neat chapter with some… interesting history. Your models look great - very sharp and clean with good contrasts and color choices. I'm looking forward to seeing more of it!