The Ashen Crows | Fall of the 11th legion

[TheAshenCrow]

The Converem
 

 

These guys were easy but fun to paint and I've been able to complete them quite quickly. Really happy with how the battle damage came out. Now all that's left to paint is the 2nd tactical marine squad and phase one of the Ashen Crows army will be finished.

[TheAshenCrow]

Ashen Crows On Parade
 

 

Finally a fully army shot of everything painted. Still not a legal army even after all this time haha. I'm loving this project and it's really encouraging seeing so many people enjoying my work. Now that the Converem have been completed I only have the 2nd tactical marine squad to build and paint (cries) and phase 1 of the Ashen Crows project will have be complete. A good amount of my lore has been written, approved and edited and I have a solid foundation for an army to where I feel confident to take the next step.

Phase 2 will hopefully contain: the final legion unit The Akian Guardians, the final special character The Plague Doctor, the full creation and testing of rules for the legion and its units, Commissioned art and finally general army expansion (I plan to convert up a contemptor and/or Leviathan dreadnought for the army as they are easily my favourite models)

[The Traitor]

Wow, I hadn't realised you had amassed so many models for the legion, can't wait for you to pass to second phase and get some bigger models like the leviathan!

[TheAshenCrow]

So in and effort to delay having to slog through another squad of tactical marines I'm going to be building my D&D character. A Clockwork Jester. Going to be using a mix of mechanicum and harlequin parts. Then he will be equipped with lorgars mace.

 

Should be a nice mini break from 6 months solid of Ashen Crows haha.

[TheAshenCrow]

Galvarian Art

 

 

I've commissioned some art by the talented Drakzilla and I though i'd how you some of the rough concept art. What do you guys think?

[Brother Michaels]

Gotta say again your marines are really impressive! And I love the artwork, interested on having some commissioned for my own legion so curious to see how well it finishes

[TheAshenCrow]

Legion Vexilla

 

 

Really happy with how this guy turned out, what do you guys think?

[Vairocanum]

Fantastic painting as usual, looking forward to the Plague Doctor and Dreadnought!

[TheAshenCrow]

Apothecary Sergeant 

 

 

My apothecary sergeant for my 2nd tactical marine squad. What do you think?

[The_son_of_Dorn]

Very interesting. Very very good paint work too!

[TheAshenCrow]

Coal Pattern Armour

Legion armour of the Ashen Crows

So I had a go at designing some legion specific armour for the Ashen Crows. Used Mk3 as the base (most appropriate as mk3 was most common armour during the early great crusade.) then the changes were inspired by armour from the dark souls games, and armour from the forge world tech-marines models.

I'm no artist but i'm quite happy with how this guys turned out.

[MikhalLeNoir]

Cool design sketch. It even looks like a proto mk4 or mk3.5 armor type.

[TheAshenCrow]

Cool design sketch. It even looks like a proto mk4 or mk3.5 armor type.

Lore wise they were hugely involved in the proto-typing and developing of the mk4 armour. Being the scientific legion after all they were very good at testing proto-types.

[TheAshenCrow]

Ashen Crow Dreadnought Concept Art

So while I was in an arty mood I thought I would also try drawing a contemptor dreadnought for the legion. Going with the same themes and inspiration as the marine armour. I cant for the life of me draw heads/helmets, so left it blank for now.

[The Traitor]

The dread looks very cool, it would be great to see him in flesh (or plastic/resin in this case). The shape of the body makes me remember the FW SoH dreadnought, maybe you should check it out...

[TheAshenCrow]

The dread looks very cool, it would be great to see him in flesh (or plastic/resin in this case). The shape of the body makes me remember the FW SoH dreadnought, maybe you should check it out...

I have been considering getting it, seems relatively simple to take off the legion iconography.

[TheAshenCrow]

Back from a Break

 

So after 7 months of working on my missing legion and a year and a half on space marines in total I decided to take a break and work on a completely different project. I decided to take up an Age of Sigmar project of which I decided to do a Slaanesh Carnival of Chaos. now that I've done a bit with them I plan to work on each project side by side rather than one or the other.

During my break I decided to change up some of the lore for my legion and the Primarch.

Here's what's changing:

Split personality - warp mutation: originally Galvarain developed a split personality due to the physical and mental trauma he suffered while being experimented on. I liked the idea but I started to feel like it didn't quite explain a lot of how he thought and felt. It was to easy of an explanation as to why he just went bad. 

To replace it he has gained a warp mutation when his birth pod was taken from terra by the chaos gods, basically it affected his brain turning him into a genius even by a primarchs standard. Though this mutation also gave him a sort of link with the warp being able to sense the emotions of those around him. This also explains why he starts to go a bit mental over time, he can become flooded and overwhelmed with emotions from others or his own resulting in him suffering murderous fits to him being found cowering away. Over time it becomes more and more of an issue. This is where the primarch decides to create a clone of himself so that he can be put to rest and his new infant replacement can be directly trained under the emperor. 

This mutation combined with the trauma from the experiments really screws him up. In some cases he acts almost like a child, amazed by the unknown but fearful of it to. 

To summaries this mutation provides a better way to explain his deteriorating mind as well as combined the thoughts and personalities of both of his sides into one character.

Appearance - now with a hint of knight. originally the Ashen crows weren't based on any culture since I didn't want that to be there primary focus. but when it came for to me designing armour it quickly became knight like , so I've decided to add that aspect into the legion a bit more. The home world does speak old English so it wouldn't be a stretch to say they have ascetics from that time era.

Who exactly ends the legion - originally it was just the space wolves but I feel that would have been to small of a force to fight a crazed primarch and an army of mutants.

Loyalist side:

Loyal Ashen crows led by the Ablaze.

Space wolves

Ultramarines 

Death guard 

Iron warriors

Traitors 

Galvarain, Crow of humanity 

Small faction of the Ashen crows: turned into elite mutants.

System populus: now mutant weapons

More details on this war later on, there is a lot to cover.

This are the key factors that have changed, though generalised I hope to do full on write ups of key characters and events that take place. But until then fell free to ask me questions.

I'm not working on anything special for the Ashen Crows currently just finishing up my 2nd tactical marine squad finally.
 

 

 

Edited May 23, 2017 by TheAshenCrow

[TheAshenCrow]

Ember Pattern power armour.

The Ember pattern power armour is a creation by Galvarian himself. Based on mk3 power armour this set keeps the same level of protection but is more refined and lighter allowing for jump packs to be equipped.

This improved armour directly led into the creation of mk4 armour of which the Ashen Crows were hugely involved with, taking part in field testing and development.

Hello everyone, here is the line work for my legions specific power armour by the talented Drakzilla. The idea behind it is that this armour is basically mk3.5. Thanks to Galvarians genius he was able to refine the mk3 design though not as easy to make his research did lead to the design and creation of mk4 armour by the mechanicus.

[The Traitor]

It looks good, the modifications might be subtle, but they give him the characteristic leaner and pointy look of your Ashen Crows, though the helmet looks too similar to those of the Iron Warriors in my opinion.

[Vairocanum]

Really cool concept art, the changes to traditional MKIII look fantastic! Will you be making models based on this art?

[MikhalLeNoir]

Really cool concept art, the changes to traditional MKIII look fantastic! Will you be making models based on this art?

I hope he will. Would buy them for conversiond^^

[TheAshenCrow]

Really cool concept art, the changes to traditional MKIII look fantastic! Will you be making models based on this art?

 

Really cool concept art, the changes to traditional MKIII look fantastic! Will you be making models based on this art?

I hope he will. Would buy them for conversiond^^

 

Really cool concept art, the changes to traditional MKIII look fantastic! Will you be making models based on this art?

I hope he will. Would buy them for conversiond^^

Thanks, I'm so plan to it's a matter of trying to find the right parts. Legs and arms are just mk3 with the trim taken off. Shoulder pads will be the mk4 ones with the larger trim. The head I want to use is the one from the red scorpions command squad. As for the chest no idea, possibly sons of Horus or dark angel one.

[TheAshenCrow]

How to Paint Ashen Crows

So I've had a few people ask me through this project how I paint my 11th missing legion: The Ashen Crows. So I thought it was about time I made a tutorial.

How to paint Ashen Crows.

Basic armour and weapons:

1: Spray the model black and then base the model using Skavenblight Dinge.

2: Dab on to the main parts of the armour using Stormvermin Fur.

3: Repeat step 2 but with dawnstone.

4: Paint all the trim using Abaddon black.

5: Shade the recesses of the armour using null oil.

6: Use Leadbelcher for the metal as well as for highlighting the black.

7: Use Hashut Copper for the smaller metal details.

8: highlight both the metal and bronze using Runefang Silver.

9: Wash all the black, silver and bronze using Agrax Earthshade.

Embers:

10: Use Mepheston red to paint markings on the right side of the armour.

11: Go over these line keeping away from the ends with a mix of Fire Dragon Bright and Mepheston red.

12: Sticking towards the parts where lines split of or to just the very middle of the lines paint on using Fire Dragon Bright.

Last details:

13: For the lenses start with Sotek Green and keep going brighter and brighter. Finally use a mix of Sotek Green and Drakenhof Nightshade to shade the lenses.

14: For the legions Symbol it's simply a white line with a black blob around it.

And there's you have it. A fully painted Ashen Crow. You can then do whatever you like with the base, I'm personally doing a snowy Industrial basing theme so I've made heavy use of Valhallan Blizzard with a bit of rusty metal.

[MikhalLeNoir]

Cool. I take the first half as tutorial for painting my pre heresy wolf lord^^.

[TheAshenCrow]

The Rekindled

I thought it was about time the Ashen Crows got a dreadnought!!!