Ravenwing 90% finished! Whoot!

Hey all. Quick one just to show the progress on the Ravenwing Bike force I've been working on.. REally pleased with how they have come out - here is a shot of the first one finished - everyone else is at the same place....EXCEPT for the Scorched Brown rim of the base.. these are the last steps to finish the army off to this standard...      

Pretty happy with how they look have to be honest, they get a Tamiya weathering on the tail pipes and bolt weaponry..I love using this stuff - it's pricey, but creates a cracking effect from just 3 different pigments - a base metal, a highlight and a rust.

They have a single highlight on the gold at the stage, but may get more.          
The airbrushing looks good, but is a very stylised "black", being far more grey... I took inspiration from the cover art of the latest Ravenwing book though on his one, allows more character to be shown..

Last stages are to "rim" the bases (not like that filth bag!) and airbrush the plasma "glow"... Bout a days work left!

Whoot! Now to decide whether or not I want the army lol!                  

Ravenwing Basing update...

Hey folks. Been away from the interwebz for the last four/five days.. Not much been going on huh?

Anyway, I've been back to my hobby projects and my Ravenwing cork basing project has progressed very nicely.
The guy to the left is just the first test model to actually get attached to his base. I think the light colour of the ruins/rubble really helps to contrast the dark colour of the Ravenwing.....
The cork bases were primed with grey.. I just used a cheap primer for this as its not necessary to really go to town on the base primer..

After this, I used a mix of Deneb stone, bleached bone and Vallejo light flesh, about 40:40:20 and just slapped on a watered down mix of this.

I did start using the airbrush, but frankly.. The brush was far better and it was really good to just get a it tactile with the brush again..

I let this dry briefly in the house and then used Europe Dust pigment from MIG pigments to heavily brush the bases.

I really "jab" this stuff on to the bases, grinding the brush in a circular motion as I apply the pigment to make sure it works its way into the crevices of the base and sticks to it.

I think I will use an epoxy resin mix to create a sloppy, wet mud onto the lower portions of the bikers.. After this dries I'll apply a dry dusting of a lighter pigment to weather the bikes..

It is a slower project than just airbrushing the crap out of the army, but it is more rewarding in many ways..it allows me to try out techniques I've not used for a while and to try and blend the use of an airbrush with the traditional brush..

I'm enjoying it and hope this is useful for you guys also... I should point out once again how mind blowingly simple this shit is.. It costs £4 per sheet and the painting and pigmenting took like an hour and a half.. Sweet.

Hobby Guide: Ravenwing Basing - Cork Ruins

Hi guys - Sorry no post all week, I've been very busy with work but you folks don't care about that! Instead,  I have been making some excellent progress with my Ravenwing army.

The army is all airbrushed now with a good fade that I am happy with. It took 30 odd bikes to get there, but we got there! Lol

What I wanted to do with this army was to base it properly. With such a low model count I figured it was well worth putting the effort in, more than just using flock that is..

So I decided to keep it simple but effective and after scouting a few options on the Internet, decided for cork ruins.

I watched an excellent tutorial on YouTube (which I will try to find and edit in here later), and with this done....I ordered my cork.

The cork board I used was bought from Amazon UK (it was literally the first stuff I came across) and only cost about £4. Perfect when I am trying to keep this army cheap - it's mainly based on models I already own.. The only new models are the new Ravenwing bikes that I just had to use to replace my old bikers..

Anyway.
The cork basing.

We take our cork board as can be seen in the image above, and we just draw quickly around the outline of a bike base.

This is only a rough guide and the ruin pieces could either hang off the edge of the base or could be smaller and inside the frame of the plastic base. Your choice.

I decided to keep mine more or less the same size as the GW plastic base.

Once this has been done once, figure out how many bases you need and then rinse and repeat.
Draw as many as you need.

I left some reasonable space inbetween the outlines as I wasn't sure how I wanted to proceed - did I want the ruins to hang over, how irregular did I want the ruins to be.. Etc..

After doing this, I swiftly cut around the outlines of each base, leaving the corners angular so I could neaten them up and "irregularise" them later.

I really wanted each base to be individual and therefore I cut all of them out first, then left them ready to play.



Once I had them all done, I started to cut them up and bevel the edge in a very rough and ready fashion. This was a simple process, each ruin taking maybe a minute maximum.

I cut some pieces "broken" like the piece to the right, whilst others were kept simple with rough edging.

Once I had cut the bases to the size and shape I wanted, I used wood glue to attach the ruin to the bases.

In order to keep them individual, I wanted to insert plastic tubing to create sewerage or random industrial piping in the midst of the ruins.

I just made small cuts using the hobby knife and inserted
lengths of plasticard tubing that I bought from Evergreen Scale Models. Perfect for the job. I bought a pack of random assorted thicknesses to increase the  variety between the models.

The process took maybe a hour, an hour and a half tops.. And it has produced some excellent and individual ruined bases for the Ravenwing to zoom over.

The next stage is to use the airbrush to base coat them black, then grey, then a single fade highlight... Some pigment for a final finish and boom..they will be done!

The 'Wing will then get pinned into them and army done... :)

I encourage you guys to have a go at cork basing. It is far far cheaper than resin bases, takes just a couple of hours for an army and makes you feel like you not just a tournament playing goon! I'm loving a bit of hobby nonsense at the minute. You can also see how much spare material I have from a single sheet costing £4! It's off camera, but there is enough to also make a decent sized 40k ruin terrain piece.. Plus some scatter terrain from what you see spare as off cuts. Bargain.

I'll update the finished pieces later in the week, with an almost finished Ravenwing force.. I am just awaiting a FW Jetbike for my Librarian and some more Death Korps dudes for my Blob IG Allied force.. 

Deathwing Tactics - An Introduction

Dakka Dakka - posted so I don't have to look at Bully's DW again -Ven.

Righto Champs, 

So I've wanted to put pen to paper on this for a little while, especially now I feel reasonably at grips with the army, or certainly the doublewing aspect of it. While my juices are flowing over some various other bits of 40K, the foreseeable future I am putting Deathwing as my best foot forward, purely as I have, certainly in 5th Ed, the best experience with it - couple of tourneys and plenty of practice.

So what am I going to cover? Well I want to look at some general concepts of the army, then some more specific unit tactics, plus an overall view of missions and deployment - a bit of everything really.

So lets start off, the Basic's - what to think about with Deathwing, actually lets call it an Introduction to Deathwing and Doublewing.