Blood Ravens conversion project - Gabriel Angelos

And so the never-ending projects continue. Have dug out some Eldar and am enjoying the change in the painting scene with some bright orange fire dragons, some swooping hawks and an Avatar (one of my first models from the ol’ days) which are now finally getting some attention. On the assembly front the entire Dark Eldar army is magnetised and assembled, as are the additions to the grey knights. All just require some basing and spraying.

On with the subject at hand, I have started a few smaller scale modelling projects, similar to those I undertook with the legion of the lost and deathwatch projects. Main reason being that they’re not overwhelming projects and so allow me to play around a bit without having to commit to a whole army’s worth of assembling and converting. That and I’ve also been playing a bit of DoW2 lately. So without further ado I present to you Gabriel Angelos:

This conversion was actually quite quick and simple once I got started. I had a spare AoBR commander to use as a base, but quickly decided the figure just didn’t have the look that I wanted for Angelos. (as seen above in the DoW2: retribution pic) The look I was going for was his DoW2 incarnation, with the idea being he’d be somewhere between Chaos Rising and Retribution. The most obvious difference between my model and the image/game version is the weaponry. Reason for this being that if he were to ever see tabletop action I’d run him as a captain with relic blade for practical reasons. (IC striking at initiative 1 never good) Thus Gabe broke out his original weapon from before he got the Thunderhammer from the Inquisitor guy in DoW.

Onto the conversion itself, I took the set of standing legs from the command squad set as it had the stoic pose and slight height advantage over other marines. The torso was a normal tactical squad one, except I took the raised collar off another torso rear and added it to the front in place of the lowered front collar. This would both serve to better represent Angelos’ armour but also to hide any imperfections in the head/neck once I’d finished converting it. The left arm was a normal shoulder pad and the company champion power weapon.

For the cording across the chest, I simply (and carefully) cut the ones from the AoBR captain and attached them in place. I took a large purity seal from the bits box and used it as the cord tether and added a bit of GS to extend it around to the shoulder. The right arm was just a normal bolt pistol arm with the commander eagle shoulder pad. With this pad, I cut the skull head off and attached it to the belt buckle instead. In place of the skull on the shoulder pad, I cut the end from a chainsword and attached it at an angle to make the pad more 3D.

The iron halo from the AoBR commander was actually ideal for trimming down and reversing onto the left shin. The head was from Captain Sicarius – I was going to use the AoBR commander head but as Angelos hadn’t got his bionic eye yet I didn’t think it appropriate. For the cloak I simply flattened some greenstuff mixed with Vaseline on a smooth surface and left it a few hours before trimming and attaching it. I then placed a normal backpack over the top, as well as a backpack skull on the knee and purity seal as finishing touches.

I have some bits put aside to assemble Thaddeus, Avitus and Tarkus and hope to pick up a scout to convert into Cyrus also. The Sevrin Loth model is adequate for Jonah Orion and as for Dreadnought Thule, I have a semi-suitable model but may try to pick up a FW ven dread at some future point to better represent him. Cheers.