Space Marine showcase - Blood Ravens and Black Templars

Time for the final instalment in the Space Marine showcase. Last but not least I’ll be covering the Blood Ravens and Black Templars chapter. Well, I say last, but in truth there’s another little Space Marine project I have in mind which I’m very excited about and will be sharing sometime soon.

Blood Ravens: 

This was a real project army in that it was inspired heavily by dawn of war 2. I therefore decided that I would only use units which are usable in the two games and that most of the characters/ICs would be as close as possible to their game equivalents. Check out the Blood Ravens section for more detail and a few WIP pics (they’re all converted and undercoated now and about half painted)

The scheme took a while to get right. I wanted a darker red than for my Blood Angels and so used scab red / red gore mixed over a mechrite red base. I tried highlighting with a pink mix but it didn’t look right so in the end settled for a more subtle blood red. Shading was with devlan mud. The eyes were painted a much brighter green than with my Blood Angels to contrast against the darker red.  The shoulder pads were based with Rakarth flesh then worked up to bleached bone. All markings were freehand painted.

Black Templars:

The Black Templars, along with the Luna Wolves, are in their infancy amongst my Astartes collections. I have all of the models and about half of them are assembled. The other half are a salvaged Templar army from EBay and such require a bit of TLC to get to the stage of painting. The overall theme will depend on what their new codex has to offer which, to be fair, will probably be when I get the enthusiasm to paint another black marine army now that the Iron hands are fully painted and the raven guard mostly painted. Suffice to say I have about 60 infantry and will be looking to build a marine horde army for variety should the new codex allow when it arrives.

Paint scheme very simply is black with a single dawnstone highlight. Red eyes and boltgun metal soft under-armour (washed with nuln oil) are the only other main colours except for the heraldry. The pads were worked up to white and the chapter symbol freehanded. I tried to make sure all of the power armour models in the army have a tabard or cloth of some sort to make them a bit more interesting. Lastly, the crusade symbol throughout the army is none other than the George cross (I am English after all) on a stylised tapered shield, painted onto the left leg. Note there is no basing theme. Reason for this is that I wanted to experiment with glueing sand onto the base and covering it with a layer of clear resin with a slight blue tint to it. Basically, to have the Templars footslogging it through a shallow stream. Obviously this will require some experimenting and investment and so for now they remain unbased.