Hobby progress part 2/3 - Raven Guard, Salamanders and Dark Angels.

Though Ultramarines have been a key feature of my hobby revamp, they're not the only ones getting some attention of late. Here's a rundown on what's been going on with the other Chapters for now.

Salamanders:

To bring these chaps up to demi-company status they needed one thing: assault marines. Now due to the way the demi-company works, I had the choice of choosing bikes, marines or speeders to fill that role and also wanted to keep melta/flamers as the key elements. I decided against the speeder as the purist in me still remembers when salamanders shunned anti-grav. It was a close contest between the bikes and assault squad but ultimately I went with the assault marines, mainly as it meant not having to buy anything as I had 5 spare. I also magnetised their jump packs to allow them to be transport mounted also. Speaking of the transport, I had a dodgy lime green Rhino I bought second hand that needed a refurb so that also got some attention. This and reinventing the devastator squad to use the new legs and have magnetised options brought them up to speed. Plus a few random models I included pictures of as they had some treatment too. Worth a mention is the fact that I bought some base expander rings recently (they'll get their own post soon) and so I used them on the assault marines as a testbed. WIth some greenstuff it actually worked out pretty well. There are a few things still lacking in this army, most notably air support, which I hope to address sometime in the next 12 months. 

Raven Guard:

These chaps gained a few sniper scouts (RG can never have too many) from Ebay as well as donating a pair of no longer needed Land speeder storms from my Crimson Fists, all of which needed a bit of a trim and a new basecoat. Now, the Raven Guard share some generically painted rapiers with my Luna Wolves, yet they lack anyone to operate them. I therefore raided the bits box and grabbed some spare legs (mostly former members of the Salamander Devastators) in order to make 3 spotters and 3 gunners for them. This places the army only 3 things shy of being complete. The first is some Brass etch to decorate any new additions with. The second, some air support, hopefully in the form of a Storm Eagle, and lastly a 3rd Thunderfire cannon to get benefit from the squadron rule.  
 a

Dark Angels:

With the advent of the new Codex I found myself one Tactical squad short of a demi-company and so committed to building that final squad from a tactical box and upgrade sprue. Simple enough really, but at the same time I tried to  re-base some of the army onto 32mm and swap out weapons on a couple of veterans. Due to a gaming session we planned at Warhammer World I also painted up about 1/3 of the army to at least tabletop standard, which puts it at half done now. Not only that but a few veterans required weapons loadouts seeing to in order to make them even semi-biable on the table. It was a worthwhile deviation from the schedule I set out and the results can be seen below.