33 hours, 36 euros and two cups of cocoa later: A new army!

This is my epic story of how I finally started my Dark Angels army.
So let me start this by saying something: this might have been the most fun army project I've done!
Well, I've only had few but it's still something.

After that information, let's start. Couple of days earlier, on a sunny Thursday afternoon I was on my way home from a friend (yes, I have friends, shut up). On my way I had to switch to another bus in Helsinki, near my local GW. There I had this strange spontaneous feeling that the Ravenwing was an awesome army. I've tought about it earlier but I just never felt like it was worth my money. However, as I waited for my next bus I couldn't resist it and went to visit the Games-Workshop. After being there for something like six minutes, I made up my mind, borrowed some money and bought two things: box of Ravenwing Bikers and a bottle of Caliban Green.

Let's get started!

With those I ran to my bus and travelled home where I still had a few hours of evening left so I naturally opened the box and started the work right away. I assembled only one of the bikers and then took a bit of a brake. Then the rare kind of motivation struck me. I have always liked the bikes in 40k and had nine Blood Angels bikes that hardly saw the tabletop. They deserved better so I took all of them (including my Librarian and Sanguinary Priest) and started working. First I had to hide the red and as I'm lazy my solution was to simply spray over them and since Ravenwing is all about "black is the new black" it actually helped me a lot. The next part was to make them Dark Angelistic-ish(?). Luckily, the Ravenwing Bike Squad box is an awesome purchase. It includes tons of DA/RW bits that gave my bikes a new look. Unfortunately I didn't have enough rear wings for all of them so I'll have to be creative in the following days.

First models painted!

I started painting my first bikes. They were already black, so it was somewhat quick, altough I hate painting bikes if they are already built, it's sometimes difficult to reach some places there. But they needed a bit more than the right color so I did some minor details (well, it is debatable if the bolters, the wings and Ravenwing sigils are "minor details"). However, it was getting pretty late so I settled for a simple solution and after those different metallic/white parts were done I highlited couple of spots with Chainmail and gave the tires some colour as well with Calthan brown on the bottom. I managed to paint six bikes out of ten. After that I left the project, finished my hot chocolate and decided to continue later.


After a long night and day, "later" became. It was about 8pm on Friday evening when I returned to home from my relatives. It didn't take long for me to regain the motivation of yesterday and I was going again.

Re-creating the bikes was a ton of fun but I still had a problem. As I didn't have Sammael or Azrael, they couldn't be my whole army. The 7th edition has an answer for this of course, but I prefer not to use unbound unless I truly have to. Luckily, I still had an extra Tactical Squad from the old Dark Vengeance box. And in what chapter do they belong? You guessed it, Dark Angels. I had nine marines unpainted, but both of my sergeants were already in red. So now it was time for some Caliban green! I started painting them and I was so excited for the cool looks that I actually sought my Dark Vengeance Company Master and painted it quickly. While painting I talked to my friend and we agreed to play today. I started to create my first 1000 point list of Dark Angels because I truly wanted to see them in the field. After pondering a while I realised that the Tacticals needed a ride. So I searched my collection and found an unpainted Rhino I had bought from my friend a while ago. Guess what else I found? Darkshroud, an old gift from a friend! Perfect, it was just the piece I needed for my army.

The Rhino was still in it's black so I just took my bigger brush and started working on it. After couple of hours I managed to finish my whole list and I was happy. Some models lacked details but were good enough for the tabletop. 

So this is a simplified version of my list.

Tactical Squad Raphael and their Rhino will be in charge of my midfield control

Level 2 Librarian on a bike

(3) Ravenwing Command Squad
- Apotechary

(10) Tactical Squad
- Rhino

(5) Tactical Squad
- Aegis Defence Line with Quad-gun

(6) Ravenwing Squad

Darkshroud

It lacks all the uprgades, but the rule of thumb is that every squad is filled with Plasma and Sergeants were uprgaded to Veterans and had Melta bombs (except for the little Tac squad). I also wanted to try an interesting little object. The Perfidious Relic of the Unforgiven, which gives my Librarian both Adamantium Will and Fear. Now my Librarian has a nice +2 to it's deny the witch rolls, +3 against lvl 1 psykers. Sweet! The model actually looks so cool, I believe I will buy it sooner or later.


At the time I'm writing this, it's 2am on Saturday morning. I would love to publish this text this very instant, but I think it needs some photos and I need some sleep before my game. So this is where I finish my writing for now...
...And this is where I continue.This morning I started painting again and continued with finishing my Librarian and painting couple bikes more.

Ravenwing Command Squad

I think that this pretty boy will be my next project. God, I love this model!

Well guys, that's all for today. I will return shortly to give a brief report of my game and the future of this project. There's still a lot to do with this group and numerous chances to expand it! What might be my next purchase or stage of this project? We shall see. Now, farewell!

- Simson