I now have the contents of the Ravenwing Battleforce assembled, and here they are.

The boxset does not come with any special weapons for your bikers.  I had a couple of meltaguns to hand that I had bitz-ordered a while back, another on a squad of tactical marines I will probably never use and a fourth that comes with the Dark Angels Veterans boxset.  That gives me two squads of three bikes, with a veteran sargeant and two melta guns in each.  One veteran sergeant has a plasma pistol, since I have 15pts spare in my 1750 list.  The other veteran sergeant has a magnetised left arm with a variety of options; chainsword, power sword, crozius (if I want to run him as a bike Chaplain) and a power fist.  I gave him a skull face under the hood and a skull backback (I think it is the Apothecary backpack) so that he looks like a Chaplain if I need him to be one.  Otherwise he looks like a normal veteran sergeant.

None of the bikers are glued to their bikes (except the Attack Bike, where I accidentally glued both guys down).  This should make priming and painting a whole lot easier.

For the magnets I used 2mmx0.5mmmm rare earth magnets.  They are just strong enough to hold the arms in place without moving.  A 2mm drill bit makes a hole in the shoulder and in the arm so that there is no gap on the model.

I also have a couple of multimelta attack bikes and Sammael in his Landspeeder.

Still to do: assemble third multimelta attack bike, and add two meltaguns to another unit of three Ravenwing bikes I bought off Ebay a while back.  That will give me three Ravenwing squads to support my Deathwing with buckets of outflanking/ scouting melta.

Deathwing

I mentioned a while back that I wanted to bling my existing Deathwing army as much as possible.  That meant a large bits order for things like missing Crux Terminatus shoulder pads, shoulder shields and sergeant/ squad banners.  I need to prime all of these tiny little bits before I glue them on the models and start painting.  If I just aim the spray primer at them, these bits will go flying all over the place.  I bought some double-sided sticky tape from the poundshop (for £1!) and you can see the bits all stuck down to it here.

I sprayed them after taking this photo, and none of them moved at all.  Success!

Converted Deathwing Terminator

I put together the first of my new Deathwing Terminators tonight, and here he is.

The main body and right arm are from the Assault Terminator box.  The legs are from the Dark Angels Veteran box.

The left arm is also from the Dark Angels Veteran box – I took the one wielding the power sword and cut the sword and hand away.  I then used a open hand from the Grey Knight Terminators box and rested that on the shield.

The shield and right shoulder pad are from Scibor Miniatures.  They both fit in with the styling on my Belial conversion, although the shield is smaller (the boss should have the biggest of everything!).  A note on the Scibor shoulder pads – they are large.  As you can see.  Way to big for marines, and still on the large side even for Terminators.  However, on the inside they won’t fit Terminator arms, and I had to take my Dremel to them with the sanding wheel to open them up enough to glue them onto the arm properly.  Bear in mind, and wear a dust mask!

The head is from the Assault Terminator box, with a custom greenstuff hood, for that Dark Angels look.  It took a few goes to get right, and to get the greenstuff thin enough.  What I did was to roll out a sausage shape and then sandwich it in the clear plastic wrap the greenstuff comes in (well watered so it won’t stick).  Then I used my craft knife handle as a rolling pin and flattened it out.  Then I cut it to shape and peeled it off, and wrapped it round his noggin.

Lastly, I want to go with a Mjolnir look on all the Thunder Hammers in this squad, so I cut the normal Thunder Hammer down quite a bit.  I will smooth out the join line with some greenstuff.  I love the way it looks; short and brutal, like the Terminator equivalent of a sawn-off shotgun.

Primed and Assembled Forgeworld Venerable Dreadnought

I got this guy assembled and primed.  What a gorgeous model!  Painting this is going to be a lot of fun

His arms are magnetised, his feet are pinned but not glued to the base and the ball-and-socket joint at his waist is not glued either, so he comes apart for painting easily.  Oh, and his head isn’t glued in, either!

Here is a video:

This post is a gallery to hold all the photos of the Chaos Baneblade I am selling on Ebay.

Here is a link to the auction.

It is a Baneblade that fell into use by renegade militia, and then slowly began turning to Khorne. It is now well on the way to becoming a fully possessed Khornate Baneblade.

Here is the Warseer build log (pics missing) and another thread showing finished shots prior to the black primer.  It has a ridiculous number of bitz and rare earth magnets in it.  Parts used:  GW Baneblade kit, Chaos Spawn and Defiler kits, IG and Chaos Tank and Vehicle Accessory sprues, Carnifex parts (GreenStuff’d to look less tyranid and more Chaos), Forgeworld resin and Chaos Renegade brass parts (including the Chaos Rhino Upgrade kit and Chaos Vehicle Crew), Fenryll resin skulls, Skeleton Regiment shield bosses, magnets, WFB Berserker heads, lots of GreenStuff, guitar string, metal chain, Dark Eldar blades, plastruct rods, plasticard, toothpicks and an odd little pewter Chaos symbol I found on Ebay.  It also has over 50 magnets, and the main gun alone has over 30 resin skulls embedded in it.  One of kind

The main cannon is swappable, and both options are magnetised.  The longer-barrelled cannon (the one with the skulls and spikes) also has a long metal pin for stability.  All the resin skulls are set into custom GreenStuff work, and the metal chain is glued in place, so does not swing about.

The side sponsons are magnetised, and I bought extra side armour plates so you can field this with or without the side sponsons.  All side armour plates are magnetised.  The side sponson guns can be put on in any one of three positions (forward, middle or rear) since all the magnets have the same polarity.

The Chaos symbol/ ram at the front is held on with no less than four magnets, so can be removed at will, or for transport.  It features a lot of GreenStuff work to integrate the Forgeworld resin symbol and the IG ram.

The Demolisher cannon on the front is fully mobile, and the mounting plate is magnetised so you can remove it fully and replace it with an alternate piece (see the photos for details).

On the turret there are multiple, fully magnetised options,  as you can see from the photos below.  This includes some of the former crew’s heads on tentacles, as well as a two resin Chaos Space Marines from the Forgeworld Chaos Vehicle Crew kit. The aerials are not only magnetised, but I replaced the plastic rod in the aerials with guitar wire – looks better, and no snapping off!

On the front of the tank, a GW skeleton model has been partially inset into the hull, just because.  More GreenStuff work blends it into the metal plating.

The model has been primed carefully and thoroughly in GW Chaos Black spray primer, but here are some pre-primer pics so you see ‘under the hood’:

The main body is in three parts because this will make it easier to paint. Muuuuuuuch easier (trust me!))

I stuck up a quick video on how the magnets help to keep the very lightweight foamcore terrain pieces from drifting all over the table.

Basically, each piece has two magnets embedded in the foamcore near the bottom of each 6″ section, so any piece can attach to any other piece in any location.

Take a look at the vid, and you’ll see what I mean:-

I love my drones, I do , so here are some pics, including four Forgeworld Drone Sentry Turrets I completed recently. Click for extreme closeups:-

Skyrays are cool. Let’s just get that out the way, put it over there and let it stew for a bit. They just are. Moving on.

Magnets are also cool, and if you put two cool things together – I dunno. You get two cool things in a bag, I guess.

Being able to remove the seeker missiles ingame is handy, since it looks better than a dice telling you how many you have fired. Or is it how many you have left? Bleh. But magnetising the seeker missiles (which look meatier and sleeker than regular seeker missiles or even the FW ones) is tricky, because the missiles have a fin and the Skyray wing has a series of narrow slots 2mm deep by about 1mm wide. Fin fits in slot, but adding magnets into the mix is not straightforward. Here is my solution.

I used my regular 3mm x 2mm neodymium magnets. A 3mm drillbit opens up the narrow slots. The drillbit just pushes the walls of the slot outwards, and does not really remove any material. The magnet glues flush, as the slot is 2mm deep. Then on to the seeker missiles.

I clipped the first 3mm of the fin off with flush cutters, leaving a flat surface. I then made pilot holes and used the same 3mm drillbit to make a space for the second magnet. Check polarity and glue the magnet in place.

All the magnets are polarised the same way, so the missiles are interchangeable.

Here is a pic of the turret with all the missiles attached. The remainder of the fin on each missile fits into the slot on the wing, so ensures each missile is lined up perfectly straight.

As per my previous post, I want to make this chassis swappable between all the options, including the Ionhead. Using the greenstuff method I mentioned in that post didn’t appeal, so I tried out various pieces of square plastic rod I had.

Digression – it is very handy how many times GW sprues feature parts with integer dimensions. Gaps that are exactly 4mm wide. Holes or pins that are exactly 3mm in diameter. Rods that are exactly 6mm long. I am sure there are good reasons for this, but it does mean that if you stock up on plastic rods (like Plastruct) of these dimensions you will find making modifications very simple.

Anyway, this is what I did. Two pieces of square plastic rod. One fits into the gap on the Ion Cannon and the other fits snugly into the mounting receptacle on the turret base.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Tau player with a Skyray kit will be in want of rare earth magnets.

It still amazes me that GW sell a Skyray kit that includes all the parts for a Hammerhead, for the same price as a Hammerhead kit itself, but I am not about to let the boggling of my personal mind get in the way of making a chassis that can be Devilfish, Hammerhead, Ionhead and Skyray. Not all at the same time, sadly.

There is an excellent guide over at Tau Online, but I prefer to work things out for myself, using whatever I have at hand.

The turret doesn’t concern me. All the turret options simply fit into the hole on top of the chassis snugly, without glue or magnets needed. The railgun and ion cannon options also fit snugly into the mounting receptacle on top of that, so no magnets needed there, although you only get one mounting piece. Easy to make another by (1) oiling the recess on the turret the receptable slots into (2) pressing greenstuff in to shape it and carefully removing it – hence the oil, and (3) glueing that to the ion cannon once it has set up.

The only place magnets are needed is at the nose. The Devilfish has a burst cannon and the others have a targeting array. I decided to magnetise these.

Note that the only thing the Skyray kit does not include is three burst cannons. It only has two. So if you take one of those for the Devilfish nose, you don’t have enough to give your Hammerhead/ Skyray the dual burst cannon option. Fortunately I have a spare vehicle burst cannon in my bitz box. If you don’t, following the Tau Online guide is your best bet.



Any questions let me know, and thanks for taking a look