Seems like ages since I've last painted anything Epic so maybe this could be a good opportunity to finish off an old project of mine. Some 3 or 4 years ago I started converting Space Marine infantry for a small Dark Angels army. The basic idea was that every unit, vehicle or infantry stand had to be converted in some way or another. From the simple addition of areials on a tank, to full weapon swaps and reposed infantry. You have probably already seen some test pieces from this army like the Marine Scouts I entered in last year's EpiComp. Still sitting in a box is the rest of the army waiting for me to crack open those pots of green paint and get to work.

The proposed army list isn't meant to be particularly tournament effective, but is simply a way to include a number of different units for a nice and varied looking army. where I can paint up both Deathwing and Ravenwing units for a bit of variation.

The list is as follows:

August: 2x Tactical Marines + Rhinos = 600 points (Plenty of units to get the hang of the color scheme - hopefully my DA green hasn't dried up completely yet)

September: 4x assault – 175 + 4x devastators + razorbacks 250 + 100 = 525 points

October: Land speeders – 200 + Scouts – 150 + Thunderhawk 200 = 550 points

November - Land Raiders – 400 + Bikes – 200 = 600

December - 2 x Warhounds = 500

Then there's a couple of optional units like a commander, librarian etc. Some of these will be infantry and some might be converted onto vehicles but I haven't quite decided on those just yet. I also got a FW reaver titan that I might paint along with the Warhounds to round off my Lucius Pattern Titan collection. ...that is if my timetable doesn't go completely out the window once Uni starts again

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Sofa General

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Great to have you joining us WN.

Good luck.

Thanks.  

Step 1: Digging the army out of storage.

Here's the army lined up on the table. There's a few extra units that I might as well add if time allows.

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Sofa General

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And here's a few closeups of some of the models. Obviously the conversions aren't all that easy to spot on the black undercoat, but hopefully the Terminators and scouts will give some rough idea of how these are going to look once painted.

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Sofa General

Nobody expects the Inquisition!!!
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A design decision needs to be made:

Back when I started these most of the Studio Dark Angels were painted the old "Christmas" pait scheme of green, red and bone. I'm not all that updated on the fluff, but some of the more recent paint schemes I've seen seem to have ditched the red in favor of black. Also the dark angels symbol seems to be painted in white rather than red nowadays. Dunno if this is company specific or something?

Anyway: What scheme do you think will look better: Old green/red/bone or newer green/black/white/bone?

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Sofa General

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Here is something for you

Perfect! Thanks Napalm
I think I'm gonna go for the 3rd company. A few spots of red does help bring out the detail on an otherwise fairly dark model.

Interesting intel regarding the robes. I guess I better sculpt some of those for a couple of command stands as well.

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Sofa General

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Dark Angels have no Veterans in power armour. Insteas they have Company Veterans which are just Tactical marines in robes and Veteran wargear.
And if you want to convert you troops with Dark Angel iconography then look at the Dark Angels upgrade sprue in GWs homepage for inspiration

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And Red weapons are still the best... so says me. Makes them pop out better than the black.

Looks good WN, Do you have any closeups of the dreads? they look like some interesting conversions.

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-Vaaish

In current Codex Dark Angels all Dark Angels still have red weapons. So green light for red  

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Red it is then

Vaaish: Nothing too fancy. I just remember seeing an old Golden Demon entry of a DA dreadnought with a powersword replacing the powerfist. I thought it looked kind of nice (also I had lost the fingers for the original fist ) so I thought I'd try it out. It is just a piece of plasticard with a bit of greenstuff and wire.

...come to think of it: With the FW chapter specific Dreadnoughts available perhaps I should revisit my own models and give them a small facelift.

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Sofa General

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Right... So I was having a look through my paints yesterday to check how many were still usable and how many have dried up. Seems Dark Angels green is one of those that have. I've tried adding some water and see if any of it is salvagable.
In the end I had to throw out 6 old pots of paint and I think I've added water to about 15 other pots which were getting rather jelly-like.
I went to the store today to pick up a new detail brush (seems those were in rather poor shape too - I've been using fairly large brushes when painting the recent EW stuff so I hadn't noticed). Trying out a new and slightly more expensive brand. Should be interesting to see how that behaves. Also picked up some more Graveyard earth, but for some weird reason I forgot the DA green paint... Ah well. Let's see how the old pot looks tonight...

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Sofa General

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Really like the terminators, is the assault cannon from an old style dreadnought or scratch built (and if so, how   )?

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AFK with real life, still checking PMs

Yeah. The terminators were partially an attempt to show that interesting weapon variants were easily achieved using commonly available bits. The assault cannon is from the plastic dreadnought, the flamer is from the squat trike. Cyclone launcher just a piece of plastic spure, powerhammer and storm shield from Chaos beastmen. The trickiest bit is the lightning claws which are made from thin slices of plasticard. Obviously some better parts are available today and also the 40k equivalent models have changed somewhat from the ones that were the inspiration for these conversions more than 4 years ago.
I'd probably scratch build the assault cannons (or at least the barels) and use the flamer from a Land Speeder if I were to redo these models today, so they don't look so much out of scale.

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Sofa General

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http://theepiclounge.wordpress.com/