Raven Guard Landspeeder

The second unit in my Raven Guard army is complete! Here is my first Raven Guard Landspeeder:

The model is fully magnetized for all weapon loadouts. The gunner is removable at the waist, and the Typhoon launchers and doors are magnetized inside the housing. The nose guns attach with magnets inside the gun mounts.

You will probably notice some very inconsistent black on the model. I had never used Nuln Oil/Badab Black on a large model with flat surfaces before, and I ended up with some splotchy areas that I tried to repair by repainting my primary color and then washing again. I thought it helped, but when I sealed the model with Dullcote, all the repaired areas reappeared. I tried like mad to fix it with another coat, but eventually gave up. It's not blatantly obvious at normal viewing distance, and certainly not on the tabletop, so I'm chalking it up as a learning experience. Better luck next time.

The decals were a bit of a bitch to get on. I'd used Forgeworld transfers on my Scout Squad, and had little major trouble with them. The decals on the Marines' shoulders were an absolute bear to get to lay flat, despite slicing the decals slightly at the fold points and using liberal amounts of Microset and Microsol over a gloss varnish on the decal locations.

I did learn that you have to be very careful with how much gloss varnish you apply over the decal areas. If you just apply a little puddle where the decal will be, you may end up with lines around the decal where the varnish sits above the paint. It's like a little plateau. Dullcote hides it some, but it appears to be smarter to varnish entire panels of the model, despite the decal being only on one piece of the panel. That way you don't get the plateau. And certainly never touch the varnish with a brush because you think it's too thick and you need to spread it out. I did that on the area the Chapter symbol is located on the nose, and I ruined the surface of the varnish and had to reapply more. Now I have a plateau with a crater in the middle.

The big numbers on the wings indicate squadron and vehicle numbers. The large number on the speeder's left wing is squadron, and the small one on the right wing is vehicle. I figured it would be much easier to keep track of which speeders belong to which unit, and therefore which models have which special rules, if I numbered them in a coherent way. My plans include multiple formations that use Landspeeders, so keeping them organized is important for and my opponents. I don't want to accidentally nominate targets for a Suppression Force with a Speeder that's actually part of a Stormbringer Squadron.

I'm pretty happy with the model, despite the mistakes I made and the problems I ran into. They're such great models and units on the table.

I have my Captain mostly built. I just need to put some Greenstuff in the neck joint of the Forgeworld Korvydae model I used as the torso/legs, and then I'll mount him for priming and painting.