The Crows WIP #1

Been meaning to write a few posts about the fluff of my army and how I paint it. This is the first one, starting somewhere in the middle of my fluff making adventures. (Note: fluff is a slang term for backstory, Warhammer cannon etc. Basically all the flavour of the game as opposed to the rules.)

I say starting in the middle because I don't actually like bikes fluff wise, and this post is all about the bikes in my space marine army. Because I don't like bikes, I had practically written them out of the fluff I made for my chapter. So by introducing my bikes before the fluff for the rest of my lads, I'm starting in the middle. I had to do something for bikes because they are the most powerful unit in the new space marines codex, so I had to play them. Now don't go thinking I'm a power gamer, I'm not. Most of the games I play are social and I play something pretty closely resembling a reasonable marines army, with lots of planes, paratrooper sternguard squads and all mechanised infantry. But occasionally (maybe 1 in 5 games) I do play more competitively, and Space Marines aren't (or weren't in 6th edition) competitive without bikes. But I don't like to play without fluff so I went and made some for the bikes.

I had some criteria:
1. The bike colour scheme couldn't be out of place from the rest of my army - the emperor's ghosts.
2. The fluff needed to be somehow in keeping with the theme, which revolves somewhat around death and rebirth iconography, but mostly around renouncing the imperium and fighting instead for the emperor's dream (my guys are technically renegades, or heretics if you prefer), which is atheistic, humanistic and liberal (not so Grimdark huh).
3. I wanted to be able to use the bikes as chaos space marine bikers as well in a pinch. I try to minimise buying models as much as possible, so when I can use marines for my CSM army and vice versa, I always go for that option. For example, I use dark angels veterans with metal armour and black robes as both legion of the damned and chaos space marines (and sternguard sometimes). Works great.

So let's start with number 1. Below is a pick of my devastator dudes:

So metallic armour with the white face paint and brown guns. Not a major constraint, but I didn't want my bikes to be all bright colours. There are also some subtle things:
a. I don't use barefaced models - you ever seen a frontline soldier without a helmet?
b. For the same reason, I avoid robes, loinclothes (I HATE LOINCLOTHES!!!!) and unnecessary bling on my guys. A few purity seals here and there (partly because I can't be bothered scratching them off) but otherwise lean, mean and military.

C. This deserves a whole paragraph: I HATE the standard GW space marine bike. Ugh, what a disgusting model. I know marines have that whole boxy, mass produced look going on, but the bike is just disgusting. I look around for other options, but I was disappointed. I like the forge world outrider bikes but they are brutally expensive. The heavy bikes from pins of war are solid but I didn't want to spend ages converting the riders to look more like marines. Scibor miniatures make kickass bikes but they are expensive and don't have tournament size bases (a bit longer). I really wanted jetbikes (my guys are big into technology and scientific method, and rediscovering jetbike tech would fit them), but alas all jetbikes are brutally expensive. I will probably still grab a Samael model at some point (coolest 40K model IMHO) but other than that I was sticking with ground guys. That basically left me with the Ravenwing bikes, the embellishments of which make them look a bit more streamlined that regular bikes. The other benefit of using Ravenwing bikes is that if I ever want to field a Ravenwing army I can do so easily.

Now we turn to issue 2. Thinking of birds and death I immediately thought of Ravens, but they were already taken. What other birds are associated with death? Vultures and...crows! I like crows, and set about designing some fluff and a colour scheme for them, starting with a slogan:
"Did somebody call for a murder?"
"The Crows, for when nothing short of a murder will do" etc

Fluff wise, I had these guys as just the biker wing of the emperor's ghosts where the chapter dumps all the new recruits who don't fit very well with it's combat doctrines i.e. everyone who prefers to ride a bike and charge into assault rather than transitioning in and out of tanks attacking at range. On the Chaos side I think 'Crows' speaks for itself. That name can be any chaos god, but especially Nurgle. This guys recently turned renegade because they, like the dark eldar, just love flitting about a battlefield killing fools as they try to run. Doneskies.

Now for a paint scheme. Thinking ghosts, death, rebirth and crows and keeping in mind that I would have to design a display board for these guys at some point I decided on the riders looking like crows, with blue rather than grey edging and the bikes looking like...what do crows perch on?....tombstones! (The display board will be a graveyard - future post on that). To keep with the crow theme I decided to order a bunch of the beaky helmets so that all my guys would have them, and to use the Ravenwing models from the Dark Vengeance box as test models.

Now it turns out that painting tombstone like effects on flat panels is damned hard (at least for me). My first attempt I stuck to dark grey tones and was somewhat happy with the result:

Painting statues and the like is easy because there is typically enough texture for you to drybrush your way to success. Start with adeptus battlegrey, wash black, skavenblight dinge, codex grey and fortress grey. Done. But on flat panels you have to do blending, and I suck at that. I found that if I blend up to a codex grey and then edge with fortress grey while also doing a bit of very fine drybrushing around the place to give the model a kind of scratched look, the result is solid. You can see it below.

For the rider I just paint raised bits Kantor blue and edge black wings with it. If I have something that requires more detail I will also get some Mordian blue in there and then black wash it. The eyes I just paint space wolf grey to get the electric look.

On the model above I was experimenting with silver on the raised bits, but I've settled on making them blue, as in the model (at the top and) below:

Oh, I'm really happy with the headlights, and it's not a hard effect to achieve. Get some white, don't thin it down but wipe some of the excess of on a piece of tissue paper. Paint the headlight and the trail that you want. Then some Calgar (pale) blue and blend it towards the edge of the light trail. Blending involves using very (very!) watery paint and painting in a certain direction so that the pigment is thicker towards the end of your stroke. This creates a natural fade to a stronger shade. Once you've done the blue, go back to white and blend it back in the opposite direction towards the light. Come back with a few more (watery) layers close to the light to make sure the colour is rich at the core. That's it! Even easier with an airbrush I imagine.

I'll have another post about bases shortly. They are very helpful for getting across the message that the bikes are meant to be tombstones (or at least fit with a graveyard colour scheme).