40K Project #3 - Sons of Vengeance (Blood Angel Successor)

It just occurred to me that I posted up my WIP images of the other two armies but totally forgot to post pics of my other army that is being slowly worked on.

I started my Blood Angel successor chapter over a year ago and made great headway on it but then Horus heresy: Betrayal came out and I got totally side tracked.  I learned a lot working on this army and it was the first army that I did any airbrush work on.  In the process of painting these models I found out that being color blind makes it really difficult to mix paints and even to thin them correctly so at some point I changed from Reaper Master Series Blood Red to Vallejo Air Italian Red and am really happy with the difference.  I think you will agree that it's a dramatically better color.

Above is a pair of Forge World Dreadnought Drop Pods.  These were fairly simple to build but after that everything went to hell.  No matter how many times I washed the parts and no matter what cleaning solutions I used, the paint kept flaking off.  I found out after a while that the resin apparently hadn't been mixed properly so paint was having a hard time sticking to the surface.  I even roughed it up with sandpaper to give the primer some extra tooth to stick to.  It really didn't help.  What I finally did was prime them, paint the base color, seal them with heavy duty gloss varnish and then paint them some more, seal them with gloss varnish again, paint some more, and seal with a matte varnish.  I hope I never have to strip these things.

Next is a Baal Predator that I was fairly happy with the paint on but hated the pinkishness of it.  I was planning on repainting it when it and the other I had just assembled were stolen out of our game room.  Apparently some Afghan needed them more than me.  It also had a dozer blade that was my first attempt at salt and hairspray weathering.  I was really happy with the way that came out.

 Then there were my pair of Land Raiders.  Both are magnetized a to take any weapon load out I could do.  While I was happy with the finished product, I was much happier when I repainted the Redeemer as you will see later.

Something had to come out of the Dreadnought Drop Pods, right?  Here we have a pair of Death Company Dreadnoughts.  This was one of my first attempts at edge highlighting.  I'm still not totally happy with these and they will probably be on deck for a repaint in the future.

And then we have the Stormraven.  These were built with the Chapter House Studios Tru-Scale kit.  I really like the way they look with the kit on.  It makes them a good deal larger and they just seem more aerodynamic with it.  As you will see later, I did repaint on of them.

So, you need troops, right?  Well, here is the first batch of 10 Assault Marines that I painted.  Of course, this was before the paint change so they will need to get redone in the future.

This was my first attempt at Sanguinary Guard, which got stripped and repainted almost as soon as I finished them.  I absolutely hated the paint job on these.

It takes five Death Company to unlock a Death Company Dreadnought so I have ten.  They all have the Max Mini jump packs.  I'm still pretty happy with these but I think I can do better now.

I absolutely fell in love with this model from Scibor when I saw it so I had to have it as my Sanguinor model. It still gets a lot of "ooohs" and "ahhhhs".

I really didn't like the Astoroth the Grim model so I did a little kit bashing and made my own version of him.

It was about this time that I found the Vallejo Air Italian Red and I've never looked back.  This five man Assault Terminator squad has magnetized arms for lightning claws and thunder hammer/storm shields.  The shoulder pads are from Custom Minis on Shapeways.  I sent him a rough sketch of what I wanted and he built it in cad and had them made.  You can find them here.

My second Assault Squad soon followed along with a Sanguinary Priest.  I made the mistake of magnetizing the back packs on these and the previous assault squad... something I will never do again.

And here are my repainted Sanguinary Guard.  Much happier with these guys.  I do have one model with a magnetized arm to hold the Chapter Banner.

The terminators needed a Sanguinary Priest of their own so I did a little kitbashing and here he is.

As happy as I am with the overall paint job on the Vindicator, I think I'll be repainting the siege shield eventually and doing salt and hairspray weathering instead of painted on weathering.  The effect is just so superior in my opinion.

Now we get to the repaints.  I think the Land Raider Redeemer looks so much better now and will hopefully get to the other Land Raider in the future.

The Stormraven repainted.  I had a few issues with the salt and hairspray technique on this one and think it was mainly because I went crazy on the weathering.  You can't see it but the hurricane bolter on the other side is missing a ton of paint where it flaked off during the process.

So there you have it.  A ton of red Space marines.  I still have about 50 Assault Marines to paint, plus all the models I need to repaint.  I have no fear of not having something to work on for the next decade.  Eventually I'll post pics of the 5000+ points of Orks I need to work on at some point. :)

Comments?  Suggestions?  Questions?  Abuse?  Let me know what you think.