# Dark Angels Apocalypse Army



## RedInventor (Oct 30, 2012)

It's been a while since I've posted and I've changed up my army a little. Instead of just of just playing out of the Dark Angels Codex, I've decided to play Dark Angels especially considering all the new cool stuff they have now. So I went a little spend crazy, with plans to spend a chunk of change on a Thunderhawk soon as well. This is what I have so far:








And a test model, to see how I wanted to paint the green:








Now part of the challenge of this army has been the timeline that I want it done by. My group of friends want to play a game with 5,000 pts per person in mid-April and I'm definitely not going to miss it. So I've started a new painting method, typically I'm the slowest painter ever and I'd never have my army ready. I read iamfanboy's article Quantity has a Quality all it's own and I've tried it out. Thus far it has definitely helped me accomplish a lot of work in significantly less time. 
Here is where I'm at so far:








Belial and My Deathwing Command Squad








My Deathwing Knights and 2 Dark Vengeance Squads

As far as Deathwing goes, I have another squad of 5 Knights to make and 5 Standard DW Terminators, plus a Chaplain Dreadnought that I'll be using as a Venerable Dreadnought and a Land Raider. Then it'll be on to the Ravenwing and Greenwing. Thanks for looking and I'd love to know what you think so feel free to comment.


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## Dakingofchaos (Sep 29, 2009)

That is a lot of expensive plastic - I'll be impressed when all thats painted! the Highlights on your tester look a wee bit thick, I'd suggest going back over the edge of them with your basecoat or even just wash them down a bit. I like the look of the bases on the termies.


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## Warpath (Nov 27, 2007)

I'm a little green with envy looking at this, Dark Angels was my first 40k army an i keep saying i will one day return to them. But with 5k Eldar to do myself that day is along way away. 

Quanitity has a quality - Yes it does and as a commission painter i understand this alot. But i still think a high standard can be reached in a short amount of time. Firstly a test model which you have done is great way to start, but if that test model takes you 3-4 hours then multiply this by the squad size and thats a lot of time. The key to it is of course batch painting and having a system. 

By system i mean painting the models the same way - example: highlighting a marine i would start on the right leg and work up to the waist then the left leg followed by body, arms and finaly head. I would repeat this through all stages on all marines until it becomes like second nature. As for how much i'd do, i would have my base colour and do 1 shade and 1 highlight for a table top standard. The key to it looking great is be neat, neatness can compensate for not having the time to do blends and other such things. 


Two things i would do for your test piece is tidy up the highlights by using your base colour (i do the same as sometimes it happens) and i would look to using a base coat of black spray for the green models. It will stop the paint rubbing off and give you shades in alot of areas saving more time. I hope this helps you with your project and i shall look on with envy at your growing army. Good luck and i look forward to seeing more since i have subscribed to your thread :grin:


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## RedInventor (Oct 30, 2012)

Thank you all for the helpful comments. I'm mostly shooting to have the army painted to a level I feel is good enought to play with and then moving on to the next group, rinse and repeat until the army is finished then I'm going to go back and bring all the models to the standard I want them at. Definitely going to be a lot to fix though when the time comes. Its just a lot of models to get done before my friends want to have our apocalypse game, which is looking to become the beginning of many to come. So with the hectic work schedule, I didn't manage to get much done this week until today. It was yet another 40k painting day at the house with a few of my buddies and I'm pretty content with where I ended up. So here's the only thing I managed to paint, a Ravenwing Dark Talon:
































Not my best work, but overall its turning out pretty good. Definitely still more work to be done, especially the base. The base is going to continue my lava theme, this time I sculpted in some rocks and bubbles in the flowing lava. First time using Apoxiesculpt and I'll have to see the results before I can really say how I feel about it. 
I also managed to prime Sammael, Asmodai, the Dark Vengeance Bike Squad, the interior of my Land Raider Crusader/Redeemer and my Ravenwing Command Squad. Overall a pretty productive day, I just wish I had more time throughout the week. Looking forward for this next week my plan is to paint everything I've primed the build the remainder of the Ravenwing (2 Darkshrouds, 1 Nephilim Jetfighter, 1 Black Knight Squad, and the Ravenwing Battleforce).


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

Nice work , looks great mate


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## RedInventor (Oct 30, 2012)

Thanks Magpie!
I finished the base up so far today, probably going to save the rest of the finishing details for another day.


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## RedInventor (Oct 30, 2012)

So with all my friends having super heavy apocalypse pieces, I decided to begin a somewhat ambitious project...









Those would be the legs to a scratchbuilt warhound titan, the forgeworld ones are a little over budget at the moment and I like crafting anyways. The end goal is to scratchbuild a warlord titan, but I've never scratch built anything so this guy is a practice piece. Since he's just practice, he's being made from cardboard and pvc. So far it has been a pretty steep learning curve, with lessons being learned after its too late to go back and fix things. For example, the pvc joint sizes listed in the template are a little bit too small in my opinion and trying to join cardboard to them is a terribly hard process. 
Here's a sideview that kind of shows what I mean-








Overall its been a pretty time intensive process, with lots of points where it seems like things aren't going to work. Once the main structure is complete, I'm going to be spending a lot of time detailing since the template is pretty bare. I'm definitely glad my friend who plays vanilla marines was here working on his own. His army will be fighting alongside mine in our apocalypse battle and it looks like we will both be fielding our warhounds. 
Here's our chicken legs next to each other (his are on the left), it looks like mine will be the shorter one.








I will also be trying to install LED's in the titan, which will be another first for me. I bought green and red LED's with the plan of making the "eyes" green and the weapons red, all powered by 4 AA batteries hidden in the main hull somewhere.
I'm going to try and take more pictures as I go in hopes that it will help anyone else that wants to build one of these guys.


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## Dakingofchaos (Sep 29, 2009)

Titan - Very cool. have you had a look at Blackadders thread? It could definatly help you along the way.

The flyer looks awesome, the lightning looks particularly effective. Food for thought the 'ripples' in the lava look to much like lines drawn with a knife and not enough like ripples; instead of lines to show the 'flow' I would just do more bubbles in future.

If this Warhound is a practice what do you intend to make the real thing out of? Have some rep for your efforts.


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## RedInventor (Oct 30, 2012)

Thanks for the advice on the lava, I wasn't too sure how to accomplish the flowing look. 
I've been reading through Blackadder's post to get a good idea of how to make a titan look awesome, his skill level far surpasses mine at the moment though. When it comes time to build the warlord I'm hoping I'm a bit closer to that level, at least enough so where I can take more time than he probably does to achieve a similar effect. To answer your question though, the next warhound will be my first dive into using styrene. The hope is I'll have a better understanding of making the template work for me from this guy, so I won't run into as many problems with styrene which is more expensive than cereal box cardboard. Hopefully on the next one I can refine my use of LED's as well so that on the second one it's a lot easier to put lights in. Once the the second warhound is finished then it will be warlord time, which will hopefully be my centerpiece model of my scratchbuilding adventure.


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## RedInventor (Oct 30, 2012)

So I managed to get the hips built and some of the main hull. I also found a place to hide the power source for the LED's that I'm going to be adding, the back of the main hull had the perfect spot. Here's how it looks so far, the main hull isn't attached to the body yet since I'm trying to decide whether I want it to rotate or not.


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## Dakingofchaos (Sep 29, 2009)

Looking good


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## RedInventor (Oct 30, 2012)

Thanks daking, its been a pretty fun project thus far.
I've managed to get some work done on the titan, built some more of the main hull and got some lights in to see how they'll look...

























Pretty rough but everything will start to come together during detailing.


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## RedInventor (Oct 30, 2012)

Managed to get quite a bit of work done over the past two nights and here is the end result.








Just the the base at the moment, from this point forward it should be detailing to bring it to life. I'm going to start by using poster board to add some texture to the armor plates so they aren't just flat and boring. Then I think I'll work on the pistons and hoses. 

















I also managed to buy a fw world one from another hobbyist and I should be seeing it in the next 3-4 days hopefully. All in all, I'm pretty proud of this puppy even though he's no where near perfect.


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## Dakingofchaos (Sep 29, 2009)

I don't think Puppy is the right name, perhaps Fluffy would capture his image better? 

Really impressed with this, are they foam darts on the weapon barrels? If so be wary when painting as they won't like spray paint!


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## RedInventor (Oct 30, 2012)

Lol thanks Daking, his formal name will be Decimis Lux of the Legio Astorum (for now). His barrels are made of large "Bubba" straws I found at Wally World (Walmart). Thank god they're not foam, I've had one too many times of spraying foam and watching it melt away before me. I still have a lot of work to do on the barrels though, especially since they are kind of rubbery, so I'm hoping once I detail them they'll harden up. All the detailing is going to be killer, I'm still not entirely sure how I'm going to do all of it. I have poster paper for the armor plates that I think I'll just print out another set of templates, draw the basic design for the armor plates then cut out the templates and trace onto the poster but I'm still not sure. I bought a bunch of different straws to make pistons and a hole puncher to make rivets but it may produce too big of circles. I also have to brace his "shoulders" since the switch I installed on each weapon arm takes a little bit of force to operate and it definitely makes the shoulder flex a bit. Lots to do, lots to do... lol


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## RedInventor (Oct 30, 2012)

Here's the switch I'm talking about, I can't believe I didn't get picures of it earlier. Its one of my favorite features that the lights added, it'll allow for me to "disable" the weapon during the game if it gets destroyed or disabled.








And couple more pictures just for fun-








I used Wall patch material for his top vents here, I was going to detail the inside but I decided I had enough other detailing to do as it is right now.








Another size comparison shot.


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## RedInventor (Oct 30, 2012)

Quick update, mostly I've been building:








The army that I've built so far, still lots of building to do let alone painting. This is almost everything I have though.








Azreal and friends.








Land Speeder Vengeance.... I know it sucks and isn't really worth it but I think it looks cool so there it is.

Still have to build:
-3 Black Knights
-5 DW Knights
-10 Tac Marines
-RW Battleforce
-Dark Shroud
-Nephilim Jet
-Land Raider Crusader
-Drop Pod
-Finish DIY Warhound Detailing
-Whatever I can make from the bitz 

New toys  :
-Imperial Bastion
-FW Warhound Titan


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## dthwish09 (Oct 15, 2009)

awesome LED work on the titan can't wait to see it painted great scratch build


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## RedInventor (Oct 30, 2012)

Thanks brother, I'm dreading the detailing but hopefully it all goes well. The LED's were a lot easier to install than I thought it would be, all in all a fun little challenge!


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## RedInventor (Oct 30, 2012)

Managed to get my Nephilim Jetfighter done built and primed, the list of "To Build" is getting shorter and shorter...








I build the flyers in sub-assemblies to make painting the insides a little easier so he is flying with the top down at the moment 

I have been fighting the urge to paint my army in my DIY chapter, the Guardians of Silence, colors for a while now. It's been eating away at me and well I caved and here is the DW Knightmaster in my chapters colors. He isn't even finished being base coated but he's looking pretty good so far I think.


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## Lemmy1916 (Jan 22, 2012)

Damn that titan looks promising!!! And all the other stuff looks very cool as well. Can't wait to see some more paint!


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## RedInventor (Oct 30, 2012)

My slow painting has returned, oh no! Well mostly I'm just playing with my DIY chapter's color scheme on a DW Knight model and here's where I'm going with it:
























Mostly just base coated, somethings such as the skulls and feathers have been shaded a little but otherwise just the base coats are mostly done.
I'd love to know what you all think, so comments and criticism if you have it.


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## RedInventor (Oct 30, 2012)

Did a little more painting tonight, didn't have a ton of time so I mostly just added some purple and worked on faces.








The group 








Azreal








DV Librarian I think his face is turning out the best.








Tactical Squad Sarge, his face needs work but I don't really know what to do with it.
That's all for now, thanks for looking.


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## Spawner105 (Jul 27, 2012)

The purple and black schemes painting is really good, its clean and well done im just personally not a fan of the purple but it still looks good


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## RedInventor (Oct 30, 2012)

Thanks spawner, purple is my favorite color and looks really good with black imho. I'm not sure if it's going to work with the lave bases though... hmmm

Here's the Guardians of Silence intro fluff I've been working on, since it has changed a little bit:








The Guardians of Silence are fierce sages of war, charactized by their exceedingly monastic bearing and love for terminator armor. They hail from the dark moon of Strix, it's eerie purple glow lights the night sky of the feral death world known as Bezgroda. Their fortress monastery is a complex of chapels and libraries built between two massive mountains and it is well known for its strange beauty. It's tall, protective walls are lined with the vibrant scripts of the writings considered sacred to the Space Marines, to inculde the Codex Astartes, the Requiem Angelis, and many more holy tomes. As a chapter, they are as dedicated to learning and mastering their minds as they are to war, as such few can better their tactical genius. 
They descend from the Dark Angels and the relics and icons of their originating chapter abound throughout the ranks for they revere their Primarch and his ancient chapter. Yet as Unforgiven they disagree with the feelings of their brother chapters, they believe their souls were redeemed when their beloved Primarch and forefathers fought the traitors on Caliban. Even still their zeal for purging the heretic burns no less within their souls, especially when it comes to the Fallen Angels. Most who meet them find them dark and unreadable, conversations with a stone wall would likely merit a greater response. Yet they are known for caring far more for those whom they protect than their father chapter and their unflinching resolve in battle has won them many allies. And deep within the Halo Stars one needs as many allies as they can have.


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## RedInventor (Oct 30, 2012)

So didn't end up painting much of anything today, it was a very long day at work and I'm beyond wore out. But all the guys are getting really excited about the apocalypse match, so I decided to put a little work into the gameboard design as it is always smart to plan well ahead when you're talking about terrain especially if it's a large piece you want to look nice. Now I probably won't begin construction on the board until I have finished the detailing of the warhound at least so it'll be a while but I really want the board to look nice. So...
The Plot:
The Apocalypse game will be fought with two sides, Space Marines & Titans vs the Xenos Host. My friend will be joining me with 10,000+ points of Space Marines and 2 Warhounds and 1 Reaver. I myself will be fielding approximately 10,000 points of Space Marines with 2 Warhounds. The xenos side is a mixed bag of: 2 Ork players with who knows how many Stompas (about 9,000 pts), a Tau army (about 4,000 pts), and an Eldar+Necron force (about 3,000 points). Obviously the Space Marines have it in points alone. To balance this the xenos will be able to redeploy lost units with Super Heavies having to wait a turn before they can. We are also trying to recruit more xenos or Chaos players to join the fray. With that many different factions though we've had some trouble generating a storyline. Thus far the best storyline we can think of is a heroic last stand against the forces of evil who want a forbidden and ominous warp relic that was discover by my chapter and taken to a chapel outpost for safekeeping. It recently began emitting a strong warp signal that has drawn many armies to it. The guardians have been valiantly defending it, yet they are being overcome. The Steel Eagles (friends DIY chapter) have come to their aid on the thick walls protecting the chapel from xenos incursion in hopes to drive the xenos off the planet and away from the dark relic. The xenos have combined forces as they are not strong enough alone to take the Space Marines, but they all have plans to attack one another once the relic has been won.

The Plan:
I have two 3'x8' tables that will be pushed together to form a 6'x8' table. The armies will be separated lengthwise. The plan for the board itself is to have the Imperial side have a wall across the back couple feet and a city type area/chapel behind it. The city will be in ruins with rubble and debris everywhere. The walls will have bullet holes and blast marks across the front from previous attacks, we'll probably use the rules FW has for an Imperial Wall. Everything in front of the wall will be barren desert type terrain with the craters from the defenders guns. Probably won't be too much in the way of cover on their side, as the attackers rarely have any cover when besieging a fortified stronghold. The idea as of right now is to go for a modular 2'x2' design that will allow me to customize the layout for different games. The layout above is the basic groundwork and most of the terrain pieces will be place on top so long as I can make it look good that way. The table will be a showcase for my models when not in use, so I want it to look really good yet be practical. If any of my buddies decided to get some tables, we may go with 2 6'x8' tables with a bridge between the two but we shall see. 

If you have been patient enough to read through all of this I would really enjoy to hear your opinions. As I said earlier, planning is the most important stage and I would really like to know if there is a flaw I'm not thinking about before I start the project and dig deeper into the design phase. This project will definitely be challenging my terrain skills especially considering I've never really done the rough war torn look I'm looking for. My last terrain project was more to showcase natural beauty and it was my first real terrain project that I completed. I have it shown below so you can get an idea of my skill level.

This display board is 2'x2' and has two Hordes minis from my Trollbloods army to show scale.

A close up of the River/Waterfall

The lake in the back, the board isn't really meant to see from the back but I couldn't resist trying such a large water area.

Thanks again for looking and please let me know if you have any thoughts or ideas!


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## Khorne's Fist (Jul 18, 2008)

The home made titan is amazing, and that display board looks great. The bases on the DA are impressive as well. +Rep.


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## RedInventor (Oct 30, 2012)

Thanks Fist, the board took a while and I'm quite proud of it. The detailing of the homemade titan has been intimidating me but I'll get to it eventually. 

Finally got a weekend off and spent most of it in Washington DC with the family, but I still managed to get some work done on the army. So what exactly did I get done?
I Built 3 Black Knights, Dark Shroud +AC, started on the DA Battleforce by building a Biker and a Landspeeder with HF and AC, and built my Command Land Raider. I'm running out of stuff to build with only 5 more Bikers, an attack bike, a drop pod, a tactical squad, and a terminator squad. Comparatively that's not much left. 

I painted the inside for what reason, I don't know since it'll never really be seen. Overall though I was going for a very monastic, mystic feel to the land raider. I was going to go with a Crusader but I only ever run my terminators in 5 man squads with 1 IC so there was no need for the extra carrying space and I love the idea of the purifying fires of the Redeemer so I went with it. I'll probably go with some owl freehand and lots of script on it as well.

Here you can see in the back corner where I really struggled to get the super glue and land raider to work with me. Probably end up filing it down then come over it with brush on primer. I hope in the end it looks okay.

I also started playing with paint schemes for the tactical marines within my army as well. I went out, bought some P3 Beaten Purple, slapped it on, and I like it.


Still needs shading/highlighting but overall the color is good.

This is what I'm thinking they'll look like.

Overall I had a great weekend. I'm happy with the progress I've made but I need to pick up the pace to get my army completed in time for the game. Hopefully now that I've narrowed down my plan I can get the great mechanical assembly line process in order and crank out an army. Luckily after my titan purchase I've been put on a relative spending freeze so I shouldn't have to worry about my army growing much more at least for a little while. The next adventure will be the gaming table and I'm looking forward to it so much that I hope it gives me the motivation to knock out painting over 100 infantry troops, 10 or so vehicles, 15+ bikers and two titans. As always thanks for reading/looking, hope you enjoyed my mini update and if you have any suggestions or comments feel free to leave them (I enjoy them).
-Red


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## Dakingofchaos (Sep 29, 2009)

Looking good! Been a whillst since I've been on and I'm really impressed with the progress. A note on the gaming boards, is that insulation foam boards your using? It's hard to tell from the top down view. 

A club I used to go to uses the foam boards and we found the edges wear down very quickly. Our answer? - Duct tape of course, just wrap it round the edge of the boards when their finished and it will make them last a lot longer. A quick spray of diluted PVA (or matt varnish dependant on money) over the top helps to prevent chipping when models are being moved or dice being rolled.

Love the image of your homeworld, is that of your construct? The fluff is good too. 

Now lets see some more titan details!


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## RedInventor (Oct 30, 2012)

Thanks Daking! I haven't made nearly as much progress as I was hoping but I suppose having almost everything built is nice. The image of my homeworld was a picture I found that I manipulated a bit. As for the terrain, I thought about using foam for the boards but I wanted something sturdier. I wen't with 2x2 sheets of OSB with a 1x2 frame. So I started work on the terrian board, couldn't resist. I almost have the basic first 6'x4' section complete. I still have to throw some shrubs in, paint the lines in the road, and touch up some of the details. Looking alright so far, any advice/suggestions would be much appreciated! 
The middle board of this 6x4 is missing since I am working on the plan for the other 6x4 and so far it looks like the road will split in two to go around the bastion. The idea for that board will be fun city fighting, whilst allowing the titans to move around a little bit.

A Ground Eye View


Now time for the overhead shots of the individual 2x2 boards:
One of the objectives will be on this board, it will be some sort of shrine where the relic was found.

Here's the back canyon area... (it's not really that yellow in real life, same goes for the next one)

The damaged/sand swept road.

I think we're going to place a crashed plane objective marker or something like that back here.

I don't really like the rock formation I made on this one but a tank could drive to the top and fire from it I guess.


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## RedInventor (Oct 30, 2012)

*Big Update*
It's been a while, eh? Sadly I don't have too much progress to post, real life has kept me very busy.
So lets get to the pictures:



This is Great Sage Sigurn Mordax v2, Chapter Master of the Guardians of Silence. This model was in every aspect technically challenging,between the Heavy Flamer-Storm Shield conversion and the free hand banner I pushed myself on this guy. I attempted NMM as well but it didn't turn out so I went over with metallic paint which led to a cool finish. Sadly the result are a little less than I wanted but it taught me a lot. The worst part is the superglue on his back from trying to get that flag to mount, I'll probably figure out a solution another time.


Belial Reborn. My original Belial model was eaten by the Dawn Power Dissolver I used to strip all of the Deathwing colored terminators. This is the new one, joyously it primed poorly and thus has that wonderful texture. I don't want to strip him again, just seems like I'm not meant to have a nice Belial. 

DV Minis on terrain board. These guys turned out well, obviously still need work but they're getting there, I'm starting to get a feel for how the army is going to look.


This is the Land Raider Redeemer I built to be Mordax's personal Land Raider. Still needs a lot of work, including weathering but I like it so far.

The Sinister Table
So it's finally starting to be something. My group has played a few games on the desert side and thus far everyone likes it. The city side still has a lot of work yet. The odd looking tile was where I tried to add a yellow to the sand to make it look, well, more sandy. Epic fail, but it would make an awesome swamp board with some flock and trees. All in all there will be two walls, 3 aegis defense lines, 3 Bastions, a Fortress of Redemption, and an Imperial sector on the city side. Should get hairy...

My Greatest Achievement (next to my daughter): 
*Loken Daniel*
My new son


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## Ring Master "Honka" (Oct 31, 2011)

wow some great looking models there. love the conversions

however with the Loken Daniel model you had input but i think your other half did most of the sculpting 

congratulations on your bundle of joy.


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## RedInventor (Oct 30, 2012)

Thanks brother
And yes my wife is the one to blame for his dashing looks lol


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