Raven Guard

The last entry I wrote was perhaps a little too much for the blog, so let's bring it back down to why I started it in the first place and showcase some miniatures.

I'm quite fond of the Sargent.

A few months back, I caved in a bought a box of the new Tactical Marines. I wanted to try out a blue colour for shading and highlighting black and wanted to get some freehand practice in.

The grand scheme was to start with these chaps and build a kill team, then expand it slowly into a full blown army. However, I don't think that is going to happen any time in the near future.

You see, I am a big fan of building armies around a theme, and I just don't find the Space Marines to have much going for them.

I threw in a meltagun, but it ruins my Kill Team plan.

That's not to say that I am belittling anyone who collects Marines, we all have our own individual tastes. But when I compare what is going on with a standard Marine model, and compare it to other forces, I find more freedom of expression.

What drew me to the Raven Guard in the first place was that they seemed very reasonable. Rather than these gung-ho champions of humanity that can do no wrong, we had these stealthy characters that embraced shadow and that really appealed to me.

All beaky, all of the time.

What I struggled with, was that the Marine codex doesn't really have options for that kind of army in it. It still panders to the Ultramarine doctrine, but saying that, if a Raven Guard supplement appeared I would probably give it another shot. There is potential here, but there aren't really the toys to allow this kind of expression. Especially considering you can't really hide like Solid Snake on a 40k battlefield as all of the miniatures are always visible.

So what now? Well, I have turned to the Dark Brethren and have started with some Hellions and some Wyches. They have some really nasty options in their book and the models are really interesting. So look out for further updates soon!