Special Project: Void Ravens Hobby League Tag

With the start of a local hobby league I finally found reason to complete a project I had been wanting to try for awhile. Although not especially useful for anything in particular, it still resulted in an interesting piece.

 


 


    The previous manager of the local Games Workshop hobby store had a competitive league that encouraged his players to paint and play their armies. He kept track of their results on an escalation board that hung on the wall. In order to play in the league the players had to design and build a tag that would represent their army. Players would take spare parts or models and stick them to a 40 mm base and paint it up in the best way to identify their armies.
   As soon as he explained it to me, the ideas for possible tags of my own starting forming in my mind. The only problem was that I would have no place to display it, no reason to use it, and thus no reason to make it. His store, although being the closest Games Workshop, was simply too far out of the way in order to participate regularly. Some time later, the owner of the game store I frequent received a supremacy board that he decided to start a hobby league with. This board came with 40 mm cog-shaped tags on hooks to show the ranking of the participants. Reason enough to start the project I had been thinking of for so long.

   I started by making sketches in my sketch pad. A simple, representative and easily sculpted design was my requirements. Eliminating any excess elements, I was left with the chapter icon and the name surrounding it. Colour would play a more significant role, but that's for the later stages. I drew the design onto the base with pencil in preparation for the sculpting stage.

After getting the guidelines drawn, I started by sculpting the raven. After letting that dry for a few hours, I moved on to the R. Greystuff takes about three to four hours to dry to a relatively solid state, so I managed to sculpt a few letters each weekend. I started with the middle letter R and worked outwards. I added stylized star bullet craters after the last letter dried.

   To save myself time trying to get a smooth coat of Bleached Bone, I ran it under my airbrush a few times until I had the desired thickness of colour. The raven icon would be painted Chaos Black later by brush, the letters and pock marks Boltgun Metal, and a glaze of Gryphonne Sepia around the base for weathering. I later took some Nuln Oil and inked around the letters and in the pock marks and glazed the letters with watered down Chaos Black.

   With that the tag is complete. A useful hint for those looking to replicate my design, I used a 25 mm base as a guideline for how much space should be left for the lettering. Even after the sculpt, the raven icon fits neatly beneath the smaller base.

  There you have it, a personalized army tag to represent my chapter in the battles ahead. Now I just need to hurry up and finish converting the last marines of my army. Luckily most of the other players aren't entirely done themselves so I still have time to catch up, but by the looks of the board I don't have as much time as I'd like! That's it for now, and as always feel free to leave your questions, comments, concerns, flames and feedback down below.

Signing off,

Cursed13