Dark Angels Tactical Squad Mavet

Hey everyone. I’m Erik, the newest contributor to LUMP. I started war gaming back in about 1988 when Rogue Trader was still out and continued to play 40k until shortly after 3rd edition was released. During this period, the internet was virtually non-existent, and the only place to learn to paint seemed to be White Dwarf. Because of this lack of insight, I was painting right out of the pot with terrible Testors brushes. Needless to say, my results were less than spectacular. After 15+ years without gaming I noticed a GW store open up right near my home a little over a year ago. I couldn’t resist checking it out and now I’ve once again been bit by the 40k bug. This time, I’m using the internet to become the painter I always wanted to be.

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This weekend I just finished up this Dark Angel tactical squad. Owners of the Dark Vengeance box set might find most of the models familiar, except of course the sergeant. The sergeant was changed due to this being my second DV tactical squad, and making a custom sergeant is a simple way to make units unique. I headed over to ebay and purchased the legs and head from the stunning new sternguard box. Lucky for me, I happened to get the matching mk4 “maximus” legs and head. Most of the other bits were from the Dark Angel accessory sprue. I decided to name the sergeant, and by association, the squad, “Mavet,” the Hebrew word for death. Given that all of the Dark Angels named characters are based on Hebrew names for demons, I decided that I’d attempt to stick with the theme.

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In addition. the bases are from Secret Weapon Miniatures “Urban Rubble” line. This is my first time using resin bases, but I’m so impressed with the results that I plan to re-base the rest of my currently cork based army to a mix of this line and the “Urban Streets” line.

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In general I really like all of the Dark Vengeance molds, and they are a really affordable way to bolster a DA army. The two trade offs paid for the low price are the lack of variation (one pose per model) and the amount of prep work needed. Because of the (mostly) two part configuration, the models had a few difficult areas. Most of the ankle areas for instance had blocks of plastic that needed to be cut away and re-sculpted. The mk6 armor heads were also particularly difficult because the beak melded into the shoulder pad. A bit of cutting and green stuff/milliput fixed the issues as you can see above, but it is a bit more time consuming to get right than the normal tactical marine box.

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In the future, I plan to share some of the basic techniques that I used to get these results on this blog through a series of tutorials. If you have any questions feel free to ask. If you’d like to see me cover something specifically, let me know and I’ll do my best to release it.

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2 thoughts on “Dark Angels Tactical Squad Mavet

    • I’m guessing you’re asking about the edge highlighting on the inner sides of the shoulder pad ridges? What makes this difficult for most people is using the side of the brush to do the edge highlight (which I recommend), but this space leaves little room for the brush tip to clear the rest of the pad. It’s also pretty hard to get a good 45 degree angle with the corner. Since you’re asking though, I assume you know all of this.

      Practice is the most useful thing here, but I do have one tip that really comes in handy for edge highlighting in general, but even more so in instances like this. What I do is use a good, small brush like a 00, coupled with a drying retarder mixed into the paint. Normally a tiny brush lets the paint dry on the tip, but the retarder counteracts this. The small precise tip helps, but the retarder also allows time to clean up when mistakes happen. I also like the way the paint behaves with a bit of retarder (it thins the paint, but doesn’t enhance flow, so the paint doesn’t drain off of the brush as easily). I’ve tried both the liquid and gel type retarders, and I like them both, but the liquid type (from a company like Liquitex) is probably the most useful.

      I hope that helps!

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