Hey folks, I am back again to show you How to BUILD a Ravenwing Primaris Chaplain on Bike. Though I write How to BUILD articles every so often, this one comes with more weight due to the Monthly Hobby Challenge in our new Dark Angels podcast the Path to Redemption. In the January 2021 episode, I challenged myself and my co host Heath to build a Ravenwing character by our February episode. This Primaris Chaplain I build with you today will serve as my challenge entry and win me a cool ten smackeroos towards a lovely Christmas gift from Heath this coming Christmas.
With the promotion and pressure to perform explained, I will get on with build. To get started, I rounded up my bitz. I chose to use the Crozius arm, the right arm, and backpack from the Indomitus Chaplain. I am using the sergeant from the Outriders squad because his right hand is his weapon hand making it easier to swap out than it being the arm holding onto the handlebars. I selected a Judicar head because who doesn’t love the idea of a bandana over the face of your biker. Finally, from the Ravenwing upgrade sprue I took the book, the back banner, and the Ravenwing logos.
In order to save myself some repetitive writing and picture taking, I will direct you to my original Ravenwing Outrider build article to see how to put the main body of the model together in order to get more into the unique flavor of the Chaplain. Another thing I am attempting in this project is to try and stick with the less excessive style of Primaris units rather than the ornate style of the Ravenwing in order to separate him aesthetically from the rest of the army. For this reason, I am not using the wing fans on the front of the bike like I do in the original build article.
Speaking of that unique flavor, it starts by removing the right arm post and filing off any excess material.
Things get interesting as I use my saw to take the whole shoulder off the Indomitus Chaplain. I started with a few cuts under the shoulder. Then I went to the neck. I wrapped it up by going straight through the back. This left me with a chunk of plastic that I needed to snip and file to get a complete shoulder.
I then dry fitted the shoulder before gluing it to the main body.
The shoulder wanted to go down and back so that’s how I positioned it at first, however, after some application of Citadel glue I used pressure to twist it around to be up and forward. I will use green stuff to clean up any gaps at the end when it is fully dry.
I moved to the powerpack next. I attached the front of the skull to the back of the skull.
It quickly became apparent that the purity seals needed to be shortened to fit so I did so with my snips. I cut along natural breaks in the molding in order to make the shortened ones look more intentional.
I then placed the powerpack onto the back. I needed to remove the push fit post in order to slide the powerpack in.
I snipped off the push fit stump on the Judicar head, filed the excess, and then placed it in relation to the arm pointing off into the distance.
Next, I move on to an important part of the model, the open book on top of the bike.
I found that I needed to remove the mounting nobs on the side closest to the Chaplain because they hung out in the air with nothing to connect to them.
The front ones fitted nicely onto the top of the bullet casing ejection point on the top of the bike casing.
As with the original Outrider article, I added the Ravenwing icons to the sides of the bike.
I lined up the top wing tip with the top most bolt on the side casing.
At this point I faced two conundrums. One is that this particular model is supposed to have a chainsword push fit into the left leg. The other is that the points skull on the backpack prevent the back banner from sitting properly.
For the first problem, I went through my bits box and found some holy scripts to cover the hole.
For the second problem, I went and got a Dark Vengeance Biker I picked up in an eBay auction and cut off his back banner because it leans back instead of up and over like the regular back banner does.
If you don’t have spare Dark Vengeance models laying around, then I believe you can get a similar bit from the Ravenwing Command Squad sprue.
I applied the banner to the back of the bike.
Next, I rolled up some green stuff and filled in the gap in the shoulder.
I played with it a bit to make it match the look of the ribbing in the joint already there.
Finally I added purity seals to the front of the bike. This would give him more of a religious character and fill up the blank space created by not adding the Ravenwing fans.
This addition contradicted my original plan to maintain the austere Primaris look but I do want this model to clearly be a Chaplain first above all things.
I made this decision really late but that’s why I didn’t add the Ravenwing fans on earlier in the project so that way I could make an audible like this one when the inspiration hit me.
Thank you all for coming along this creative journey with me. I always like it when I start with a plan but then innovate on the fly as pieces don’t fit or I discover a new possibility. If you want to know more about why I picked a Ravenwing Chaplain this month, please listen to the January episode of The Path to Redemption here. Or, listen to it here on the Dank Lists Wargaming website here. If you want to see more How to BUILD! articles, please look through the rest of our blog and check out our Youtube Channel.
Until next time, keep it Dank!
Bailey
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