Tag: Space Marines

Another Monday in quarantine, another hobby sessions with people. As well as my opponent (still in Marine land), two other wargaming friends jumped in to work on some projects (tiny Knights and yet more Space Marines). I of course was working on something totally different…

Space Marines! Wait…

Yeah, I’ve finally finished assembling all the Primaris Space Marines I suddenly seem to have collected from various places. They still need to be undercoated and then painted but I seem to have enough guys for maybe a small force for 40k. I don’t intend to play 40k but I might end up in a situation to play some games with my friends who have their own groups. I do need to bulk out the Reavers and the Inceptors (probably) and I would like to order a few extra units (I’ve always wanted a Redemptor Dreadnought and the Heavy Intercessors look perfect).

The final few models done, I then moved on to assembling the last few pieces of MDF from the Sarissa Alamo packs I backed on Kickstarter earlier this year. Having now built it all, it’s a pretty impressive collection. There are plenty of buildings to use, as well as some smart design within them.

I can already see plenty of different layout that would work using them, and can’t wait to get some figures on it and play a few games. I have some other opinions on it (and especially but they will be in a separate post.

As a final thing, I made up the Technical Charlie from Spectre that arrived earlier this year. Really nice construction, great quality on them with very little clean up required. This will pop up later once I finish painting.

Not sure what I’ll be working on next week – part of me wants to finish off this Cypher character on my desk but I might do some more Enforcers or finish tweaking my Brits. But another SITREP next time I hobby!

Last weekend was my Dastardly Regular Opponent’s birthday. (I got him a Crusader to replace the Matilda I shredded with a 50mm AT gun in our last Chain of Command game before lockdown. Because I’m petty like that.) And seeing as he was stuck in the middle of an Imperial Fist painting spree, and all of us stuck in our houses because of isolation, we decided to jump on and assist as morale support/hangout.

And as part of this, I got to finish off my Intercessor Squad! You can see them arrayed above – entirely illegal in 40k, probably not great in Killteam but also a fun different thing to paint.

The final three figures I stuck on some female marine heads from Statuesque, just to add a little variation to the squads look. These heads are lovely – cast in metal rather than resin, covered in hair styles and biotics to make them look like “female Space Marines” as opposed to “Female space marines”. In other words, they fit perfectly. I had great fun painting the lady with cornrows and I think she’s my favourite in the squad.

The Squad Leader on the other hand… I’m not quite as keen on? When painting her face, my attempt at a new flesh tone came out very dark, almost covered in ash. So, working from references of soldiers post-explosion, I decided to add a few additional touches of Blood for the Blood God (focusing on the forehead and the nose) and make it seems like she’s just had her helmet blown away by some high explosive blast. I’m not sure the effect works, but it definitely has a look to it that makes her really stand out from her team.

So what’s next? Well I have my WW2 brits on the go, the Enforcers need building there are more modern miniatures to finish and I do actually have my hero character to finish off in the same colour scheme…

Oh and I started assembling this Dark Imperium set I have. I’m not going to assemble the Death Guard side, but a few more marines (minus the fancy shoulder pads) should be a neat expansion for my squad of elites. And totally not the start of an army with.

…

I think.

Seeing as I’m now back into full on local lockdown, biweekly Monday wargames with Dastardly Regular Opponent have been swapped out with painting sessions on the internet. And so as part of this, I’ve been continuing work on my Space Marines!

After doing my test model, I spent my first week finishing off the three other marines who did not have bare heads – seeing as I was making a kill-team, I went overboard on characters and so everyone got bare heads.

The paint scheme, having now done several, works really well. The black is simple and easy to do, the red arms help them to really stand out, while the flash of tan around the edge of the shoulder pads is a nice contrast to the other colours. It’s also a nice number of colours – not so many that each figure takes too long but not too few that they look unfinished.

I also did a figure that has been sat in my collection since I grabbed it from a friend’s collection as they were getting rid of it. The Assault on Black Reach pilot is a really good figure and although some of the details are a little softer compared to the more modern sculpts, he’s still a cool little guy. I’ve painted him up as a slightly suspicious Imperial agent that could be used either for Killteam as an objective or end up in the underhive for Necromunda. Blood technical paint is a heck of a thing.

Yesterday’s painting saw me do the first three of the bare-headed Marines. I’m actually really happy with how the faces came out – the washes and hair colours worked well, while the details like studs and scars were nice to pick out. The only thing I’m not keen on is the colour of the flesh – under the lightbox it looks very yellow. I think I’ll go back and hit it with a few light highlights, just to make it look a little less yellow.

Next up for the marine project is the last three Intercessors and the Cypher character I picked up. I actually removed the head from the Intercessors because I picked up some female heads from Statuesque Miniatures because I want to add a few warrior women among my superhuman warriors. More details coming when they arrive (and I keep painting).

I didn’t get up to much painting over the break (catching up on sleep and a little bit of prep-work took up my time). However, I did manage to get around to painting up one of my squad of Deathwatch Intercessors (that I assembled for some Killteam play over 18 months ago).

I decided pretty early on that I didn’t want to paint the normal Deathwatch pattern. Partially because I’d rather avoid having to hunt down/use transfers and partially bevause it saves me painting different coloured shoulders. The other side to this is that I’m not 100% sold on running them as Deathwatch. From my reading of the rulebook, not being a core space marine means missing out on some of the cool toys, especially as I’m only really interested in collecting the big marines (the normal Tactical Marines look too much like Marinelets at this point).

So instead, I’ve come up with my own chapter “The Punished”. Their arms painted red to match their chapter master (and because I’m a MGS V fan), their decorated left shoulder a sign of veterancy, I’ll be adding more to the lore for these guys. For now, here is the basic paint plan:

• Black Undercoat
• Black armour
• Left shoulder – Natural Steel
• Left arm – Natural Steel then  carmine red
• Left shoulder – Black
• Rim + skulls – Game colour 72.034
• Pouches – Mahogany Brown

Painting space marines is different from painting all my modern troops. For one thing, they are much larger, meaning all the details are larger as well. There are also much more large flat or rounded areas, without the texture for my usual techniques to use. However, I’m looking forward to painting the rest of them up!