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Ahoy there folks, after seeing some preview shots of 5th edition from the Baltimore games day, it appears the Legion of the Damned are making a comeback as a legitamately playable Space Marine chapter (with real rules and everything! ) Anyhow, I've now finished assembling the last (serious this time...ok maybe just for the time being) amount of space marines and I'm just about ready to start painting.

I've always wanted to do a Legion of the Damned army, but even in the "How to Paint Space Marines Book" it doesn't give much examples of how to make them. I do know they're a base black with a heavy flame and death motif, but the thing that threw me off was the serious amount of bones stuck in and around the bodies of the space marine armor.

I've heard conflicting accounts of how these effects were achieved. The most common one was that folks made liberal use of gutting Vampire Counts Skeletal warriors and chopping and paring down the bone pieces and glueing them on. This seems the most reasonable approach as, as far as I can tell anyway, this seems to be the only reliable source of skeletal bits that are placed on the marine models. If anyone has any further source for bulk skeletal bits that would fit well on a standard space marine model, I would be deeply appreciative.

Now the second, and I'm hoping not as conventional method is to literally individually sculpt the bones onto the body using green stuff, but given my ham-handedness just assembling the darn things, I don't know about how good I could manage with tiny bits of green stuff to look boney-like.

In any case I would appreciate any advice for creating this awesome army. They were the first chapter who caught my attention when I was on the fence about joining this hobby and I'd certainly like to make them a reality.

Ahh, one of my favorite legions, err, chapters.

There's a couple other ways you can do it too. Easiest (in terms of modeling) is to simply paint the bones on the armor. This is the old school way to do it, like they did in the Rogue Trader days.



Also, you can replace some of the Marine's body parts with the skeleton cut offs (like I did). For example, cut off an arm and replace it with a skeleton one, or make a big hole in a chest place and add in one of the skeleton rib cages. This will, of course, be the more difficult of the choices.

If you're going to simply add bones to the outside of the armor, I'd suggest cutting it to roughly how you need, then sanding it down to make it fit nicely. Then just fill any gaps with green stuff and you're off!

Or, you can use the LotD metals, if you don't mind a slightly dated marine. All you've got to do there is bits ord......

Wait, nevermind.

if you can paint flames, you can paint bones. It's just decoration, paint 'em wherever they look good. It is a great looking colour scheme, the biggest problem is trying to make each marine look slightly different.

The Power Cosmic wrote:Also, you can replace some of the Marine's body parts with the skeleton cut offs (like I did). For example, cut off an arm and replace it with a skeleton one, or make a big hole in a chest place and add in one of the skeleton rib cages. This will, of course, be the more difficult of the choices.

I don't know that I'd go as far as to replace the chestpiece with a skelly rib cage, but using skelly bits is IMHO the easiest way to go. Also, it's pretty easy to make GS bones that you can just mold onto the armor.

The Power Cosmic wrote:If you're going to simply add bones to the outside of the armor, I'd suggest cutting it to roughly how you need, then sanding it down to make it fit nicely. Then just fill any gaps with green stuff and you're off!

Yeah, a good razor saw will do you wonders here.

You can cut a skeleton skull in half, and mount the face onto a flattened area of the guy's shoulder-pads. That should look pretty cool.

xenite wrote:You can cut a skeleton skull in half, and mount the face onto a flattened area of the guy's shoulder-pads. That should look pretty cool.

LOL, yeah, that one, too - GW had a tutorial on that way back in the Rogue Trader days.

Awesome stuff mates, thanks a bunch! I figure I'll do lots of painting then and probably stick the bone pieces with the sergeants and vehicles then to save on costs of those skeletal warrior dudes. Man I can't wait to start em!

I will take some pics of my version of LOTD later and post 'em for ya.

Stelek wrote:I will take some pics of my version of LOTD later and post 'em for ya.

Awesome thanks a bunch!

The Power Cosmic wrote:Ahh, one of my favorite legions, err, chapters.

There's a couple other ways you can do it too. Easiest (in terms of modeling) is to simply paint the bones on the armor. This is the old school way to do it, like they did in the Rogue Trader days.



Also, you can replace some of the Marine's body parts with the skeleton cut offs (like I did). For example, cut off an arm and replace it with a skeleton one, or make a big hole in a chest place and add in one of the skeleton rib cages. This will, of course, be the more difficult of the choices.

If you're going to simply add bones to the outside of the armor, I'd suggest cutting it to roughly how you need, then sanding it down to make it fit nicely. Then just fill any gaps with green stuff and you're off!

Or, you can use the LotD metals, if you don't mind a slightly dated marine. All you've got to do there is bits ord......

Wait, nevermind.

Hrm, well I've been doing some digging on those good old chaps and every picture I look at the bones don't look painted, they definitely look "sculpted" on (they're really raised above the skin of the model, the HTPSM book even shows em with distinct raised bone structures on em, can you achieve this using a really thick un-watered down foundation paint or am I damned (ha! zing!) to rip apart skeletal warriors to achieve the look?

Once again, any help is appreciated!

When Legion of the Damned were first introduced back in RT days, there were no special minis for them, thus requiring that bones and skeletons be painted onto the armor or skelly models chopped up and glued in appropriate places.

In Second Ed., they came out with a limited range of Legion models, including the Super-Secret, Ultra-Limited Sgt. Centurius model which used to run $100+ on ebay (and frankly, may still). This range did have the bones sculpted on. However, if you look closely at that range of models, you see that every one of them, bar Centurius, is pose-for-pose the same as other metal SM of the day. GW just had one of their sculptors throw some GS bones and flames on existing models and weapons and they ran a casting run with them. By today's standards, the level of detail is pretty crude.

I wouldn't try using un-watered down foundation to do raised bones on regular marines. I think the easiest thing for you to do is get some green stuff and check out GW's hobby web pages for some GS basics and you should be able to produce some pretty simple bones and flames yourself.

Well, you could also sculpt a few skeleton pieces up, and then Green Stuff Cast them.

Start producing them in batches, and then glue them on as needed to create variety.

http://warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2242

Just don't copy anything directly from GW's art work. That's breaking copywrite law.