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Nice work on the classics.

And yes, scale creep is a huge myth.

 Gordy2000 wrote:
Great work on those Space Crusade marines. Those were the first Warhammer minis I ever painted, way back in the Dark Age of Technology. Basically Space Crusade was my gateway drug.

And hat tip for painting all the weapon options. Good show!

Thanks I missed Space Crusade the first time round - got my start with Space Hulk, but I didn't start getting White Dwarf and becoming aware of the larger 40k world until a little later. I recall Advanced Space Crusade was being advertised in the issues I had then, with its buck-teeth bear-paw Tyranids and Old World Empire Sleeves Scouts (I do want some of both of those, one day) - one of the Eavy Metal pages did show some of the Space Crusade marines, but I didn't really know what they were specifically until later.

 Nevelon wrote:
Nice work on the classics.

And yes, scale creep is a huge myth.

Thanks!



This month's contest entry, some Star Leopards Intercessors - over on the Boys From The Astronomican thread I've told the tale of bringing the Star Leopards back from one obscure snippet of lore, and Captain Fragman then winning the local gaming group's open painting contest (it's just a small group, don't get too excited); from the prize pool I chose a sprue of five Intercessors, and I decided it was only fitting they also be Star Leopards, so here we are.



I broke out the bits box during assembly, since I'd already put together the Intercessors for the Astronomican project more or less stock. Back when third edition came out I found it very satisfying to customise the new multipart Tactical marines - there had of course been multipart plastic Tacticals earlier, but they were pretty limited with their flat waists and helmets and torsos as one piece, the new sprues with ball joint necks and waists, and a bunch of accessories on the sprue, were far more versatile, and even though nowadays we make fun of their 'options' basically just being variations on the same 'marine holding bolter' pose, the small changes and customisations made it really feel like they were my marines from the ground up. So I approached these lads in a similar spirit. The sergeant got the most work, since I wanted him to stand out: Necron chunk on the base to make him taller and more heroic-looking, Black Templar candles on the backpack, a shoulder shield with a book stuck to it (the same book piece as I used on Captain Fragman, I think his idiot insistence on doing dumb things because "It is written!" may actually be a hallmark of the entire chapter, so the book is a recurring motif for them), and his pistol arm is actually from a Techmarine, with its grav pistol swapped out for a plasma; the cables don't line up perfectly with the backpack, but they're near enough. Naturally I went with a bare head per the Star Leopards' habitual idiot machismo, so I took the ball off a helmet and stuck it to his belt, and since I'd recently picked up the battlefield trophies set I gave him a genestealer head nailed to his shoulder pad. The thunder hammer came about just from browsing through the codex and noticing Intercessor sergeants can have one - the arm is an aiming-pistol one, with the pistol hand replaced with a power axe hand, with the blade removed and replaced by a chunk of tech from, I think, the Kataphron Breacher sprue that looked close enough to a hammer head, plus a long bit of purity seal parchment from a Sororitas sprue.



The rest of the squad I kept a little more restrained, but I wanted each of them to be unique in some way (hence entering them in the painting contest under the 'irregular' theme). One of the obvious conversions of the old 3rd ed Tacticals was to slice the bicep of the bolter arm to swivel the weapon up, then put the auspex in the vacant left hand, so the comms marine is kind of my homage to that, with the addition of a backpack sensor gadget from the Apothecary, or Sanguinary Priest, I forget which. I hadn't used the turret gunner mini on my Deimos Predator, since the old Predators I was paying tribute to didn't have them, so the next marine got the Heresy-era helmet and shoulder pads from there. The grenade launcher marine initially just got a skull-and-ponytail trophy piece from the White Scars upgrade set, but I decided that was a bit too low-key so I added a couple of pieces from the Breacher sprue, which I think are just meant to be extra gadgets for one of the big guns but the nodes on them are about the same size as the extra grenades on the bolter's strap, so he became the marine who really likes grenades. And finally, something I'd been wanting to do for a while based on the bionic parts in the Rogue Trader marine gallery which are far cruder than the type you see on minis nowadays, a marine with a robot leg that's actually a Breacher flamer arm, with the 'elbow' becoming his knee, and the flamer barrel removed and replaced with a spare foot from a Necron, which is generic enough to pass. I left the fuel tank from the flamer attached, since it reminds me of the tanks you see attached to the backs of Armiger legs, so maybe this bionic is a smaller version of the same design. His head comes from, I think, the Eradicator (melta) squad - he's also got a helmet top attached to his belt, which I'm not certain is from the same source so it may not technically be the right design to attach to the Eradicator mask, but near enough.



Fragman being a Terminator Captain actually left a bunch of the specifics of the chapter's colours up for grabs, since a lot of his design could as easily be personal heraldry as the chapter-wide colour scheme. I decided to stick with the original inspiration (an ancient-ass plastic Terminator I'd painted really badly, since even though that paint job had nothing to do with the Star Leopards, it did come from 1989 like their one canon appearance), with orange on the left shoulder and left shin - Fragman isn't wearing his helmet (of course) so I wondered whether maybe the helmets would also be orange, but I decided to keep the black helmet from the old Terminator, although I ended up painting the sergeant's helmet orange to set him apart (the skull on the helmet would indicate veteran, like Blood Angels); I also on a whim put a narrow stripe on the helmet of the comms guy, which I think maybe signifies that he's qualified to be a non-sergeant squad leader according to the old Tactical practice of splitting a squad of ten into two squads of five (of course Intercessors don't do that, and even if they had it doesn't make sense the second squad leader would be here alongside the sergeant, but it's just an idle thought). Since the sergeant's left shoulder is covered by genestealer I decided the whole chapter wears their symbol on their right shoulder - said symbol of course being the Thundercats logo, which I specifically chose for Fragman on the basis that I'd only have to paint it once, so having to do it five more times here was a bit of a corner I painted myself into, but never mind; they're a bit wonky, but near enough. The other four marines got the usual squad number and type on their left shoulder then, and for the sergeant I put them on his knee. I thought of using the shoulder trim to indicate their company a la Ultramarines, but I've always liked the Dark Angels kneepad company symbols, so I decided to copy that, suggesting that these lunatics are actually Dark Angels successors; I like to imagine that, thanks to their history of dumbass honor-before-reason deeds, they're part of a smaller subset of the Unforgiven known as 'the Uninvited', as whenever the Dark Angels and their successors get together for a chat, they 'accidentally' forget to inform the Star Phantoms so they don't have to be reminded they're related. I went with dark skin for the sergeant just because I feel like I don't get past the Caucasian skin tone paints often enough - I feel like I need more variety of brown paints for the highlights, I don't love the selection I'm working with - and for the robo-leg guy on a whim I gave him green hair, since I thought maybe the Star Leopards are one of the chapters who recruit from a hive world by rounding up the biggest psychos they can find in the gang population.

Incidentally I'm pretty happy with how the Necron chunk on the sergeant's base turned out, copied from the stock photos of the Obelisk and a couple of other scenery-type pieces - I used a slightly colder set of greens, just because that's what I've got handy, and also put the brighter spots of highlighting in more random places rather than always on the corners, which kind of reminds me of Tron as if the bright pulses are flowing along the edges rather than just stuck in one place. Not sure how well if at all that'd translate to regular Necron troops - I didn't do any of the glowing edges on the Necron head on comms guy's base, just glowing eyes and mouth - but all my previous attempts at a Necron colour scheme I liked have fallen a bit flat, so I may give this a try next time I have a complete Necron for whatever reason.

Incidentally the iffy writing on the scrolls is the classic 'kil', and 'hooo' (as in Thundercats) on the two bolters, and on the comms guy's shoulder I've named him Brother Khloe, after Chloe O'Brien who was always on comms with Kiefer Sutherland in 24.