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OK, so I have been working on this a while, and finally have them done. Here is the whole shebang:



All the arms and torsos have 1/8" rare earth magnets. I wound up using around 40 or so on the project, from Amazing Magnets. They don't come in as fancy a container as Magcraft, but they are far, far less expensive for an equivalent product.
Here they are broken into squads. My available combinations are

1 squad of 8 marines with bolters\shotguns\CCW, a sergeant armed with bolter, boltgun, CCW, power fist, power sword, and a marine with either a heavy bolter or missile launcher; OR
2 squads of 4 marines each with bolters\shotguns\ccw, the sgts as above but one gets either a power sword or power fist, and each squad has a marine with either a missile launcher or a heavy bolter (i only have one missile launcher, but 2 heavy bolters)

6 seemed like a good number, since that's how many fit in a Razorback.

The Sergeants have Maxmini torsos, and I also have 5x Maxmini sniper rifles I will add shortly.

Here are some more pictures, broken into various squads:

Squad with shotguns, led by Sergeant Turead:


Squad with CCW, led by Sergeant Turead:


Squad with mixed arms, led by Sergeant Turead:


Squad with bolters, led by Sergeant Hadrian:


Squad (full) with CCW led by Sergeant Hadrian:


I'm not crazy about how the faces came out. I decided to do 15 heads to start with - 5 black, 5 white, 5 brown. The black guys came out terrific, imo - I use a recipe you can find here. The brown guys came out terribly, and the white guy came out poor - way too dark. I wound up keeping the black guys and stripping the rest. The brown ones again came out terrible, but I didn't have some of the colors the recipe called for so it's probably my substitutions that were ruining those - I shelved it for now. The white guys came out better - some where even OK, in my opinion. Although they're not awesome, they might be the best I can do on these particular heads. I do have many spares that are primed and unpainted, so I might try taking another whack at them at some point; they are glued on with only a tiny little bit of superglue. The biggest problem I had was getting the colors to blend smoothly. I went from Tanned Flesh to Dwarf Flesh to Elf Flesh, adding in 50/50 mixes between those, so it's stepping between 5 different shades but still not smoothly. I tried a glaze of tanned flesh with mixed results, then a glaze of Devlan mud with slightly better results. Not sure how I could improve these, or even if I need to: they look not so great in these pictures but the actual minis in hand don't look too bad. The nature of miniature photography I guess.

The black guys heads are pinned, though. I'm really pleased with how they came out in general and how Sgt. Turead and the Heavy Bolter marine came out. I also like the white guy that's looking off to the side, you can see him on the far right here:



A word on how these minis were sealed. The torsos of the scouts are sealed with 2 coats of Minwax clear polyurethane (think colorless dip) to protect against rubbing from swapping the arms, which I try to do as little, and as gently, as possible. All of them are of course finished in Dullcote. The shoulders were painted with Future floor polish before applying my home-printed Blood Raven decals, then the decals were applied with Mr. Mark Softer, then after drying, and carefully massaging them smooth, they got 2 more coats of the same Minwax the torsos got before they got the Dullcote.


If you wish to see more of my Space Marines, they are in my army profile.

Cool idea and very thorough! You can field pretty much any scout squad you'd want, except snipers.

Great idea and great work, they look amazing! What have the sergeants got behind their heads?

Doomface81 wrote:Cool idea and very thorough! You can field pretty much any scout squad you'd want, except snipers.

I got some Maxmini sniper rifles, but I'm not sure if I'm going to use them. The scale seems off, by which I mean the scale for the sniper rifiles is accurately 28mm and look too small in the mutant proportions of "heroic scale". I might use them anyway, not sure.

Dr.NiiNJA wrote:Great idea and great work, they look amazing! What have the sergeants got behind their heads?

Meltabombs. I can show different angles if you'd like. Maybe I should have taken photos of more angles yesterday.

I'd like to see how you painted them if it's not too much of a hassle. Cheers

Sure, it was really easy, except the faces (which are in the previous link).

1.) Pants, boots, gloves, and sleeves in Adeptus Battlegrey. Drybrush with Codex Grey. Wash with Badab Black.
2.) Pick out the leather parts on the boots (leaving the toeplate and heels as is) with Bestial Brown. Use the same color for the pouches, holsters and straps.
3.) Paint the forearm guards with P3 Hammerfall Khaki (or Kommando Khaki). Try not to get the skulls.
4.) Paint the chest eagles, belt and strap buckles, and skulls with Shining Gold.
5.) Wash everything from steps 2 - 4 with Devlan Mud
6.) Carefully drybrush the chest eagles and the skulls with burnished gold. A flat edged brush works well for this.
7.) For the red, I have a premixed dropper with 50/50 Mechrite Red and Blood Red that I will henceforth call Blood Raven Red. Mix this up and paint the bulgy things on the boots, the backs of the gloves, the torso, and the shoulderpads.
8.) Do an edge highlight on the red with Blood Red.
9.) Paint the heatsink on the back, and the hoses with Boltgun Metal. Wash with Badab Black.

For the weapons, it varies some but generally it's a combination of Boltgun Metal, Snakebite Leather, Badab Black, Devlan Mud, and Blood Raven Red. The scopes were painted with several lighter shades of green, I forget exactly which shades.

Oh the interchangeability. I love it.

Really great painting. It's just I can't help but laugh at the one scout's eyes in the pick with the Sergeant and the power weapon. The one on the left, idk why but he just makes me laugh everytime I see his face, I just find something hilarious with it!