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So I finally gave in and bought my first space marines since the 3rd edition of 40k, I've been searching around in an attempt not to repeat obvious questions but I'm looking for some advice.
I'm in the process of stripping a lot of thick horrible paint from a selection of old metal and plastic models. In the mean time I've picked up a starter 40k paint set and a tactical squad to preserve my sanity. This gives me some basic paints and hopefully a small collection of spares as my bits box has been reduced to a plastic bag of plastic imperial guard heads and a pile of lasguns.

With the paint set i get 5 marines /w bolters that I had planned on using as test miniatures since they didn't cost much more on top of the paints and brush so I'm not too worried about them but it would be nice to be able to incorporate them into a squad the only issues is; moulded ultramarine shoulders. I'm not 100% on which chapter I'm going to go with but I'm pretty sure its not going to be ultramarines.

a) I'm just wandering if I manage to file of the "U" from the shoulders will these 3 part guys look completely out of place grouped with "normal" tactical marines. If so I can resign them to testing my dubious painting skills.

Also for a slightly more embarrassing newbie question;
b)are these knee shapes intentional on some of these guys (see pic) just looks a bit weird as it kind of merges into the lower leg, but i don't want to hack something off that should be there.

a) The basic 3-part Marines do have an obvious look to them and will probably look out of place with the more dynamic Marine models.

b) Yeah that's totally normal, some knees are meant to have that rounded design. It's just a lack of clear definition in the mold design that makes it merge into the lower leg.

A) You can file the omega off of the ultramarine models. If it looks wrong after that then you can greenstuff over it to give yourself a blank slate. My army is a mix of current models and older ones and I haven't had anything said to me so I don't think they will draw questions. If you don't like them then use them for testing paint schemes.

B) Yeah that's supposed to be there. It does merge with the lower part since that is the part it is attached to some of my marines have the same thing.

Cheers guys, I wasn't sure about the mold so thought I should check before taking a knife to some new models xD

Will give the shoulders a go and see how it turns out, worst case they end up as test guys.

[edit]

A couple hours of scraping, and harassment did a reasonable job removing the symbols, still a bit rough but more than enough to get me started.