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Hi everyone! I got a painting question I would like to ask. Who should pilot a SM flyer? a Techmarine or a normal space marine?

I'm asking this question because it kinda matter fluff wise. I feel the flyer pilot should be a normal space marine because otherwise there won't be enough techmarines in a chapter to fly all those stormravens and stormtalons. The Dark Angel/Blood Angels/ Grey Knight all painted by GW to have a normal SM, but uses a red marine (I assume its a techmarine) for the Ultramarine flyer.

Would you think it's weird if a SM player shows up to a game with 6 techmarines? (3 piloting Stormraven and 3 Stormtalon).

How would you paint your flyer pilot?

My Space Wolf Thunderhawk Pilots are both painted as grey hunters as in the SW fluff it states this is where their pilots come from.

All the bits that come with the flyer kits are Techmarines. Helmet and shoulders. So are gunners for vehicles. So I paint them badboys red with a standard black/white BT shoulder.

Im sure each chapter has quite a few Techys hanging around.

probably 90% of the chapters use Tech Marines as pilots, it's not like Tech Marines are "Rare" and you don't use them outside of the vehicle, so that makes no difference. One of the exceptions that I know of is Dark Angels, because they use Ravenwing pilots for everything, this is however a specialized case, Most marines are not trained to pilot because it's something they do not need to do, they always have tech marines, servitors, menials etc that can fly.

@Ravenwing pilots - What about the gunners in LR etc? Black or red?

Don't forget techmarines have reversable color scheme's.

IE a Ultramarine Storm Talon pilot could be blue with just a simple red shoulder.

Imperial fist Land Raider crew could be yellow with a red shoulder.

etc.

that's how I do my salamander tech marines... green armor with a red shoulder pad on one side. all my vehicle crewmen are done like this, be they pilots or gunners.

You're close to reopening the long-running 'who drives the rhinos' debate.

It's a long-running fluff issue, there just aren't enough marines to fill all the vehicle crews unless they somehow 'don't count' towards the 1000 marine limit.

There's lots of theories around to fix it but for your question I'd go with some sort of junior tech marine, chapter colors and red shoulder pad.

There's probably so few fliers per chapter (seeing as they were just re-conned in) that it doesn't make a big difference.