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Hi all, so after a lot of deliberation, I've decided to start a Salamanders army. What was initially planned to be only a 1500 point army, has evolved into possibly expanding, and with a new Space Marine codex looming very soon, who knows where it could go.

Here's what I've got to start with;



What you can see here is 1 tac squad (plus 1 more not pictured), 2 rhinos, assault terminators, a land raider redeemer, Thunderfire cannon, and a box of scouts, PLUS, some Forgeworld shoulder pads (power armour and terminator armour) and lastly some Forgeworld Etched Brass

The initial list of models is as follows

2 x Tac squads, Multimelta and flamer
2 x Rhinos
Assault Termies (TH+SS)
Land Raider Redeemer
2 xThunderfire cannons
Vulkan He'Stan
Scouts with snipers plus Telion
Aegis defense line with Icarus Lascannon and/or Quad gun

Stay tuned!

Excellent choice!

I look forward to seeing it all come together.

Is that TFC metal or Finecast? I have just stuck a metal one together and it wasn't much fun

The beginning..





Assembly so far

Subscribed, looking forward to more!

Gettin' work done on the land raider!

Didn't opt for Forgeworld doors (maybe I should have) but instead used some Etched Brass



And the melta gunner



Here's the army so far!

Awesome, Can't wait to see them painted!

Looking good! I used the FW brass on my LR doors too, they paint up fine and having the brass bits means you have plenty to put elsewhere on your other models

Here's where I'm at currently with some colour scheme trials..

More to come..

Thought I'd do a quick step by step of the planned painting method



Base coat the model using Caliban Green



Panelling coat of Warpstone Glow, taking care to leave a thin line of Caliban in the recesses



Edge highlight of mix of Warpstone Glow, and Moot Green



At this tage, I started painting the details, I may go back and do an even thinner highlight of pure Moot Green on the very edges of the armor, thoughts on this extra step?

Very nice - an army of these is going to look fantastic!

He looks great simple but very effective. The greens very neat and these guys will look great when they're all laid out together.

Here's a shot of what the terminators will look like with Chapterhouse shields.




The sergeant



With the dead terminator from Space Hulk, this will serve as an objective marker.


More to come!

Here's a WIP of the first squad after taking some coats of paint. Still working away.. But getting there.

Thoughts/opinions/critiques?

JB

Looking good!

Love the poses you've managed to get - my tac marines are all in the fairly dull standard pose.

What do you have planned for the bases?

Love that sergeant's helm! You mind if I steal that for my own Salamanders? Truly awesome work.

Not a huge fan of extreme highlighting, but your colors seem good so far, and you seem to have a really good grasp of sculpting. I can't wait to see the models all finished!

Slinky wrote:Looking good!

Love the poses you've managed to get - my tac marines are all in the fairly dull standard pose.

What do you have planned for the bases?

Thanks! The poses aren't bad, but after seeing all the new bits in the kits coming out this weekend, half of me is disappointed I didn't wait a little longer!

As for the bases, I'm not entirely sure. I'm planning to make a display board for this, Armies on Parade style, so was going to base them very basically, just a dark grey/black sand, and then make the base slots on the display board recessed, so the models sit flush with the board.
I've seen plenty of lava bases on Salamander armies, and the colour contrast always looks great, but to me, an entire army walking over lava seems.. Silly. But then again in tournaments there's usually free painting points for having 'extra effort' on bases, so I'm still tossing up options.
If I go with the display board and models sitting flush idea, I *will* have some lava on the board, just not all over the place, therefore the bases on the models themselves won't have lava, except for maybe Vulkan.

Jimsolo wrote:Love that sergeant's helm! You mind if I steal that for my own Salamanders? Truly awesome work.

Not a huge fan of extreme highlighting, but your colors seem good so far, and you seem to have a really good grasp of sculpting. I can't wait to see the models all finished!

Absolutely, feel free to borrow or steal any ideas here.

Appreciate the compliments, however as far as the sculpting goes, there is none here! Everything shown here is pure bits,I'm absolutely AWFUL with Greenstuff!

Are the highlights just something you don't like on models in general, or do you think they could have been done better on this models in particular? Comments and criticism is always welcome!

Very nice color outlay .at first I bought the dead termite didn't fit because of the icons of the chalice all over him, but I figure there has to be at least one heavy drinker in the chapter, and when everyone saw him slumps over they figured he had been up late the night before. Little did they know the gene stealers had nibbled on him .

Sorry, by sculpting I meant 'construction.' You've got some good dynamic poses going.

So when it comes to Vulkan, are you going to use the factory-standard model, a converted standard model, a scratchbuilt one, or just forgo him entirely?

Really nice! Keep up the good work. Subscribed

Thanks so much for all the compliments so far, hoping I can keep up the consistency of updates and also quality work!

 Jimsolo wrote:
Sorry, by sculpting I meant 'construction.' You've got some good dynamic poses going.

So when it comes to Vulkan, are you going to use the factory-standard model, a converted standard model, a scratchbuilt one, or just forgo him entirely?

I just saw the sprues for the new Space Marine kits released tomorrow and HOLY CRAP..! My marines are nowhere near as cool as the ones that are going to start popping up after these kits are released are. There are certainly some very cool pieces coming on these kits.

As for Vulkan, I have grabbed an official standard model that I'll paint up, but I'm also heavily considering converting up a home style conversion.

Well yesterday marked the day that the new Space Marine codex and kits were released.

I went to go pick up my new codex, and couldn't help myself but to pick up a few of the new kits. I grabbed one Tactical Squad box, one Sternguard squad box, and one of the new Hunter/Stalker AA tanks.



Here's the tank assembled as a Hunter, without giving too much away, these things are going to be incredible against flyers, and I'm considering running two of them in a list.

The new tac and sternguard kits are incredible, so many fantastic parts, most exciting however are the new combi weapons


Combi Flamer off the Sternguard sprue


More of the combiweapons from Sternguard sprue


Tac squad sprue comes with one combi weapon, the bolter section is seperate, and then you can choose which combi-piece to use.

Okay, so I have been *super* lazy about updating this blog, and it really is a shame.

The good news is that I haven't been completely lazy with actually working on the army, just posting.

To try and rectify this, I'm going to post a current update on where things are at.

I do have a HEAP of WiP photos saved somewhere on my phone and/or pc, and I will endeavour to upload these so you can see the progress the army has undertaken, but for now, here's where the Salamanders are at!

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The entire army as it currently stands. Please note most of these units are still WIP. Unfortunately the way I generally work isn't to paint one unit to completion then move to the next, but to work on units until I get bored, or distracted by something new I get. It's not the greatest, as it usually means nothing is every quite *finished*, but unfortunately I've fallen into the habit again.
(After these pics were taken, I realised I've left off my scouts - d'oh!)

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Characters. In the middle we have Vulkan He'Stan himself, on the right a Terminator Librarian, built from the Space Hulk character, and on the left is my version of Harath Shen.

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Squad 2, with dedicated Rhino transport.

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Bikes. Decided I needed some grav guns (after getting smashed by T8 wraithknights and T6 riptides) and what better than grav guns with relentless to always get the full amount of shots?

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Venerable dread in dedicated Drop Pod transport. This guy is ususally used as a suicide unit to get First Blood with a twin linked melta.

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Thunderfire cannon with techmarine.

These Salamanders look great, can't wait to see more

Excellent stuff! Is that the Chapterhouse kit on the Drop Pod? Looks good. I love the Mk3 armoured apothecary, too!

How did I miss this? Awesome work, and subbed for more. These are all excellently clean, well-executed and the attention to detail is great. Looking forward to seeing where this goes.

Heh. I just had a flashback to some of GW’s early, less useful, painting guides. The ones that go from Prime -> basecoat -> golden demon. You know there are more steps involved, and you want to see them. But love the end one.

Looking very nice there.

Fantastic army, looking forward to more!

Following this. working on my own salamanders army so this is inspiring for me.

Paradigm wrote:How did I miss this? Awesome work, and subbed for more. These are all excellently clean, well-executed and the attention to detail is great. Looking forward to seeing where this goes.

Definitely an error on my behalf, not yours. As I said I was super slack in updating this, I'm quite disappointed really, but I'll try and upload some of the WIP in-between stages of what I've posted above, as well as continuing to post new stuff I work on.

Nevelon wrote:Heh. I just had a flashback to some of GW’s early, less useful, painting guides. The ones that go from Prime -> basecoat -> golden demon. You know there are more steps involved, and you want to see them. But love the end one.

Looking very nice there.

Definitely going to try and get some of the other steps posted, as above

Slinky wrote:Excellent stuff! Is that the Chapterhouse kit on the Drop Pod? Looks good. I love the Mk3 armoured apothecary, too!

Indeed the Chapterhouse kits on the Drop Pod. To be honest these were a quite the pain to get to fit well.
Your sallies look quite tasty too!

AlphariusOmegon wrote:Following this. working on my own salamanders army so this is inspiring for me.

rohansoldier wrote:Fantastic army, looking forward to more!

TheYellowSubmarine wrote:These Salamanders look great, can't wait to see more

Thanks guys! Will endeavour to post some more shortly.