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Hello! Late last year I started working on my first Space Marine army after growing a bit bored with my Militarum Tempestus (People hadn't yet figured out how to counter deep strike, so I felt it might be time to move onto something more fun to face.), and I've always liked the colour scheme of the Minotaurs and the few special models they do have are great (Particularly Asterion Moloc and Hecaton Aiakos) which I can't wait to paint, but I'm forcing myself to work on the small fry first (with a few exceptions) so as to get some colour on the table for once. (I'm a notoriously slow painter...) Of course while I still like the colour scheme and think the models (whilst not completely finished) turned out well, painting so much metal is annoying since you can't use a wet-pallet (or at least it's never worked for me) and so it dries way too fast... Anyway, here are some of the WIP and (somewhat) finished models I've built/painted so far


My first Tactical Squad, forgot the lenses on the unit leader... Woops. Whilst it's probably a bit contradictory toward the lore I wanted to embrace their Spartan-esque style fully and so I got spartan styled helmets for my tactical marines and separate crests for my Mk4 armoured marines (whom are almost exclusively veterans). I really like the look of Mk3 and 4 armours, so I've used those as the basis for my army with some smaller modifications.


My WIP Vanguard Veteran squad, one of the first units I started working on (mostly to see if it would work conceptually), put them to the side for now since while I love the look of them Power Lances and Storm Shields are not the most efficient loadout xD


Some more WIP pictures, this time of my Sniper Scouts. Never liked the scout models, most of it's due to them being old sculpts but the heads are just so bad... Luckily with a bit of work I could fit these helmeted heads on them. Though in some ways I'm thinking they might look too badass for scouts...

Don't have a picture of the whole unit (which is why I put the unpainted one up above), but I do have one of my first 'test' model. Given their roles as infiltrators and snipers, having them in glowing bronze/brass made no sense to me, so I went for a more dark scheme with these guys and though it can't be seen from the picture the camo-cloak is a variety of black and greys (and a tiny bit of brown) to fit with the cityfight basing theme.


My magnetized Captain, a few gun options but I usually go for the Mastercrafted Boltgun and "Thunder Spear"(Thunder Hammer, spartan style) combo in the second image.



My Contemptor Dreadnoughts, the painted one is the boring "Betrayal at Calth" contemptor with literally no poseability, did what I dared without risking breaking it and I guess it works. Good for testing how the colour scheme works on larger models however.
The other one is my Relic Contemptor with some weapon options(And almost every piece above the waist magnetized... Sometimes becomes a problem.), either double fists with Plasma Blastguns or two twin-lascannons, though I've become partial to taking a fist and a double lascannon lately, so I'm gonna have to convert a combi-bolter for his hand. No real picture for Aiakos yet, but I did have him fighting the Emperor's Champion the other day, so that was fun


And finally for the unit I've put the most time and effort into so far, my Terminator Assault Squad which I envision as Asterion Molocs honour guard.

Fully greenstuffed capes and "Thunder Spears" and cool spartan themed shields (Though the quality wasn't quite what I expected. Very thin on the outside, and literally no detail on the back...). Like with everything, still needs some more work (highlighting the non-metals and oxide effect on the brass specifically).

And some more WIP pictures. The ones I'm most excited to paint right now are probably my "Chapter Command", which I made by using Mk4 Space Marine bits, some third party stuff and Custodes bodies. They turned out a lot taller than expected, but I don't care too much about that, if anything it gives them character

The Chapter Ancient is obvious, next to him is the Chapter Champion (Though I'll be using the Company Champion profile, I like the idea of giving him the Shield Eternal), and on the outside are my two Honour Guards which will most of the time be accompanying Aiakos and a Tech Marine to make him about as survivable as one can get. Very expensive combo, but one hell of a distraction.

Half of my Second Tactical Squad WIP


Bolter Scouts and sergeant with Stormbolter with underslung shotgun WIP


Opinions and critique welcome

I'd say the "badassness" of your scouts is just right.
XD

Well still haven't gotten back to my second Tactical Squad, but I instead have Forgebane to distract me, so here's my first attempt at an Armiger. Slightly "acquired" from somewhere... Hmm.

Well it took a while but I'm finally "finished" with Hecaton Aiakos, just after his embarrassing defeat to T'au this week. Maybe bringing 5 Deadnoughts and 2 Armigers wasn't such a good idea

Need to highlight the 'vines' some more, and work on the plasma glow, but overall I'm happy with the result. Still not convinced on the text on the things, but I can always repaint them if I change my mind.

Next up I'll probably work on my Lieutenant and Scouts. Unless I choose to build more Marines first... Really wish I had access too Crusader Squads, would work so well with my imagined list xD Maybe I'll just make more Vanguard Veterans, that extra attack of theirs is pretty good, at least compared to Assault Marines(Who would be awesome if they were troops ).

The wear and tear with the smudged writing on the cloth looks so cool! Easy to do? Honestly thought it was actual fabric before a second look.

BabyRipper

babyripper wrote:
The wear and tear with the smudged writing on the cloth looks so cool! Easy to do? Honestly thought it was actual fabric before a second look.

BabyRipper

Huh, thanks. Bit of cheating with the writing since it's literally penciled on (0.1mm "document fine liner" permanent) and then finger smudged a bit before it completely dried and a soft drybrush over it to make it look weathered and remove the worst slips with the pencil (surprisingly hard to make straight lines on a curved surface ).

Don't remember exactly how I did the cloth itself, started with Reapers MSP Moldy Skin (first time I found a use for it, huzzah!), then I think I did a pretty hard drybrush of MSP Polished Bone (I think it's somewhere between skull white and ushabti bone. Kind of porcelain-ish when done on a smooth surface), then I think I washed it with agrax earthshade (not sure on the order of the last two steps) before highlighting with polished bone again. I believe this is when I did the writing as described above.

Hopefully that was helpful to some extent... I really need to write down my process for these things so I don't forget it for myself xD

These are great! Where did you get the spartan helmets? I'm planning a Minotaurs army myself (I've already discovered the Shapeways pauldrons!).

 corpuschain wrote:
These are great! Where did you get the spartan helmets? I'm planning a Minotaurs army myself (I've already discovered the Shapeways pauldrons!).

Thanks, yeah the Minotaurs has a pretty neat theme and I like how they are unrepentant donkey-caves even amongst Marine chapters (Funnily enough, my other favourite chapters include the Salamanders.)

The helmets (both variants) and the horse-hair plumes on the Mk4 marines, along with the spears on the Terminators, the capes on the tactical sergeants(and a few others), the shields on the melee Scouts and the jump packs on the Vanguard Vets are all from Anvil Industries. They have a fairly expansive line of "Exo-Lords" models and bits, most of which work for conversions. As with all resin some cleaning is needed, but I haven't really needed to soak them like I do with Forge World stuff (But I probably should have xD)

The shapeways pauldrons are pretty good, the quality on the loose chapter symbols are a bit spotty at times however but I've made do, since while I like Forge Worlds pauldrons they are a bit too much to have on everything... So I stick them on unit leaders or veterans generally.