While the Terrain and Lost Patrol stuff go off in their own directions, I have not been idle on the paining and modeling front. Having set my (rather ludicrous) targets for the 2017/18 Hobby Season I have decided to initially focus on getting the Dark Angels/Night Sentinels Battle Company up and running. While the bulk of this company was already completed for the Tournament last year there were a few glaring omissions from the fully fitted out 100 man strong company. The main one of these was the Assault Squads, and so I have set about amending this oversight.

First of all I had decided that going for two ten man squads was only worth while doing if I put 2 flamers and an eviscerator in each squad, as well as having one on foot and one with jump packs. This would give me some flexibility in how I run them in games, making it far more likely that I actually would take them and not feel like I was just paying the fluff tax for having them.

This required a bit or rejigging of my existing assault squad on foot, as well as some conversion work for the eviscerators (as I don’t want to buy the new box of assault marines or the extortionately priced bitz on EBay). I would also be repurposing a varied mix of jump pack assault marine spares that I have acquired form EBay over the years, meaning a slightly disparate look but ultimately cheap squad.

As before, my initial aim is to get the units built first of all (meeting the Great Build Target of the Hobby season list) and then painted to the same basic colour layer standard with basing and transfers that the rest of the Battle Company is up to. Hopefully then I can just go back and highlight afterwards and take them to the next level.

Assault Squad Hese

So this is the existing assault squad on foot, but with two flamers removed and a normal assault trooper added along with the eviscerator dude. I’ve also taken the opportunity to touch these guys up a little (as they were a bit rushed last time with the deadline looming) as well as spent a bit of time on the sergeants faces (which I’m pretty happy with, given they were both covered in EBay gakk)

So this is my home baked eviscerator wielding marine – really simple conversion, basically cut up two chainswords and filed down the inside and stuck them together. It doesn’t look quite as cool or dynamic as the proper model, but I think it has that 40K air of ludicrous overstatement and menace. It also cost nothing to make, with the Kroot’s decapitated head a nice little bonus. I also took care not to model it with a bolt pistol incase I come across any WYSIWYG Nazis out there (but put a holstered one on the leg instead so I can use it as a normal assault guy if I need to!)

Process:

•Sprayed Chaos Black, with Dark Green Wash on black armor areas

•Trims, joints, breastplates and gun/chainsword bits done in Leadbelcher,

•Eyes, Pauldron Icons, purity seals and sword casings in Mephiston Red,

•Based with Fine Brown Sand, washed with Seraphim Sepia and Dry brushed with Bleached Bone. Clumps of grass and stones added

Faces done trying to follow the WD article on faces, but to a level I can manage 🙂

•Transfers added and painted over in Mephiston Red

Thoughts:

Pretty happy for now, not the most amazing of paint jobs but it makes them playable and gives me room for improvement later. It also gives me two big fat To Done badges for the Hobby Season, the first I have achieved so far – and we are already a month in! Time to crack on, Jump pack assault squad is almost there but not quite, so they will be the next update (hopefully soon, unless I get distracted by X-Wing again 🙂