A delve into creating my custom successors and how I got there
Small beginnings
When I first got back into the hobby in college I was really at a loss of where to start, it had been around 4 years since I had seriously done any hobby with my poorly painted ultramarines, orks , goblins and dwarves sitting in storage or lost in my family home. Starting from scratch with all my paints dried out the natural choice was the dark vengeance set , Chaos Vs Dark angels !
Like most when joining the hobby at that time it was warhammerTV and Duncans Videos that guided me on how to paint the boys in green . While these where by no means fantastic models I did feel very proud of them at the time… although I think even then I knew my photography skills where lacking on them . While I was content with my dark angels, at the time it was the chaos and their lovely chosen trim that truly attracted my eye leaving me to neglect the poor marines for quite some time
This however would change drastically with the Deathwing. I fell in love with the bone guys and terminators in general ( something I do not remember liking that much when painting up black reach ) I really started to flex my skills although still unable to photograph them and started to see some actually pretty impressive results. While blurry the banner in this image isn’t too bad, and while there is still a lot of mistakes over the model I was getting neater and neater with each one
As time went on I added 15 more terms with the Deathwing box, 5 more Cataphractii Belial and another set of the push to fit Deathwing from a friend building up quite the Deathwing army.
Inevitably this love of bone began to bleed over. I no longer wanted just bone terms but bone dreads and then bone marines. And all of a sudden I was repainting ( or overpainting more like it ) all my marines in the same thick bone scheme
Finally finding what I loved I started to branch out and build out a full force adding librarians , chaplains, razorbacks and such to
A heresy revolution
However the true lighting in a bottle for me was the mk3 kits. While I had enjoyed mk4 in the betray at calth set it was mk3 that spurred me on to another level .
Gone was the chunky bone painted over black primer , swapped out for army painter bone spray to leave a much better finish . A also changed up my golds swapping to the new retributor armour gold everyone was talking about with some washes of reikland fleshshade to bring it down a bit . Also gone was the dark angel! During this time I wanted to branch out a bit and make my own successor. My previous guys where just angels of absolution in their bone but the blue pad and knee made them something new. Thus the “Lions Wrath” was born with very little thought beyond “lets make them a little different ”
As well as this we can see my first serious attempts at freehand in both the chapter symbol and the little bits of freehand text on the model. Something that will stick around for the long term
My plan at the time was a full company of mk3 with mk3 assault, jump , chaplain and such and I started making very good progress on them
it was during this I first tried an experiment . Black parts of the armour for the arms and legs and leaving just the main body , shoulder and knee pads bone. This is an idea started here but not one I would forget, after all I think even now it still looks cool . however I had no idea what was on the horizon for marines that would throw my existing projects into the bin
Era Primaris
While the leaks had started to appear online I was still not prepared for what was to come . Primaris struck me like a bolt of lighting and utterly captured all of my attention . All of a sudden my terms and my mk3 where tiny and bad and these lovely tall boys where here to consume my hobby … and boy did they. While I was in the hobby prior clearly . 8th edition made me a diehard and its been my main “thing” ever since for 9 years.
But with this renewed interest so came another change in scheme. While I mainly stuck with the same bone I wanted to create the appearance of almost an over and under armour on the model, to my knowledge I was the first person to do this however the world is wide and there are plenty of other creative people. I kept the blue pads as well as the script on the marine .
I started to add some little markers aswell on the marines with stripes , bands, triangles after trying it on the mk3 assault marines
While not every model hooked me ( gravis captain and inceptors ) the dread, hellblasters and intercessors got me painting a tonne over the next few years
I was beginning to build out a real force of marines, and painted them up while also taking some detours to painting some knights refining and getting better at my bone boys
The great Phobos experiment
In a surprise twist games workshop made another starter set …. mid edition . This time with a whole bunch of stealthy looking units. Problem. My guys are bright bone and don’t really fit that much . Solution. Paint them black .
Its interesting to look back at all the choices I made and how they would lead to my current scheme. Swapping out the bone and the black gave a very different and custom feel to these guys that I loved. While phobos is divisive at the time I loved these lot and painted up 20 of them .
I was experimenting more with faces, colours, cloth and such
This lead me to an interesting point in my marines. I was honestly having more fun painting the black then I was the bone … and so … I changed up my scheme completely.
I took the silver and black from my Phobos and bashed them right into my normal marines. I also started to make a real effort on this squad to make then “veteran intercessors” which is now a defunct datasheet. I gave them knives, tilting shields , DA helmets, greenstuff capes and loincloths. Overall I still actually really like these guys . While the execution isn’t always there the basic ideas here are still really solid. I was looking to push the marine kits to my limit .
Era Indomitus
Covid and a new amazing starter set meant one thing for me . Paint like there is no tomorrow. While I was not going quite as far on the conversions with my indomitus era marines as the prior vets I was started to get more comfortable with kitbashing and converting, trying to make every character and HQ special to mine
Indomitus felt like it was my dream in model form , extra details , robes, gothic . During this period I got very health, had a bunch of freetime , avoided covid and painted marines
I was also starting to see social media success on my marines too. Getting a few hundred followers on Facebook and getting some traction on Reddit . All felt amazing… until suddenly it didn’t .
Going back to uni, doing my final year My interest in marines started to fade. Cursed city then stormcast caught my attention for a solid while taking me away . I sold most of my old mk3 and took a break.
On returning I made a massive mistake. I thought “black marines and grey bases that’s not right” and went to solve it . I am very happy with the marines I painted during this era , some of them a lot. However the Blanche inspired basses where a disaster. They where annoying to paint with so many layers need, the enamels I used where wayy to glossy and I had to spend ages trying to fix it , and the end result is a mess.
This period is largely saved by the amazing black templar models that where perfect for conversion. I do want to recreate these models in my current scheme when I have the time but for now they are good models on bad bases
However while working on the captain conversion base I had to paint some more bone marines… and kind of liked it . So with this in hand I went to paint some of my classic scheme again on some more models .
While these models are quite far in technique from how I do my current marines you can feel the similarity a lot more in them . unlike before I did volumes, better shading and highlights , I used scale necro gold after seeing cult of paint use them and overall it caused me to fall in love with bone once again .
This time I felt the new edition calling and I know something had to change. The basing was not working for me, my scheme was not working for me, how I painted was not working for me .
One scout changes everything
Being there in person at warhammer fest for the 10th edition reveal was utterly fantastic. Seeing the terminators, captain , librarian , new dreadnought and just being around everyone was lovely .
However my marines where in limbo, I needed to paint up some test models to try and figure out what I wanted to do . Thinking back on my two main schemes the bone and the black I wanted to make something in-between . This is when this amazing horus heresy art appeared on my feed . It was basically everything I wanted and more . The bone, blue and black all on one model .
Aswell as this the recent lion model had shown something to me… black doesn’t need to be grey or blue. It can be green . So with all this I made some test models , not just for the new scheme but a new way of basing
On reflection , these where horrible test models. The lack of trim, Low amount of black armour plates, no backpack or helmet left things way to open . But despite that, they where the best looking marines from a paint perspective I had ever done by a mile. I knew I had found something special . And god while the basing was a pain it finally looked good.
Not sure how I found epic basing 4 years ago but by this time I had my printer up and running and pumping out bits for me .
With this my modern scheme was born proper. There is still some more steps to go , with me still using a lot of primaris mk10 helmets back then , green cloth instead of red. But this is the age I’m still on
I will be going over this scheme , how it works, what I changed, why I do what I do in another Blog post soon. Just wanted to map our their journey first. Expect two articles: In love of terminators and Lions Wrath.
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