Tuesday, 25 July 2017

Side-Project: Six Flavours of Primaris


So, the other day I was going to buy the Easy Build Plague Marines and, of course, it occurred to me that it'd be useful to also pick up the Easy Build Poxwalkers, as well. After all, thought I, they are a unit that gains models through combat so it would help to have a couple extra bodies knocking around.

Of course, when you start thinking like that its a slippery slope and you think “What's five pounds more for the big set?” After all, it gets me a little cardboard scenery and a mini-rulebook. I do like a mini-rulebook or, rather, my arms and back like a mini-rulebook when I'm lugging my army down to the local store.

And I get six Primaris Marines, after all that other stuff effectively for free (shut up, I'm rationalising).

Frankly, its the perfect opportunity to do some colour tests to see whether a different palette makes me more interested in the Primaris designs. Its not that I hate them, they just don't quite inspire me yet. So, a few ideas I want to test:

Intercessor #1: Fire Hawks

Unlike most chapters on this list the Fire Hawks aren't here because I particularly like their background. In all honesty, I barely remember any of it. I remember that they're a Cursed Founding chapter and that's about it. I assume they have a thing for flamer weapons but that's a wild stab in the dark. Rather, they're on here purely for how pretty they look. They have orange-brown armour with freehand yellow flames painted on them. That's cool.

I've always suspected that Space Marines might look good in orange and not only does this work as a test case but I get to practice some simple freehand, which is an area I have been meaning to improve on for a long time now.

Intercessor #2: Angels Revenant

One of those great colour schemes that Forge World periodically creates for chapters that just die out in the first few pages of an Imperial Armour story but I reckon the Ultima Founding will have resurrected a few chapters using archived gene-seed so here we are. Also, resurrecting a dead chapter saves on having to come up with new names, colur schemes and such and the Imperium is nothing if not ultimately a really lazy bureaucracy.

Anyway, royal purple armour with bone elements, I love the contrast and I think deep purple is one of those colours that will really sell the idea of Primaris Marines as glorious agents of the Emperor. I feel these models, free from much of the crusty ostentation of normal Space Marines, might benefit from a really clean and artificial colour scheme.

Intercessor #3: Celestial Lions

Speaking of the congenitally screwed: the Celestial Lions. I have some Custodes that I've been meaning to get to for a while so a chance to test out gold armour methods would be welcome. Also, the bright blue on the shoulder armour is something I want to test myself against as getting a good, solid bright blue is a colour I've struggled with a lot. I'm thinking of adapting a method the Dark Imperium building guide recommends for plasma coils.

On the subject of potential futures, there's a history of the Lions working with the Black Templars so they could appear as an allied detachment to my beloved Black Templars.

Reiver #1: Raptors

I love the Raptors for their very direct and very non-Codex attitude of “whatever works”. Take command of local Imperial Guard regiments? If it helps! Repaint your armour for camoflague? Not a bad idea!

In painting terms, this is the least ambitious on the list. They wear camoflague green armour and I could be lazy and just use the same all-purpose green method I use on my Orks and Death Guard but there's a rather good WarhammerTV video for an olive green Raptors armour I want to try because I need more green methods so that everything in my Death Guard doesn't look identical.

This will definitely be the Reiver with the bare head because I want to experiment with a pale flesh method to represent the pallid Raven Guard fleshtone.

Reiver #2: Exorcists

First of bloody all, they're not blanks! I feel oddly strongly about this and I don't know why, I read the Forge World background first where they have a psyker brotherhood called the Orison of the Broken Tower, of which their Badab special character is a member. Okay, rant over, moving on...

If you're detecting a little bias towards the chapters of the Badab War you are not wrong. Those two books are my favourite Imperial Armour books in terms of story and of all the chapters in that book the Exorcists are the ones who grabbed my imagination the most. I love the idea of having a chapter who are daemon hunting specialists but still perform all the general functions of a Space Marine chapter. I actually, briefly, had an Exorcists army but it was before I could paint even as middlingly well as I do now.

Painting opportunities here are to try a brighter red than I use on my Flesh Tearers as well as perhaps trying to achieve a very, very dark grey for the trim (I originally painted it black but looking at the illustrations it is actually a grey).

Reiver #3: Carcharadons (aka Space Sharks)

Oh, I love the Carcharadons. For one thing they're an ultra-aggressive crusading chapter who patrol the outer darkness of the galaxy fighting vaguely defined supernatural menaces. They have mutated shark skin, basically, as a result of corrupted Raven Guard gene-seed. Also, they have what basically amounts to a monochromatic colour scheme going from dark grey to light grey to off-white which looks amazingly cool. Also, their armour has these markings based on Polynesian tattoos which should be fun / frustrating to attempt. 

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