+ inload: Hold fast! Ultramarine Breachers +

+ The Vigintii +

+ I've banged on a lot about Breachers over the past couple of inloads, so rather than repeating myself, I'll simply pop up some pictures of the squad as they currently stand. +

+ Sergeant and four marines. The banner was painted with the new Iyanden Darksun (apologies, I can't remember the name) then washed with sepia ink. While wet, I used my thumb to wipe off the excess ink from the raised areas. Once dry, I used slightly diluted Iyanden Darksun to clean it up a bit, then added Dheneb Stone to the mix for highlights. The detail is all moulded on – I think the backpack is a metal piece from the character Sicarius. +

+ Note the inclusion of an heraldic tilt shield – I'm really enjoying adding these to the occasional veteran. +

+ Squad leader and four marines. Being organised to a fault, the Ultramarines always have a chain of command in place. This fella doesn't have any in-game rules, but made a good excuse to have a bit more fun modelling – building lots of near-uniform models isn't the most exciting process, even if the end result is worth it. +

+...and all together, plus Brother Letas (in the red helm of censure). The bases aren't complete, and nor are the squad markings. The little circles you can see on the shields will have an eta (η) symbol. Rather annoyingly, despite spending [SCRAPSHUNTERRORABORT] ages last night carefully painting in the Breacher Squad symbol (an inverted omega with a gladius through the centre) on every right shoulderpad, I forgot to get a pict-capture of any of them. +

+ You can just about make one or two out in this rather gloomy WIP picture, but you'll probably have to use your imagination for now. Regarding the markings, I couldn't resist adding a few little personalising details – the occasional CXC (for the 190th), legion numeral or additional Legion symbol here and there – but I've deliberately left them fairly neutral. These are, after all, new Ultramarines. Not quite raw recruits, but only just beginning to write their legends... +

+++ AMEND +++

+ I've now secured a pict-capture of the Breacher squad details:

+++AMEND TERMINUS+++

+ What next? +

+ With the first ten (well, eleven) Vigintii requiring just some final weathering and basing, the next things on the painting table:

+ Ah, more Breachers. Well, that's not particularly exciting. +

+ Ah, an apothecary! That's a bit more fun. I've a solid preference for the visuals of a game, and one of the things that always slightly disheartens me is when one or other army isn't on the table. This is generally due to it being pretty much all in reserve, or all in flyers, or so forth. My army sits around looking daft and then getting shot from all angles as they pop up, with no opportunity to actually fight. Fortunately, my Iron Warriors army taught me the great pleasure of augury scanners and Explorator augury webs, which go a long way to disrupting reserves and generally making life a bit more difficult for infiltration/deep-strike heavy armies, and giving my Ultramarines a chance to shoot back before they're annihilated. Why's this relevant? Well, Apothecaries can have augury scanners, so that's what he's clutching in his left hand. +

+ The visuals bites both ways – I suspect my infantry-heavy army would benefit from having lots of apothecaries, but it just seems a bit off to me to have so many in an army. One apothecary to every forty or so men seems alright, though. +