+ Defenders of Nocturne – 2nd Company Salamanders +
+ An experiment in speed-painting +
+ Well, here we go in earnest! Fresh from the forges of Lucifer216 are some of the designs of the absolutely tip-top chap, @bolterjugend. Pictured above is one of his takes on Mark VII armour, pictured alongside my clod-fingered conversion. As you can see, @bolterjugend's models are very nicely proportioned, with a real feel of 'walking tank'. +
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| + The whole gang + |
+ And since they're very nicely 3D printed, I had thirteen of them cleaned and part assembled within an hour of opening the parcel. They then received a series of priming sprays. The boltguns, backpack and shoulder pads (plus bare heads) were sprayed with Halford's black primer; while the bodies (all one piece, together with arms) and helmets were primed with Halfords camouflage brown all over. +
+ Once dry, the bodies were glued to bases and sprayed from approximately 45 degrees off horizontal with Halford's camouflage green. This left a little brown in the recesses and lower areas. The process was repeated with Colourforge's Salamander Green spray – something I picked up recently and with which I have been very impressed – to give some very simple zenithal shading. +
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| + While the marines are considerably bulkier than Primaris, they've been designed with a lot of consideration for kitbashing, so – as you can see here – GW and FW heads fit nicely with no adjustment. + |
+ After leaving them to dry (and not really long enough, if I'm honest – I was just very excited to build them! You should leave them overnight between each spray to de-gas, if possible), I used superglue to assemble them. This involved nothing more than gluing on the heads, backpacks, pauldrons and guns, and took about ten minutes. Reminiscent of nothing more complex than the push-fit marines from 2nd ed. – rather fitting for this Battle-for-Armageddon-themed project. +
+ The results, I'll hope you agree, look very effective. I can't quite put my finger on it, but they remind me of the best bits of the 2nd edition marines. It's more than just the armour mark; there's something about the cleanliness of the lines. Anyway, I'm really pleased with them. My plan is to supplement these marines with my own conversions, getting the best of mass-production and hand-crafting. +
+ On reflection, I may have rather rushed through the building of these – perhaps I'll pop back and swap out some hands for special/heavy weapons before painting them all. +
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+ Roll call +
+ And so to the lore. The Dust of Armageddon project is themed around the Second War for Armageddon, and so I've been doing some research. There's not, in truth, a great deal of specific information on the actions of the Salamanders beyond the fact that their Chapter Master, Tu'Shan, was newly-invested, and ceded command to Dante of the Blood Angels. +
The Salamanders took upon themselves the essential but neglected task of protecting the supply convoys, fighting rearguard actions against the Orks' advances and escorting refugee columns.
+ The artwork of the period mostly shows the Salamanders Second Company, the 'Defenders of Nocturne' – white Salamander on a black field. Although this is pretty much the 'default' Company colour (in the same way as ninety percent of Space Wolves armies use the Blackmane Company markings), it looks good and I'm happy to use it as the basis for the scheme here. +
+ Happily, in terms of timeline, we find that the Second War occurred about thirty years after the Badab War – and which company fought there? That's right, the Second Company again. Nice – so there's a lovely narrative opportunity to have this army include a substantial proportion of Badab veterans, along with a new intake from the Reserve Companies. +
+ These Marines will be that recent intake. Far from being inexperienced, they are fully-fledged and battle-hardened Salamanders, but Badab proved a brutal war, and the Second Company was sorely depleted. +
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+ Who's who? +
+ I stumbled upon an awesome name generator on Realm of Plastic [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+], and thought I'd use it to work up some names for these thirteen lucky warriors who've been promoted to Captain Mir'san's Company. +
+ Selected for promotion are:
- Nomix Nor'jargan
- Illor Hak'phast
- Cassax Fo'ken
- Adrak Ush'en
- Vor'ord Grorn
- Atanarian Sepor
- Typhak Numatone
- Iaptane Greon
- V'reth Tarsidemi
- Volkaeus Orurr
- Clysis Skatar'tarro
- Mulbaku Numek
- Dakad Ka
+ My conversions (left), will serve as the Company veterans etc, but I'm looking forward to painting up the @bolterjugend sculpts. +
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1 comment:
'...they remind me of the best bits of the 2nd edition marines. It's more than just the armour mark; there's something about the cleanliness of the lines.'
Its also the simpleness of the paintjob at this point. I was only today looking over the 2nd ed marine Garfy got and the period painting instructions:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FxDjBqiXoAAGH1e?format=jpg&name=large
Step 2 has the model painted flat red, with flat black details and concludes: 'When you've painted your base green, your model is ready for the battlefield'
Not that anyone needs permission to field their miniatures- but that is correct, at this point all the functional elements of the mini are visible to aid its use as a playing piece. It is also recognisable as a Blood Angel. Everything that follows is embellishment- highlighting, fiddly skulls and details, metallics (which could be black)
In all the blanchitsu and recess shades, simplicity gets lost. Your models look great in gren and black and everything you do from this point on will be cherries on top of some great sculpts.
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