Category: Space Marines

Brother Amset, Sons of Horus

On By Chris B.In Horus Heresy, LEDs, Painting Recipe, Sons of Horus, Space Marines1 Comment

Let the galaxy burn!

Warmaster Horus, Primarch of the Sons of Horus

In a surprise to absolutely no one, I’m back again this week with another MKVI Space Marine. What is surprising is that it’s not a loyalist painted in a primary colour – red, blue or yellow – but in a lovely sea green traitor! Brother Amset of the Sons of Horus is a test model for an upcoming project, just like my Custodian and Imperial Fist from recent weeks. It’s been many years since I’ve painted a Marine who has spat on his oaths to the Emperor, and it felt a bit strange!

Modelling & Painting

Brother Amset was built straight from the Legion MKVI Tactical Squad kit, apart from being given the LED helmet eye lens and bolter muzzle flare treatment, as detailed in my LED Muzzle Flare tutorial. As there wasn’t anything too complex about this build, I took the opportunity to document the process and refresh my LED Muzzle Flare tutorial. I’ve made some significant changes to this tutorial to reflect improvements I’ve developed in this process over the years. The original June 2019 version of this tutorial has been archived here in case anyone still wants to reference it.

The paint recipes I used for this model draw heavily from the Warhammer+ Citadel Masterclass tutorials. I found painting an entirely new colour of power armour a refreshing change! The whole miniature was spray undercoated with Chaos Black spray. All paints are Citadel unless specified otherwise.

  • Sons of Horus Armour
  • Sons of Horus Green basecoat (2-3 thin coats)
  • 50:50 Incubi Darkness:Abaddon Black shade
  • 50:50 Sons of Horus Green:Sybarite Green highlight
  • Sybarite Green fine highlight
  • Gauss Blaster Green dot highlight
  • Black Armour
  • Abaddon Black basecoat
  • Incubi Darkness highlight
  • Sons of Horus Green fine highlight
  • 50:50 Sons of horus Green:Deepkin Flesh dot highlight
  • Silver Metallics
  • Leadbelcher basecoat
  • Nuln Oil shade
  • Stormhost Silver highlight
  • Gold Metallics
  • Scorched Brown basecoat
  • Retributor Armour layer
  • Reikland Fleshshade shade
  • Stormhost Silver highlight
  • Martian Base
  • Mournfang Brown basecoat
  • Martian Ironearth technical paint
  • Reikland Fleshshade shade
  • Jokareo Orange drybrush
  • Lugganath Orange drybrush
  • Doombull Brown glaze on model’s feet and ankles
  • Tuskgor Fur glaze on model’s feet, ankles and shins

I also continued my experiments with making the eyes and special effects look better when the LED is switched off. I applied a very thin glaze of red all over each eye lens, followed by a thin glaze of orange towards the bottom of the lens. Lastly, a very watered down dot of white in the opposite corner. The muzzle flare was shaded with Fuegan Orange at the widest point nearest the barrel of the bolter. Once that was dry, the whole muzzle flare was given a watered down glaze of Imperial Fist contrast paint.

That’s it for this week. I had a lot of fun painting a Son of Horus and am looking forward to revisiting this colour scheme again (which is just as well really). As always, thanks very much for reading, and please don’t forget you can also follow my work on social media at Twitter, Mastodon and Instagram. I’ll see you again soon for some more LED miniatures!

Brother Lydus, Imperial Fists

On By Chris B.In Horus Heresy, Imperial Fists, LEDs, Painting Recipe, Space Marines2 Comments

A man’s soul needs to be a fortress.

Rogal Dorn, Primarch of the Imperial Fists

I’m back again with another MKVI Space Marine, but this time it’s not a converted Primaris Marine! Brother Lydus is built straight from the new(ish) Legion MKVI Tactical Squad kit. Just like my Custodian from a few weeks ago, this Imperial Fist is an individual test model for another upcoming project.

Modelling & Painting

I haven’t done a lot of conversion work on this model, by my standards at least. I’ve just given it the very basic LED helmet eye lens treatment, as detailed in my LED Eye Lens tutorial. As this model was so straightforward to make, I took the opportunity to document the process and refresh my LED Eye Lens tutorial. It is essentially the same, with a few minor improvements and clarifications, as well as new, clearer photos. I know from my website stats that this particular tutorial is one of the most visited pages on my website, especially as many of the other more complex tutorials reference it as a starting point. It’s a few years old now so I thought it was worth bringing up-to-date. I haven’t deleted the original August 2018 version though, that is now archived here in case anyone still wanted to reference it.

Previously I’ve used blue LEDs for Imperial Fists, but I decided to switch to red for this project. This is for two reasons: firstly it more closely matches the current Horus Heresy artwork for the Imperial Fists, and secondly I find the red LEDs are more vibrant than the blue equivalents, especially on camera.

For the paint scheme, I mostly stuck to my traditional yellow recipe, but with a few tweaks, detailed below. I decided to try applying the shades slightly later in the process, but also applying different levels of shades in different areas of the yellow armour to give a bit more depth to the large smooth surfaces that characterise MKVI plate. The whole miniature was undercoated with Chaos Black spray.

  • Yellow Armour
  • Averland Sunset basecoat
  • Yriel Yellow layer (2-3 thin coats)
  • Casandora Yellow shade
  • Fuegan Orange shade in darker areas (slightly watered down)
  • Mournfang Brown shade in deepest recesses
  • Yriel Yellow edge highlight
  • Flash Gitz Yellow fine highlight
  • Dorn Yellow fine highlight on sharpest edges
  • White Scar dot highlight on sharpest edges
  • Black Armour
  • Chaos Black basecoat
  • Eshin Grey highlight
  • Dawnstone fine highlight
  • Silver Metallics
  • Leadbelcher basecoat
  • Nuln Oil shade
  • Stormhost Silver highlight
  • Martian Base
  • Mournfang Brown basecoat
  • Martian Ironearth technical paint
  • Reikland Fleshshade shade
  • Jokareo Orange drybrush
  • Lugganath Orange drybrush

The Martian base was a bit of an experiment, but I’m mostly pleased with how it turned out. I think I’ll go a bit less heavy on the drybrush stages next time. But it still provides a lovely contrast for the yellow armour of the Imperial Fist.

While I was carrying out experiments with the model, I also decided to have a go at making the eyes look better when the LED is switched off. These models spend the majority of their time in my display cabinet with the electronics turned off to save batteries, so I thought it might be nice to not simply have ‘blank’ resin eyes. I applied a very thin glaze of red all over each lens, followed by a thin glaze of orange towards the bottom of the lens. Lastly, a very watered down dot of white in the opposite corner. As you can see in the images below, it works very well – the off-white colour of the resin is an excellent base for the glazes, and the glazes are still thin enough that it doesn’t noticeably effect the LED glow.

That’s it for this week. The plastic Legion MKVI kit is absolutely wonderful – although I might be slightly bias as a real ‘Beakie’ fan boy – and I’m looking forward to revisiting it in the very near future. Anyway, as always, thanks very much for reading, and please don’t forget you can also follow my work on social media at Twitter, Mastodon and Instagram. I’ll see you again soon for some more LED miniatures!

Brother Oram, Flesh Eaters Assault Marine

On By Chris B.In Flesh Eaters, LEDs, Space Marines, Technical, True Scale, War of the False Primarch, Warhammer 40,000Leave a comment

Explosive hull decompression sounds the same in any language.

Brother Oram, Flesh Eaters Assault Marine

It’s back to the Flesh Eaters project this week with Brother Oram, an explosive-equipped Assault Intercessor. Brother Oram is technically the first member of a new Assault Intercessor squad, but for the moment he will join Squad Levers for games of Kill Team as a grenadier specialist.

Building & Painting

I used the techniques described in my LED Eye Lens tutorial to create the effects of Brother Oram’s helmet. The only significant difference worth noting is that I used a TruOpto 1.8mm Green LED instead of the red LED described in the tutorial.

Oram’s bullet ricochet effects were achieved using the techniques described in my Simple LED Muzzle Flare tutorial, only with the “flares” coming from the armour rather than a gun barrel. The two LEDs on this model are connected in parallel and both powered from the same battery and switch.

In the images below you can see the exposed LED on the left, and then the impact effects after the acrylic gel had been applied, as described in steps 13 – 15 of the tutorial. There is one difference though, and that is the addition of “sparks” made from tiny pieces of fibre optic cable. This was an experiment, and I’m very pleased with how it turned out. As seen in the centre image below, after the first application of the acrylic gel, I used a set of fine tweezers to push five short approximately five millimetre lengths of fibre optic into the gel in what I hoped was a random pattern. The end of the fibres in the gel are touching the outer surface of the yellow LED. The acrylic gel is strong enough to hold the fibres in place as it dries, so long as you are careful not to disturb it. Once the initial layer of gel had dried, I then applied a second layer to further sculpt the shape of the ricochet effect, as seen in the image below on the right. This included sculpting the gel upwards to follow the paths of some of the fibres. This was intended to make the “trajectories” of the “sparks” (i.e. the ends of the fibre) look a little more natural. This required some very fine sculpting – I used a small piece of wire to get in between the fibres, rather than my normal sculpting tools.

As I’ve described previously for other members of this squad, the base model is a Primaris Assault Intercessor that I have modified to wear MkVI armour, in keeping with the War of the False Primarch theme for my Flesh Eaters army. You can read the latest from the War of the False Primarch campaign here. For those that are interested, my painting recipe for the red Flesh Eaters armour can be found in this previous post.

One aspect of this model that I painted differently was the battle damage on the pauldrons and left forearm. I haven’t added much battle damage or weathering to the Flesh Eaters in this project, other than some subtle dust and dirt around the feet. But with this miniature I really wanted to sell the idea of a Marine under fire, so I added some damage to hint at previous impacts. This was applied using the sponge method. The damage is Rhinox Hide, which I then highlighted along the lower edge with Evil Sunz Scarlet and Wild Rider Red to give a sense of depth.

My plan from the start with this model was to have him be a grenadier in Kill Team, so I knew that I needed to give some visible indication of this specialism. If you look closely you may see that he has a number of grenades in his belt. His left hand originally held a melta bomb, but I wasn’t happy with the look. I tried switching it for a belt of grenades, but I wasn’t happy with that either. In the end I settled for the limpet mine as something that looked suitably dramatic and brutal! This came out of my bits box, but I think it was originally from a plastic Ork set. In hindsight I wish I’d filed off the rivets to make it look less Orky, but with the right paint job I still think it is feasibly an Imperial weapon!

That’s it for this week, I hope you’ve enjoyed learning about Brother Oram! As always, thanks very much for reading, and please don’t forget you can also follow my work on social media at Twitter, Mastodon and Instagram. I’ll see you again soon for some more LED miniatures!

Demios Predator, 15mm scale

On By Chris B.In Horus Heresy, Horus Heresy 15mm, Imperial Fists, LEDs, Space MarinesLeave a comment

Death has arrived!

Predator tank commander motto

It’s a quick diversion back into slightly unusual territory this week with a 15mm scale Demios Predator! This cool little model was printed as a gift by a good friend who owns a 3D resin printer. He also included some 15mm MkVI Space Marines and several other vehicles, including a 15mm Land Raider that I shared a few weeks ago.

Models at 15mm scale sit somewhere in between the 6mm scale of Epic miniatures and the 28mm scale of Warhammer 40,000. They’re small enough that they don’t take super long to paint, but large enough to tackle some interesting details. I’m using this cool gift as an opportunity to paint-up a small 15mm scale Horus Heresy Imperial Fists army. Below you can see comparison shots of the Predator next to 15mm infantry, and my trusty 28mm Guardsman ‘Sergeant Scale’.

This particular model was very high-up the painting priority order. For me, the Deimos Predator Destructor is one of the most iconic Space Marine tanks. In fact I think the very original 1980s plastic Predator was the first vehicle I ever encountered on the 40K tabletop!

Painting & Modelling

The 15mm Horus Heresy project is quite light on LEDs – if you’ll excuse the pun – compared to most of my other armies. But many of the vehicles are just too tempting not to wire up! As you can see from the above left image, the Predator autocannon barrel came out of the printer slightly ‘droopy’, so I decided to replace it with plastic rod. This also made it easier to drill the holes for the muzzle flare wires.

The Predator autocannon has a 3V Yellow 0805 SMD Chip LED (available from Small Scale Lights) at the muzzle. The LED is in series with its supplied 100Ω resistor. The circuit is supplied by a single 3V CR2032 coin cell battery and switch in the 50mm base. The muzzle flare effect around the LED is made from acrylic gel. I have a full, detailed explanation for how this whole process is done in my Simple LED Muzzle Flare Tutorial.

If you’re interested in my yellow paint receipe, you can find it in my previous post on the 15mm scale Land Raider.

As mentioned in my previous post on 15mm Horus Heresy, my plan is to use these models to play a few games with my regular gaming buddy Apologist who is building up an Emperor’s Children force. If you’d like to see how that’s going, then search his blog for 15mm Horus Heresy.

That’s it for this week, I hope you’re all finding this slightly unusual project interesting! I’m sure there will be some more posts about 15mm Horus Heresy again in the future. As ever, thanks for reading, and please don’t forget you can also follow my work on Twitter and Instagram.

“Pacification of Logan’s World” Flesh Eaters ‘Armies on Parade’ 2022

On By Chris B.In Flesh Eaters, LEDs, Space Marines, War of the False Primarch, Warhammer 40,0002 Comments

“The War of the False Primarch was a dark and bloody episode of the Imperium’s history, now largely lost to myth and purged from all records, that plunged the Segmentum Pacificus into anarchy from 780.M33 to 860.M33. The conflict was finally ended when the High Lords of Terra convened the Pentarchy of Blood and tasked five loyal Chapters to destroy eleven others that had been declared Traitoris Perdita for their actions during the war.”

– IMPERIAL ARMOUR VOLUME TWO – SECOND EDITION PG. 17

The Flesh Eaters space marine chapter, a key member of the Pentarchy of Blood, bring the will of the High Lords to the Partisan frontier planet Logan’s World on the border of Segmentum Pacificus. Brother-Chaplain Uriah Grimm leads elements of the third company in a purge of the population. Resistance is put down and captives are taken for interrogation. Clues are sought regarding the whereabouts of the Abomination, the so-called “False Primarch”, and his Silver Stars chapter.

Concept

The concept for this board was fairly straightforward. The Flesh Eaters have come to a world loyal to the False Primarch, and are conducting a purge of the citizens while looking for clues to the whereabouts of their enemy. The local population are mounting a resistance, but without space marine support of their own they don’t have much hope…

The Flesh Eaters have chosen the ruined Sanctum Imperialis – an obvious symbol of Imperial authority – as their base of operations. Brother-Chaplain Uriah Grimm directs the purge from the balcony. The colour scheme of the Sanctum subtly echoes that of the chaplain, with a lot of red, black and white on the details. The red backdrop behind the building is a cardboard miniature photography background that came free with White Dwarf a few years ago.

The Partisan Population

The Partisan resistance are all made from the Necromunda Hive Scum boxed set, and the market stall and accessories come from the Underhive Market set. I wanted to give a “Jesus kicking the merchants out of the temple” vibe with how the Flesh Eaters were dealing with the locals who had dared to use the Sanctum as a market place. A small easter egg, you may have spotted the market stall has a Silver Stars helmet for sale! The Sotek Green – more of a turquoise despite the name – of the Silver Stars’ helmet is also used in the clothing of the Partisan population. This was used to help visually associate them with the Silver Stars’ cause, and also to give a contrasting “red versus blue” vibe to the display board.

The graffiti artist being captured for interrogation is based on the artwork below from the Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader rulebook. The Hive Scum box didn’t have any arms in this pose, so I had to sculpt them from scratch myself.

What’s Next?

There we have it, another ‘Armies on Parade’ project concluded! I hope you’ve enjoyed all the photographs of the display board. Don’t forget you can click on any of the images to open a larger view. So what’s next for the Flesh Eaters? This certainly isn’t the end of the project. I’m still aiming to reach at least 1000 points. I have at least one more squad, one character and two vehicles planned, so stay tuned over the coming months to see this army continue to grow.

That’s all for today, thanks for reading, I hope you’ve enjoyed this year’s Armies on Parade project. Don’t forget you can also follow my work on Twitter and Instagram. I’ll be back again with more miniatures soon!