Category: True Scale

The Silver Stars

On By Chris B.In Kill Team, LEDs, Painting Recipe, Silver Stars, Space Marines, True Scale, War of the False Primarch, Warhammer 40,0006 Comments

From the dark void, salvation came in the guise of argent stars.

Jarnail Solarion of the Inheritors chapter

The Silver Stars chapter are a creation of my good friend and regular opponent, Apologist. They are the instigators of the War of the False Primarch and the leaders of the Partisan faction, in opposition to my Flesh Eaters and the other Orthodox chapters sent to eradicate this threat to the High Lords of Terra. When I was building my Armies on Parade 2023 entry, “Interregnum at Interlude Quay”, I knew that I wanted some antagonists on the board for the Flesh Eaters to be fighting. So what better choice than the Silver Stars?

Modelling

Before anything else, it’s worth making the point that the Silver Stars are (out-of-universe) intentionally slightly unclear, and this has been intentionally built into their marking scheme. They are, after all, supposedly the returned Legion of a lost or forgotten Primarch; or possibly a renegade Chapter masquerading as such behind an abomination; or perhaps the time- or dimensionally-displaced results of some Other event.

Apologist on the Silver Stars

The Silver Stars are intended to look like they’ve stepped straight out of the 31st Millennium (the War of the False Primarch being set in the 34th Millennium), so I wanted to create a MkII or MkIII look for their armour. I also needed to ensure they measured-up to the Flesh Eaters, which are based on Primaris Marines converted to look like they are wearing MkVI armour.

There were a number of ways I could have gone about this, including using third party 3D printable ’embiggened’ MkII legs and torso, or using Cataphractii Terminator legs. But in the end I decided to use what was already in my ‘bits box’, which was a lot of Primaris spares and some sprues of the old plastic MkIII armour.

These Silver Stars are built around Primaris legs and bodies, plus the older plastic MkIII arms, pauldrons, backpacks, bolters and heads. To give the legs a more “antiquated” look, I added Mixed Micro Glass Balls from Green Stuff World as armour studs. I’d be the first to admit this isn’t perfect, and if I hadn’t been up against the Armies on Parade submission deadline, I may have spent a bit more time converting the legs. Still, I don’t think it looks too bad, and as Apologist says in the quote above, the provenance of their armour is supposed to be intentionally unclear.

To make the LED effects, from left to right in the image above, I used the techniques detailed in my LED Muzzle Flare tutorial, Simple LED Muzzle Flare tutorial, and LED Eye Lens tutorial, respectively. The ‘dead’ Silver Star has no LEDs – his armour systems have powered down!

Painting

The basics of the scheme are armour as white as bone, as green as the ocean, as rose as coral; and with gold accents.

Apologist on the Silver Stars

Apologist has published a couple of guides to painting the Silver Stars on his website, including an article on their paint scheme and another on insignia and heraldry. Apologist and I have slightly different painting styles, so I used his guides as a starting point for my own, slightly tweaked interpretation which I have shared below.

All paints listed are from the Citadel range, unless stated otherwise. The miniatures were primed with Halfords Primer Grey, which is a good quality and cost effective undercoat spray for those based in the UK.

  • White Armour
  • Ulthuan Grey basecoat (two thin coats)
  • Apothecary White Contrast shade
  • Ulthuan Grey layer (one thin coat, but I didn’t worry about getting a super smooth finish, as it added to the battle worn look)
  • Corax White highlight
  • Skull White fine highlight
  • Blue Armour
  • Sotek Green
  • Talassar Blue Contrast shade
  • 50:50 Sotek Green:Corax White hightlight
  • Gold Trim
  • Retributor Armour
  • Reikland Fleshshade shade
  • Druchii Violet shade (applied to deepest recesses while previous shade is still wet)
  • Runefang Steel highlight
  • Rose Helmet Crest
  • Screamer Pink basecoat
  • Nuln Oil shade
  • Screamer Pink layer
  • 50:50 Scream Pink:Corax White highlight
  • Rose Shoulder Banding
  • Screamer Pink layer
  • Silver Equipment
  • Black Templar Contrast basecoat
  • Leadbelcher layer
  • Nuln Oil shade
  • Runefang Steel highlight
  • Rubber Undersuit
  • Black Templar Contrast basecoat
  • Dark Leather
  • Dryad Bark basecoat
  • Nuln Oil shade
  • Gothor Brown highlight
  • Karak Stone fine highlight
  • Chapter Insignia & Squad Markings
  • Corax White layer

Silver Stars bear what appear to be Legion symbols both on their left pauldron (as typical for Space Marines), and on the centre of their torso. The marking is a white, four-pointed star made up of four small, unconnected right-angled triangles. They typically appears to be rotating anti-clockwise on the pauldron and clockwise on the torso (both suggesting forward movement); but occasionally run in the opposite direction, which indicates a form of intra-Legion specialism or honorific termed Manawa.

Whatever the direction of travel, and wherever it appears, the Silver Star symbol is near-universally rendered in white (that is, heraldic silver). 

Apologist on the Silver Stars

The chapter insignia and squad markings were painted freehand with a slightly thinned down Corax White. Once you’ve practised it a few times, it’s a fairly easy chapter symbol to freehand compared to many others. If this article has inspired you to have a go at painting your own Silver Stars, then I would definitely recommend reading Apologist’s article on insignia and heraldry.

So, there we have it, the mysterious Silver Stars! Are they saviours of mankind or an existential threat to the Imperium? That’s a question I will leave to the reader. In any case, these miniatures were great fun to make and paint, a real palate cleanser from the Flesh Eaters. In fact, now their job on the display board is done, I thought it might be fun to expand these three into a six-man Intercessor squad for games of Kill Team. Otherwise it seems a shame for them to languish in a box somewhere not getting used. So keep an eye out for a few more Silver Stars over the coming months – reporting all sightings to the proper authorities in you sector, of course! And if this has piqued your interest in this enigmatic chapter, then I encourage you to check out Apologist’s excellent blog on the War of the False Primarch project.

Thanks very much for reading today’s post, and please remember if you’re on Instagram, Threads, Twitter/X, Bluesky or Mastodon you can also find me posting my work there.

Brother Byrne, Flesh Eaters Sergeant

On By Chris B.In Flesh Eaters, LEDs, Space Marines, Technical, True Scale, War of the False Primarch, Warhammer 40,0001 Comment

It’s back to the Flesh Eaters project this week with Brother Byrne, a plasma pistol and power fist equipped Assault Intercessor Sergeant. Brother Byrne will be leading my second Assault Intercessor squad – henceforth known as Squad Byrne!

Modelling & Painting

This model has had the LED helmet eye lens and plasma weapon treatment, as detailed in my LED Plasma Weapon tutorial. As this model was fairly straightforward to make, I took the opportunity to document the process and refresh my LED Plasma Weapon 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 LED plasma weapons this is one of my most popular tutorials. 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.

As I’ve described previously for other Flesh Eaters miniatures, 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.

Brother Byrne takes his name from a classic Rogue Trader miniature with plasma gun. Unlike Brother Levers, who was directly inspired by his 1980s namesake, I’ve just borrowed the name from Brother Byrne and not tried to recreate the original miniature.

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 minor battle damage around the lower leg area. The damage was applied using the sponge method and Rhinox Hide, which I then highlighted along the lower edge with Evil Sunz Scarlet and Wild Rider Red to give a sense of depth.

I haven’t added much battle damage or weathering to the Flesh Eaters in this project so far, but Sergeant Bryne’s squad mate Brother Oram has some, so I thought I might introduce a bit more battle damage for this unit. I may even go back and add it to some other completed units!

That’s it for today, but if you’d like to read more about my Flesh Eaters then you can view all posts tagged with Flesh Eaters. 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.

Flesh Eaters 500 Point Patrol

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

It’s finally happened, I’ve officially reached the 500 point milestone with the Flesh Eaters, and it’s only taken me a year and a half to get this far! I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to share some group photos.

So what’s in this 500 point ‘Patrol’ list?

Also pictured in the image above is Ancient Harlon. There weren’t quite enough points spare to fit him into the Patrol, but he will be included in future larger games.

There is of course the small matter of all the points values changing in a few weeks as 10th edition Warhammer 40,000 is released, so this force may not be quite 500 points by then. But I’m sure it won’t be drastically different…

Long time readers will know that this army is themed around Apologist’s ‘War of the False Primarch’ community project. This little-known piece of Imperial history takes place in the 34th Millennium, and is described in very few official sources.

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 are members of the so-called ‘Pentarchy of Blood’, those chapters who enacted the will of the High Lords of Terra on the wayward Partisan chapters. The patronage of the High Lords means that they are equipped with a mixture of the latest technology the 34th millenium has to offer, plus the best of what’s left in the vaults from the Heresy. I’ve tried to give this force a retro ‘Rogue Trader’ and ‘2nd edition’ Warhammer 40,000 vibe, and I hope that comes across in the model design and paint schemes.

The army in its current form represents Task Force Grimm as it appeared during the during the so-called “Sorrowful Years”, the period during the War of the False Primarch that saw mainly retrenchment and small scale skirmishes between Orthodox and Partisan forces. Uriah Grimm spent this time leading his forces in small-scale raids into Partisan border worlds, looking for any clues to the whereabouts of the False Primarch.

So where do the Flesh Eaters go from here? Well we have the Space Marine half of the Leviathan box just over the horizon, plus plans for some more, larger vehicles. So plenty more to come back for!

That’s all for today, I hope you’ve enjoyed this summary of the project so far. If you’d like to read more about my Flesh Eaters then you can read all posts tagged with Flesh Eaters. As ever, thanks very much for reading, and please don’t forget you can also follow my work on social media at Twitter, Mastodon and Instagram.

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 40,0002 Comments

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!

Brother Dunn, Flesh Eaters Assault Marine

On By Chris B.In Flesh Eaters, LEDs, Space Marines, Technical, True Scale, War of the False Primarch, Warhammer 40,0001 Comment

My Flesh Eater project continues this week with Brother Dunn, a chainsword-wielding Assault Intercessor equipped with an LED infra-visor and the fifth member of Assault Squad Levers.

Building & Painting

The design of Brother Dunn is intended to capture the look of Assault Marines with infra-visors and was inspired by the classic Rogue Trader Assault Marine art and model, as seen in this previous article about Brother Talon. I’ve recreated this Rogue Trader-era look using the head of a Space Marine Primaris Incursor and the techniques described in my LED Eye Lens tutorial. The only difference worth noting is that I used a TruOpto 1.8mm Green LED instead of the red LED described in the tutorial. 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.

In this holo-pict we can see Brother Dunn of the Flesh Eaters sporting personal heraldry on his tilt shield. Astartes are granted personal heraldry on ascending to the rank of veteran, or in some cases for acts of extreme personal valour. We can assume the latter is likely the case with Brother Dunn as he is clearly a member of a line unit. The shield displays the classic ‘severed gorgon’s head’ heraldic device. The meaning of heraldry chosen by Astartes is often very personal. We might guess that the defeated gorgon represents the False Primarch, the Abomination himself, and the forward-facing central snake could perhaps be the notorious ‘Vox Volnoscere’? This would then likely mean that the five blood drops dripping from the gorgon’s neck symbolise the Pentarchy of Blood, of which the Flesh Eaters were an integral part. Can his heraldry therefore be read as a direct taunt to the Partisans, or perhaps an oath that Brother Dunn himself would see fulfilled?

Of course, the chances are equally good that Brother Dunn simply chose an image from ancient texts that would appear frightening to his enemies, and there is no deeper meaning than that!

Extract from ‘A Treatise on the War of the False Primarch’ by Scribe Howtopher Buxcraft

The personal heraldry on this model was a bit of an experiment, and I’m fairly pleased with the way it turned out. The tilt shield is a moulded-on part of the torso for this model, so I had to include it. I started by painting another Flesh Eaters symbol in Corax White, but I didn’t like the way it drew the eye away from the model’s face. So I decided to do a freehand design in Evil Sunz Scarlet and Wild Rider Red, my two red highlight colours. This way the heraldry does not immediately draw the eye to it, but there is something rewarding to find when the eye does get there. The gorgon head theme is partially inspired by a John Blanche drawing of a marine with similar heraldry, but I think it fits well with the theme, as detailed above.

The only other thing of note is the bolter. Rules-wise, I will use Brother Talon as a Primaris Assault Intercessor, so he is equipped with a heavy bolt pistol. I didn’t want to spoil the MkVI aesthetic though, so instead I used an Umbra-pattern bolter with a shortened magazine as a visual representation of the heavy bolt pistol.

That’s all for today, and that’s also it for Assault Squad Levers! I’ll be back again soon with some group shots of the unit. Then it will be time to think about some officers to lead this army! As ever, thanks for reading, and please don’t forget you can also follow my work on Twitter and Instagram.