Ultramarines Sniper Scouts WIP, Part III

Once a model has received it's basic paint job, it's often tempting to put off finishing it. I mean, it's obviously playable; does it really need more work? My Terminators sat for several weeks before I finally gave them their final washes and highlights. I was also tempted not to finish Sergeant Telion. Given how new most of our players are to 40K, we rarely play games larger than 1000 points. At 50 points, Telion is a significant investment in a smaller game. However, having already spent a ridiculous amount of time on the Scouts, I decided not to delay in completing them.

Scout squad with Telion (2/9/12)

Telion got my full attention once the other Scouts were fully assembled. The special character represents my first pewter model. I quickly learned that paint doesn't like to stick to pewter quite as well as it does to plastic (Bryce warned me about this) and realized that I had to be very careful about rubbing paint off of points or edges. Additionally, I had read that watery glues like the Krazy Glue Craft I've used for all my other models (and which I like very much) doesn't quite work as well for metal figures. Instead I used Krazy Glue Craft Gel Formula to attach Telion's bolter and head to his torso. I followed that up by allowing some of the watery glue to seep into the crevices of the joints. This seemed to work pretty well.

Telion is painted in similar colors and in an identical style as the rest of the squad. The primary difference is that the inside of his cloak is three layers of Gore Red painted over Calthan Brown. (I learned the hard way that Gore Red does not easily cover black while painting my Captain last year.) Telion's beard is a layer of Codex Grey with watered-down Skull White highlights.

Telion closeup (2/9/12)

I took the assembled and mostly painted Scouts to our game last week to show them off to Bryce, Jon, Carl, and Kevin. The squad didn't get the chance to fight since I played proctor to Carl and Kevin early in the evening and wasn't in any condition to play in the latter half of the night when I was hit by a particularly nasty gallbladder attack (it's a long story).

I finished off Telion and the squad over the week following the game. I used heavy doses of Badab Black on the armored portions of the Scouts and Devlan Mud on the fabric portions and over gold areas. In the end my models look positively filthy compared to Games Workshop's examples. I do this because it's easy to apply a wash over the entire surface of a model and because I can't imagine that armor that's supposed to see continual combat while being hundreds if not thousands of years old can be anything but horribly dirty. (GW's professional models may look pristine, but all artwork depicting Space Marines shows their armor to be chipped, spalled, cracked, scorched, and smudged.) Although achieved with a different technique, the "grimdark" Eldar look showcased at FTW reminds me of how I like my Ultramarines.

I dry-brushed some simple highlights over the washes, which also served to slightly lighten up the models. I've attempted to do bolder highlights in the past but have been dissatisfied by my inability to produce smooth, consistent lines. The armor was dry-brushed/highlighted with Ultramarines Blue, the fabric with Bleached Bone, and the black regions with Codex Grey.

The completed squad (2/18/12)

I really like the color scheme for Ultramarines Scouts. However, it makes me laugh to think that troops that wear giant gold winged skulls on their chests and off-white trousers could ever be stealthy, even if they do use camo cloaks. Telion has the Stealth special rule and he has the most garish armor of them all.

Finished sergeant (2/18/12)

Completed Sergeant Telion (2/18/12)

Telion's base is decorated with a bullet-punctured Ork skull provided in the sniper Scout box. The Bleached Bone-painted skull was weathered using Badab Black and Devlan Mud washes and then highlighted with watered-down Bleached Bone. Given that Telion was supposed to have played a crucial role in the Black Reach campaign and that one of our regulars plays Orks, I thought it an appropriate addition.

Now that I've finally finished the Scouts (about two and a half months after I started them), I'm having a hard time deciding what I should build next.