Flavius Felix, Command Squad Veteran

I am now the proud owner of a full Ultramarines Command Squad with Style! Here is Flavius Felix:

This is his general back story write up:
Veteran Brother Flavius Felix is the oldest member of the command squad, and is fiercely protective of Numerian Castor. He has taken more than one bullet for the Apothecary, and his extensive bionics are proof of that. Castor ensures the scarred old veteran receives the best augmetics the Chapter's Apothecarion has to offer.

Overall, I'm happy with how he turned out. I did add some static grass to his base shortly after taking the pictures to break up the brown and match the rest of the squad. Speaking of the squad...

In all their glory. It feels really good to finish such a long project like this. I know normal humans would probably have finished these guys in a week or two, but it took me six months.

Now that they are done, I can dedicate more time to completing my Vindicator. I really want to have it complete for this month's 1500 point tournament at the FLGS. I haven't run a Vindicator since the dawn of 5th Edition, when I had a second hand, metal version that I used to run unpainted and half-salvaged.

Checking In

It's been some time since my last posting, so I figured it was time to check in with an update and some random thoughts.

I took the last week off work (hooray for paid vacation days), but didn't paint a whole lot. I had a lot of home improvement projects to do (and still do, nothing takes the time you'll think it'll take). I only found a few spare moments here and there to pick away at things. I primed the Standard Bearer, but not his banner. It's separate from the pole for painting. I also finished painting blue on the siege shield of my Vindicator (also separate from the parent model for painting). No picture, as I figure no one really needs or wants to see a siege shield painted plain blue.

I can't decide if I should finish the rest of the dozer in metallic colors before masking off the angled stripe I plan to airbrush across the front, or if I should airbrush the stripe and then finish the metals. It probably doesn't make much difference, as the stripe won't cross the metal areas.

I've selected some preliminary parts for the fourth member of the squad, who is the anti-armor and demolitions expert. I chose one of the armored torsos from the Forgeworld Mk4 Power Weapons Set, basic legs (no need for a tabard under all that plating), and haven't picked a helmet yet. FW parts are always ever so slightly smaller than GW plastics, so some heads look odd on the torso I picked. I thought about the grilled helmet from the VenDread kit, but it looks hilarious when test fitted in place.
For armament, I'm torn. I'm trying to keep every member of the squad at no more than 15 points of upgrades. Command Squad members start with a bolt pistol and a boltgun. They can buy pretty much any of the upgrade options (ranged, melee, special) and various other items. Because this guy is a demo/tank expert, he'll get meltabombs alongside his grenades. The meltabombs from the kit I linked above are about half the size of regular GW plastic bombs, so they can be fitted to a Marine's belt, pack, or thigh plates.
The sticky part are his guns. All Marine Veterans get two base attacks in their profile. You can bump them to three if you trade the bolter for a melee weapon while retaining the pistol. But this Marine isn't a melee fighter, so he won't get a melee upgrade. My decision comes down to: meltagun and bolter, or combimelta and bolt pistol? Both the combimelta and the meltagun are the same points cost.
If I take a pistol and combi, I'll get only one shot with the melta but also have the bolter to fire the rest of the time, as well as a pistol shot before a charge. It's simple to model and a pretty standard choice. However, if I take the meltagun and bolter I can fire as many melta shots as I like, and still have the bolter when other things are out of range or are less than ideal targets (you don't shoot melta at Gaunts and Orks). I won' tneed the pistol before a charge, because a meltagun is Assault 1. Modeling the bolter and the meltagun in a somewhat realistic way will be tougher. I will have to sling one or the other weapon over his back or under his backpack, or try to clamp the bolter to his leg. Unfortunately, there are no smaller bolters in any kit, and slinging weapons has always been a modeling challenge.

The fifth member of the squad is one I've not assembled parts for, though I did pickup some parts I might use. I got a handful of what I'm told are old upgrade torsos for Fabius Bile enhanced Marines. They look suitably bionic/augmetic for my purposes of building a squad member who's almost entirely rebuilt with bionics because he takes a lot of bullets for the Apothecary. The general plan is to use the half-bionic sergeant head from one of the older Marine kits, one of those Bile torsos, and then either buy or build bionic arms and legs. GW makes the Iron hands upgrade kit (though its in Finecast now), and Kromlech also makes some interesting bionic legs but no arms. I haven't picked armament for him yet, but I'm leaning towards something cheap like a stormbolter and a chainsword, because he'll be taking Look Out Sir rolls for the Apothecary a lot.

After all of that, I'm still working and planning some Allied units. Raven Guard are still in the works, but I'm also looking sidelong at Grey Knights. I own a 5-man unit of the old metal Terminators, and a Captain Stern model who can be just about any of the HQ models in TDA. I'd originally wanted to add them to add some Sanctic and anti-Daemon ability into my force, but the new codex looks really interesting. Not over the top like its prior incarnation, and much more streamlined.
There's also the upcoming Officio Assassinorum dataslate to think about. The one thing I hated about prior incarnations of Assassins was that you had to spend points on an HQ and Troops to get access to one. I'm definitely going to look at the dataslate when it's available, as I've always wanted to put an Eversor or a Culexis on the table.

In Progress: Apothecary

I've actually been making some progress on models during the last week-plus, but have been quiet about it. It was a busy weekend that trailed into a busy early part of this week, but I found time last night to pull some images off my camera and clean them up.

Here's is where my Apothecary stands right now:

Obviously, all that is done is the white. I have a couple cleanup spots left here and there, but for the most part the white is finished. I painted this in the hardest possible way. I primed black, then painted all the armor grey. I then started layering white, backfilled any sloppy areas with grey again, and then cleaned up the spots again.

That was dumb. I should have just primed white, washed the seams grey, and then cleaned up. I was concerned about the effect white primer would have on my reds and blues, when I should have just painted black under those areas if I was worried about it. Lesson learned.

I also started picking away at the Vindicator, starting with the dozer blade.

That's my sloppy midtone coat. Once I've got the final color on there, I have to go back and clean up the seams and borders with the shade color. Eventually, I'll be adding an off-centered white or yellow stripe to the dozer to break up the monotony of the blue. I'll likely tape the area off and use my airbrush for that.

This is the old Forgeworld Vindicator kit, and I've encountered a couple problems with it. You can't see the back of the dozer in the pic, but the area behind the vision port is odd. Instead of being framed in riveted steel like the front, it's just a blank surface, but not flat. There's this weird, sunken border there that looks like a miscast, but isn't. I've seen it on other pictures of the model on other blogs. In hindsight, I wish I'd taken the time to add a strip of plasticard around the back of the port to make it look better.

I also had some areas where my hour of scrubbing wasn't able to remove all the mold release. They were small areas, so I didn't want to strip the model down and try again. Instead, I steadily added pure black paint back over the spots til it was covered. Very frustrating to have one half-millimeter spot on top, or some seam at the dozer attachment point that wouldn't hold primer. Here's hoping the mold release has finally washed away and the patches hold when painted and sealed.

It's been tough getting the time or energy to paint this week. I've been busy canning strawberry jam all week, plus hockey, keeping the garden, and the oppressive heat. In an effort to keep our electrcicty bill manageable, I've been closing the doors to rooms we aren't in, which includes the room I paint in. So, when I do have time to plop down and throw some paint around, it's 87 degrees in that room. I end up sitting on the couch in front of the air conditioner instead.

Hopefully this weekend cools down some, so I can move on to the rest of the Apothecary, as well as start cleaning and assembling the Standard Bearer.

Meet Brontes...

This past weekend was spent assembling an old Forge World Vindicator. I've named it 'Brontes'. The name was taken from one of the trio of Cyclops that assisted Zeus against the Titans by crafting his lightning bolts. Brontes means "thunder" (from which you get Brontosaurus). The other two Cyclops are Steropes (lightning) and Arges (brightness).
I like to name my tanks and vehicles by theme, and the trio of Cyclops fit perfectly. I tend to draw my names from Hesiod's Theogony. Cyclops just feel right for Vindicators...tanks with one massive gun in the center of their heads. I've named all my Dreadnoughts after Argonauts, and tried to name my Rhinos after steeds, but found that it was hard to do so for chasses that I switched around from Rhino to Razorback to Predator to Whirlwind.

Here's the nearly-done result:

 (The siege shield isn't glued to the hull, so I can paint it properly).
I got the upgrade kit from a guy on Bartertown who was leaving the hobby, if I remember right. I got a great deal on it, just shy of the cost of buying just the current plastic Vindicator sprues online. The kits are nearly identical, but the FW version is missing side armor plating. I thought about buying the plastic side armor from a bitz seller, but it wasn't worth the $5-8 price tag. Instead, I'll just be putting basic blank doors on, and using some banners and icons from the Venerable Dreadnought and Ravenwing Upgrade sprues to break up the big, flat surface. I figure the linen color of those, plus some silver/white crux terminates icons and then purity seals will do nicely over the big, wide blue surface.

Speaking of big, flat, blue surfaces, I'm not sure what to do about that siege shield. I know a lot of people love to use it for freehand murals, hazard stripes, or very involved battle damage or weathering. I don't do weathering on my Ultramarines, so that option is out. I do feature some small areas of freehand, but I just can't wrap my head around the idea of Marines or their serfs spending ages on a fancy mural on the front-facing surface of a tank that is designed to doze through rubble, smash down walls, and deflect incoming munitions. Some poor bastard spends hundreds of hours pouring his soul into an intricate rendering of Guilliman...and the paint is blasted off in the first volley of incoming heavy bolter rounds that smack into the Vindicator. Oooops!

Hazard stripes might be interesting, and they do look very good on the examples I've seen. I've also seen some examples where just a simple Chapter symbol and some unit markings work nicely.

Anyone painted a Vindicator? What'd you do with your siege shield, and why?