Painted Salamanders Legion Squad: 2/10

The second member of the Salamanders squad features a unique shoulder pad with a devastator marking on it. The narrative here is that this marine is either (a) from a Salamanders heavy support squad that was entirely killed except for him, or (b) stole the shoulder pad from another legion (probably Word Bearers given the colouring) to re-equip himself. I have deliberately left the reason ambiguous, which is only accentuated by the lack of battle damage on this shoulder. 

Otherwise, this marine follows my standard formulation for my Salamanders, and features a degree of weathering and battle damage across many parts of the armour. I'm really pleased with this one and how it has turned out. 

Painted Salamanders Legion Squad: 1/10

This is the first of my Salamanders Legion squad painted up for 30k Horus Heresy, and part of a shattered legions army I am in the midst of making. 

I wanted to communicate here a battle worn look, rather than purely clean lines of freshly painted power armour. This is a marine who took part in the drop site massacre and miraculously survived to live to fight on. His armour is intended to reflect that moment in the fight - on the surface of Isstvan 5, being hunted by the traitor legions somewhere in the wastelands along with a small collection of his brothers and allies from the loyalist legions. 

The paint scheme follows the contrast paint approach using warp lightning set out in my earlier posting. Subsequently, a liberal application of Nuln oil has been applied before highlighting commenced. I've gone as bright as scorpion green on the highlights here, before bringing it back together. I think this has paid off. Battle damage has been added through application of black and silvers on selected parts of the armour. The shoulder pads were handled distinctly thanks to the iconography and oaths of the moment. I'm tempted to add some scribed writing to the oath papers on the shoulder pad to give a better air of authenticity. I might also add a highlight dot to the helmet lenses as well as a final touch, but others this Salamander is ready to unleash the fury of the legion.

Tamiya Weathering Powders

A very long time ago, I bought a small set of Tamiya weathering master powders, pictured below. I almost forgot that I had it in my collection until recently. The main cause of this was that when I first bought it, my wife commented that I was now using eye shadow on my miniatures, and I put it away somewhere out of sight for a bit. I can see why she said that though. These weathering powders genuinely look and feel much like traditional eye shadow powders - no two ways about it. They even come packed with an eye shadow applicator. 

In painting up my Salamanders legion squad, I rediscovered the Tamiya powders. Since they've been in the case and they're compact powders, they have hardly aged or deteriorated to any great degree. Hence I've been applying some orange rust, gun metal, and silver to my miniatures to create a bit more of a worn look over recent days. The powders work really well when used appropriately -- on obvious edges where rusting or metal would be seen in natural light. 

Or as my wife said again today: applying eye shadow to the miniatures. Can recommend!

More Salamanders Painting

More progress over the weekend just gone. The squad is all up to the same stage now and is basically awaiting some final detailing (e.g., finishing off the eye lenses, adding writing to the oaths of the moment), weathering (need to make some parts look a bit more worn in addition to the battle damage already painted on), base painting (its currently blandly undercoated, but aiming to make it gritty). Hence only a bit more effort to go on this squad and it'll be done.

Salamanders Squad Painting Progress

Some painting progress on my Shattered Legions Salamanders squad today. I've done the undercoat, the base coat (using contrast paints) and a number of other details, as illustrated in the images below. 

After the base layers had been applied, I was concerned that the shading that used the contrast paints wasn't exaggerated sufficiently for my tastes. These marines are, after all, Istvaan 5 survivors on the Urgall Depression. Therefore I turned to the old favourite: Nuln Oil. A good soaking in the oil has resulted in a much dirtier, and worn look for this layer and I'm pleased with the results thus far. Obviously there's still a long way to go with the edge highlighting yet to be done, and the details on the shoulder pads - including the flame iconography - to deal with. These will be in the next few steps. Good progress so far though!

Shattered Legions: Salamanders Tactical Squad Assembled

Given the Coronavirus, I've been tremendously busy with working from home recently. However, after the video conferences and telephone calls have ended, I have managed to squeeze in some hobby time here and there. Thus, I have been making progress on my Shattered Legions project.

Today is a component of that project: a 10 man Salamanders Legion tactical squad fully assembled and ready for priming and painting!

Each of the models is a bit of a kit bash. Some have components from Forge World, plastic bits and bobs from various marks of armour, and even chaos space marines. The reason for having such a diverse set of armour marks within a single squad is straight forward: this group of marines are Istvaan survivors. They have cobbled together what parts they could and re-purposed anything that they could find to fix and append what they already had. They are being hunted down across the wastelands and black sandy remains of the Urgall Depression. Yet they live, where many thousands of others have perished.

The back left marine shows one that is already painted up -- my initial experiment with the Salamanders Legion paint scheme that I'm going to be keeping and replicating (with embellishments) on the rest of the squad.

Hope that you're all fit and well folks. Keep safe in these unusual times.