Space Hulk Brother Zael

Time for another Space Hulk miniature. Maybe I'll have finished the whole set by next Christmas, though I wouldn't bet on it, considering I have yet to start on the Genestealers.

 I have to admit that the models in the set are finely detailed and tend to have nice themes to them. Brother Zael has a whole bunch of various purity seals and oaths of the moment stuck to his armour, which gives the model character and adds to the narrative of the squad. It would have been easy to just give the model a heavy flamer and decide that's his thing, leaving the rest generic. Fortunately, that didn't happen.

 That said, the Crux Terminatus stones on the models in particular have pretty inconsistent texture quality to them. The standard plastic Space Marine Terminators and the Wolf Guard terminators have Crux Terminati that always end up getting fine definition from the normal shading and highlighting treatment, while this one ended up being blurry, no matter what I did. May well be that I should have done something differently, but my point is that with most Terminator models, I don't have to.

Brother Zael's right shoulder pad is among my favourites in the squads, with the white flame on the black background, behind a gem in the shape of a gemstone. It captures well both his own as well as his Chapter's iconography.
I used a mix of purple and blue shades and black soot weathering powder on the nozzle of the flamer to get the discolouration effect. It's surprisingly easy and a very effective trick to make the weapon seem like it's seen some use.