Three Deathwatch Vanguard Veterans, painted

There are probably several times over more canonical Space Marine chapters that specialise in melee than ones that focus on shooting. This would probably not be very realistic, but it means there is a wide spectrum of different melee-focused marines, from the Black Templar crusaders, swearing oaths full of zeal, to the silent and terrifying Carcharodons Astra, who kill their enemies with naked efficiency. This emables a Deathwatch Vanguard squad to have a nice spread of different marines, whose different styles would complement each other well.

 The Carcharodons Astra veteran's armour's molecular bonding studs give the model a lot of character, as does the fierce pose of th model. I wanted to leave the armour relatively simple and unadorned, as the chapter is known for their simplistic brutality, rather than their artistry.

 The Black Templar somewhat represents the opposite end of the same spectrum. The Marine would have sworn a number of oaths, both at the beginning of his duty in the Deathwatch as well as before each battle, and these should be represented on his armour. I ended up sculpting an extra litany scroll to be worn as a loincloth, just to make extra room for his oaths. I also scribbled some on the front of his right greave.

The Flesh Tearer would probably be the most terrifying of the three, to his opponents as well as his allies, since one can never be certain if one of his Chapter is going to be able to keep his aggression directed towards the enemy, instead of his allies. This is somewhat reflected on the model, in that I can never be sure if the model's heavy thunder hammer is going to stay on or come off, because there is a slight gap between the arms and the torso. To fill in that gap with green stuff, I would have had to first attach the weapon and then prime and paint the model, and I find that fiddly, so I just decided to glue it where it stuck and hope for the best. If it comes off again, I suppose I'll use green stuff.

Three Deathwatch Vanguard Veterans

While shooting is nice, and often the most effective strategy, much of the appeal in Warhammer 40,000 is in melee. Another important aspect are the Space Marines. When you combine the Space Marines all-star force, Deathwatch, and melee specialisation, you may have gone overboard, but I'm going to risk it.

 Black Templar is one of the Chapters I wanted to have represented in my Vanguard Veterans. I made the model to be prepared for a variety of different situations, so I gave him two power weapons, one being an axe, to tackle any 2+ armoured opponents, and one a sword, to strike at I4. In the lore, Black Templars commonly chain their weapons to their vambraces. I decided the model wouldn't really look like a member of the Chapter if I didn't reflect that.

 The Heavy Thunder Hammer is a very aggressive weapon, and I chose the Flesh Tearer to bear it. I gave the model one of the metal Deathwatch heads from the older upgrade kit. I also wanted to have at least one descendant chapter of the Blood Angels represented in the first batch of my Vanguard Veterans, even though I fully intend to have an actual Blood Angel there as well.

One of the chapters not represented in the Deathwatch Veteran kit is the Carcharodons Astra. I like them, though, and the chapter's preference for close assault makes them a natural choice for the Vanguard Veterans. They are often portrayed wearing the Mk.V armour, and I had some extra pieces left over from my previous Skyclaw project.
Lightning claws felt like a natural choice, considering the chapter's brutal style of combat.

I expect the models will be painted for next week's update.

Eldar Harlquin Shadowseer

The Harlequins embody the main problem I have with some of the later Games Workshop models, in that while the models themselves look great, there often really is only one pose they're meant to be assembled in, so if you have anything other than the one kit, you're going to be repeating poses very soon. This becomes a problem especially with the Harlequins that tend to have rather recognisable poses, as they should, considering their lore.
Fortunately, the Harlequins don't have many armour plates with straight, mechanical lines on them, so remaking parts of their limbs with green stuff isn't that difficult.

 Having recently read Andy Chambers' Masque of the Vyle, I decided I wanted my Shadowseer to be female. Since 40k miniatures aren't known for being terribly subtle, that pretty much meant just sculpting breasts on the miniature's torso. Considering how much the model is pushing its chest out, it's fortunate the model's hat somewhat covers the chest area, otherwise the end result could have looked crass.

 I also reposed the model's feet so that it's no longer leaping off a stone to the unknown, but balancing on the arch rubble. I also glued a couple of resin skulls to the base to give it some flavour.

The model's right arm was also reposed, mainly because I don't care that much for the original bent arm pose, made up for movie posters to fit the actor's face and the gun in the same picture. The straight arm looks more relaxed in my opinion.
The model will be painted in the following week and I'll append this post once it's finished.

Three Deathwatch Veterans, painted

When I started painting miniatures, I initially thought painting simple black Space Marine armour would be easy, until I tried it. I had no idea how to highlight black, and without highlighting it, the miniatures looked flat and just wrong. Naturally, I went too far to the opposite direction and decided painting black is really difficult, going as far as mixing a separate dark metallic colour for the Chaplains of my Space Marine chapter.

Of course, at the time, my brushes were of very poor quality, and my hand wasn't very steady either, so after painting a few Space Wolves, I tried my hand at painting some Wolf Priests, I found that black is actually fairly simple, and can be accomplished with simple drybrushing, or just highlighting in layers. With Deathwatch, I ended up using the same highlight method as seen on GW's YouTube channel, because it's neutral, but has a little bit of colour to it.

The Raven Guard veteran was the first one that I painted, which worked out well, since when I chose the company and team markings, the model's cloak got somewhat in the way. I probably could have used any of the other marking styles as well, but the diagonal red line of the Watch Company Quartus worked out the best. I also decided to freehand the team number rather than to bother with transfers. As it turned out, the font is surprisingly easy to paint.

 The Red Scorpion veteran was the second one I painted. The bright colours of the shoulder pad were a little challenging, especially since in the raised areas they were easy to accidentally wipe away, but not too difficult in the end.

The Space Wolf veteran would have been the most difficult one, had I not had plenty of practice with painting bare heads and wolfy talismans. As it was, the black armour made the model somewhat easier to paint than an average Space Wolves model.
I also used two different shades of grass tufts on this model, as well as the Red Scorpion. I recently bought a pack of Winter and Frozen tufts to go with my earlier Highland tufts, allowing me to glue a very simple gradient of different colours of grass on bases if needed. That should come in handy with future terrain projects.

Three Deathwatch Veterans with Stalker Pattern Bolters

I was making Deathwatch models with GW's old metal upgrade kit long before the new Codex came out, so naturally, I preordered the Codex and bought a Veterans kit soon after. Generally speaking, I liked the new sprues, though I was disappointed to see it only included one Stalker pattern bolter and two shotguns. Then I remembered Forgeworld's Legion Recon Squad, which I had wanted to do something with for a while already, but didn't really have the need for, since Space Wolf Scouts don't use power armour, and I don't need five Wolf Guard Pack Leaders.
However, the Recon Squad's extra shotguns and bolters with suppressors really did come in handy for a couple of Kill Teams. Of course, having the Maximus pattern power armour seems a little unusual for Deathwatch, but in my headcanon, Mk.IV is stealthier than Mk.VIII, at least until proven otherwise.
The main problem with the recon squad models is that all of them have one of their shoulder pads at least partially covered by the cloak. As both shoulder pads are somewhat more meaningful for Deathwatch marines than most others, this posed a slight problem.
Four out of the five models had their right shoulder pads covered, though, which meant I could work with that, assuming I could find another way to convey which Chapter the veteran comes from. Since Space Marine chapters are about as gimmicky as they get, that shouldn't be a problem.

 The first one I started working on, and the only one whose right shoulder pad is visible, was the Red Scorpions veteran. It made sense to have at least one of the Mk. IV wearing Marines be a Red Scorpion, since the Chapter really seems to like the armour pattern. I gave him a Deathwatch power pack instead of the Mk.IV recon model.
The left shoulder pad was only partially covered, so I carved out the shoulder, replaced it with a Deathwatch pad and resculpted the cloak over it.

 The Raven Guard's Chapter is not obvious at this stage yet, though I plan to paint the Raven Guard badge on his left greave. I wanted to give the model the Mk.VI helmet, since that's the Raven Guard's thing. Considering the Chapter's love of stealth, I feel like the Stalker pattern bolter and the camo cloak fits him well.

If there was one Chapter I knew I could make recognizable, it was the Space Wolves. Regardless, I still considered using the plastic Kill Team bits for him just to make it explicitly clear that he comes from Erik Morkai's Great Company, but eventually, I decided it wouldn't matter that much. In addition to the head from the Space Wolves upgrade sprue, gave him a wolf's head hood, a couple of tail talismans and a other bits and pieces.

I expect it shouldn't take long to paint the black armoured Marines, assuming my can of spray undercoat doesn't run out. I aim to finish them by next Sunday.