Horus Heresy 500p Challenge: The Thousand Sons by Bothi

What I love most about the Thousand Sons is their deep metallic red as their main color. So I had to try to reproduce that. But how to do it?

I researched a lot and there are a few colors out there that can do it. But for a clean look you really need an airbrush to do it. And I don’t have one. Maybe a spray can for cars? But that would clutter the details too much…

Then I stumbled over this blog entry: http://www.mengelminiatures.com/2016/11/tutorial-heresy-era-thousand-sons-by-em.html

This was exactly was I was looking for and I already own most of the colors used. Only the black bolters I don’t like that much. So I decided that mine will be white (or ivory for that matter).

But I had to try the paint scheme first. I took two of my really old 40k Marines and tried the scheme in two different ways. These are the results.

Please only judge the color of the armour in these pictures. I know the rest looks really crappy. I was just testing colors to get and idea where I want to go with this. Spent like 5-10 mins per Model on the details. Just quickly dropping some colors.

But on the armour I spent much more time and effort. The left (darker one) is exactly following EM’s guide. The lighter one is my own interpretation on that. On the photos I actually like my version better. But in real life with real light the darker one looks much better. The red is much deeper and has a strong metallic gleam to it. It got a bit to shiny, but I can fix that.

Next up are the bases. I’m probably going to paint the bases seperately and only glue the mini onto it after both are painted. I decided to go with the Arcane bases from Microart Studios (see below). For one they look awesome. I already can imagine my army walking through the streets of Tizca. And they are available in all sizes. Now I am ready to go.