Eternal Crusade

The first miniature from the Indomitus box!

I started to look for Black Templar characters, but all those on offer are still the smaller classical marines. Since my entire force will consist of primaris marines, such small characters would look strange among them. Looking at the primaris characters, I came across a lieutenant holding a sword in the air, carrying a pistol and with laurels on his helmet. Just like… an Emperor’s Champion.

For quite some time I didn’t know what to do with the bases of this army. Eventually I went for a red desert theme (like on the planet Mars). A good opportunity to try out crackle paint for the first time.

In tutorials they say, you need to put on a thick coat. I tried it out on some test bases below, using Martian Ironearth form Citadels Technical paints.

Hmm, on the test bases there are hardly any cracks. Looks like when the say a thick coat, they mean a THICK coat. I gave the one below a second thicker coat.

That looks better. Now I felt confident to try it out on the bases of my miniatures.

Above you see the base of my Redemptor dreadnought. The thicker the paint, the bigger the cracks. In the future I should try a more even thick coat across the entire base. On this base you can clearly see where I put it on thick and where I didn’t put it on thick enough. And I should be more careful around the legs, the crackle paint sticking to the dreadnoughts feet, looks unrealistic.

Pigment powder

With the base painted, the dreadnought (and the marines I painted earlier) look to clean for a big machine marching through a desert and kicking up al lot of dust. I dug op some dark red pigment powder (MIG Old Rust P230) and brushed it on the legs. This looks better. It creates a transition between the red desert colour of the base and black of the dreadnought. Looking slightly weathered looks more realistic too.

Since I painted my Intercessors I bought water transfers from The Mighty Brush (www.themightybrush.com). They have large sheets with strong transfers. I used the sheet with crosses as well their “Imperial gothic script” sheet. On the photo’s below, you can see both sheets.

These marines have been lingering around my hobby space for about a year. They’re finally painted. 21 years after I first got into 40K I’ve painted my very first Space Marines!

When painting these I didn’t have any water transfers yet, so I painted the crosses on their shoulder pads freehand. It took a while, but it can be done.

After finishing them, I discovered you need at least 5 intercessors for a unit. ☹ I guess I will have to buy a few more.

The approaching 9^th edition of 40K convinced me to get into 40K again. Last time I played it was 5^th edition, about 10 years ago. I’ve ordered the new Indomitus Box Set. I will paint the entire space marine force as Black Templars.

In the mean time I’ve already bought some easy to build primaris marines because I couldn’t wait for the box and to try out painting Black Templars.