Rogue Troopers

Nearly a whole year since my last Space Marine!

The next commission for General Leofa is a pack of twenty or so renegade marines. Not Chaos ones per se, despite the eight-point stars a few of them sport. They're on that path without having actually reached the door, rung the bell and shaken the tentacles of the dweller within, perhaps. 

Okay, so this guy might have his hand stuck in the letterbox a little. 

'No official colour schemes' was the instruction, along with some pics from the original Rogue Trader book for inspiration. Telling me to go nuts, well, I'm not great at it. I get nervous that my worst excesses might just be rubbish. So I went and did a bit more research, even re-reading some of that august and weighty tome (in lightweight pdf format, my wrists are only so strong these days).

Space Marines were a lot more punky back when they were created. More like a scrappy military force, even if they were an elite one. Their colour schemes were less formalised, even the art had them with more of a Judge Dredd vibe, ruthless and mean rather than religiously righteous.

I like thise guy. The wording on his legplates is clearly supposed to read 'Avenge' and 'Smite' but they ran out of room. His right leg actually says 'Smit'. For the Emperor! Avenge Smitty! 

And they had a lot more camoflage, even if the fluff mentions that they scoffed at using it. You don't see a lot of that these days, DP marines. Easier to paint without it, for starters, plus the suggestion is to use the chivalric patterns favoured by most chapters.

Which is a shame, I think, because it's easier to paint than you think and it looks really good on marine armour! Certainly no harder than painting really fine highlights on armour edges, and also much more liberating.

This is just under half of the group, the rest are under way. I got a drill for Christmas, so I'm drilling out their gun barrels, which is tricky but worth it. I also need to look out some new and interesting camo patterns for them, so if anyone has ideas, please suggest in the comments below.

Disclaimer! For the purposes of clarity, I did doctor the inset photo of the legnd on his chainsaw. You can read it in the flesh, but in the photo, the ink is rather reflective, and I couldn't get a decent shot. So I cheated and used Paint to beef up the contrast a little. Sorry. 

Other stuff on the side, of course. The rest of the Mantic goblins for Dungeon Saga, ahead of the Warlord of Galahir campaign we shall be starting next month.

And some Mantic heroes to go with them...

...as well as some Reaper stuff, just so I'm still slowly putting a dent in that too.

The cowboys last time were fun, so I did another of the pulp heroes in the Bones set. I have no idea who he's meant to be, but he turned out well. Belongs in a museum, perhaps.

Maryland Smith? Vermont Peterson? Washington Taylor? It's a surprisingly robust formula for a name, actually