The fifth operative is actually my sixth in the kill team. The Compendium originally provided for a Deathwatch kill team to consist of five operatives, but later dataslates increased that to six. As I mentioned in the introductory entry for this project (here), this isn't going to be a "real" game. Instead, we're playing a mini-tutorial, applying concepts of the Joint Ops rules from the current edition of the game in the 2021 edition of the game, with four players divided into two teams. We might not even have time for a full game. Two of the players have kill teams consisting of two fire teams while two of the players (including me) have kill teams consisting of a single fire team, so both of us Adeptus Astartes players might take five-operative teams (each one short of the post-dataslate kill team size) just to keep the time manageable. Since I'm not playing with the intent of crushing my adversaries, I've deliberately sub-optimized. On the off chance that we go with the full six-operative teams, though, I needed to add the sixth model. Truth be told, I love storm bolters and I love volume of fire. And since the Warrior operative has an option for a storm bolter, I went with that.

The metal shoulder pad on the right shoulder should catch your attention right away. That's one of the old Assault squad shoulder pads. I bought a bunch of those for a project way back when (during the time of 3rd/4th edition - I think I planned on doing an Emperor's Warbringers army). He's pointing because I needed the left arm/hand to be doing something. I maintained the pattern of using basic Tactical/Devastator squad legs/bodies for the heavy gunner and warriors. That pointing arm/hand came from the Sternguard kit (I think).

Since I already have two official Chapters (the Griffon Lords and the Sons of Medusa) I ruled out my original option, the Guardians of the Covenant. Also, the Guardians of the Covenant feature their Chapter badge - crossed white swords - on a black field, and I wanted each of the operatives to have a color other than black or white on that shoulder pad (though my extended roster might include those colors). The only color I had left was orange, so that's what this guy got. So I opted to make this another new DIY, the Paragon Knights (after double-checking that there are no official Chapters using this name, and no unofficial ones, either, as far as I know). Now some of you might point out that the Grey Knights already have "Paragons" within their ranks and this might be confusing. To that I'll respond that the Grey Knights are a secret and they might be unknown to some other Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes. So when this Chapter chose its name way back when, they were unaware of the Knights of Titan and their ranks. Or maybe they just didn't care. After all, each Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes is fully autonomous. This will be another DIY that I plan to develop to the two- or three-paragraph level.

This guy wasn't quite as bad as the others in terms of mould lines, but you can see some places where I got a bit sloppy with the glue. And the join of the right hand and the arm is a bit off . So a little cleanup is definitely in order (I doubt I'll re-attach that hand, however).