Well, between the current UK heatwave and going away on holiday, progress on the Armageddon box has been a little slower than I'd hoped. Now that things have settled down, though, I'm finally starting to crack on with it.

I've started with the first unit, the Heavy Bolter Eradicators. These are part of my plans for the Space Marines and will be painted as Unnumbered Sons Ultramarines.

I still need to add some weathering powders to blend the lower legs into the bases, but I'll do that once the whole squad is finished so everything has a consistent look.

The colour scheme has evolved a little from my original plan. Initially, I wanted to follow the scheme shown in the Dawn of Fire books, where the Unnumbered Sons have a grey chevron over the Legion symbol on the left shoulder pad. I painted up a few test shoulder pads to try out different ideas, but I wasn't really happy with any of them. In the end, I decided to leave the chevron off altogether. I know that makes them less than 100% lore accurate, but I'm happy with how they look.

The second change was with the markings. My original intention was to keep them fairly plain, with only the squad number, battlefield role, and Legion markings. Once I'd finished the first model, though, it looked a bit too bare, so I quickly changed my mind and added some honours and Indomitus Crusade campaign markings instead.

My thinking is that the Torchbearer Fleet would probably have had a pretty rough journey to the Reed Stars. Being located in Segmentum Obscurus, deep within Imperium Nihilus, I can imagine they would have fought through plenty of battles before reaching their destination. Those extra honours help tell that story and give the models a bit more character.

Hopefully my next post will feature the completed squad... assuming this heatwave finally gives us a break.

At the moment it's sitting at a rather uncomfortable 34°C in my hobby room, which isn't exactly ideal painting weather.

Until next time.