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Hello fellow frater, My hobby butterfly is in overdrive again and sweeping me up into the world of Mantis Warrior space marines. On the surface I love the colour scheme. But recently I'd seen some inspiring artwork that set me on this path. @Wolfdawgart on twitter has done a few pictures of Mantis Warriors (amongst other things!) that really struck a cord. They just seemed to suit the phobos armour so well and really made sense of the whole Vanguard Space Marine release for me. Before that I had avoided them and actually Primaris marines altogether. Here is a pic of his alongside a Marine I made to see if I could do a little homage... I also built and painted a test model to see what that might be like. I even got the airbrush out of it's decade of stasis. I got a real sense I wanted a jungle setting for these and a real Predator vibe. Maybe some striking scorpion influence, or was that just the colours talking. Some of you will have seen this guy already from my other thread. I had a go at the markings on the helmet from the artwork here. I was then having Ideas for the different types of units I might include in the army. My friends IRL are doing a crusdae for 9th so I'll be trying to get 25PL together. I've put some models together to test out ideas for various units. It's a lot of test models at this point. I put together this reiver to try to get that Praying Mantis insect feel. This is another infiltrator, tried to get a bit of predator influence in this one. Bladeguard Veteran idea, using Phobos armour and with original Mantis ninja influence but also an insectoid shield in this context. I was thinking now that I might go full Phobos armour even for units (like the bladeguard that aren't). I then looked at the Gravis statline and had an idea. I was thinking about the Mantis Warriors being Renegades and decimated by the attacks of the Carcharadons. They would need new recuits and bionics. They are limited/punished to have small numbers. I was thinking a desperation to earn lost honour and re-establish themselves in the imperium. So crossing the Rubicon, Bionics, new recruits from varied sources and even full on robots might be on the cards for them. So here is an idea for an Eradicator, it's just a head swap currently to get an idea... I've since been working on an incursor unit taking the ninja, robot and insect ideas further... Migs of Iron sleet (Migsula on insta) did AMAZING blood angel scouts using phobos armour and admech backpacks. They were a huge influence on these Incursors! So it's been a lot of experimenting and fiddly faffing about. But I feel I've got some ideas to work with here and look forward to getting more painted and also getting stuck into some of these ideas for the various units. Please let me know what you think. KDC

Starting on a vanguard force for fun. Mantis Warriors primaris using the old Badab War tranquil campaign camouflage. Step 1: Pink primer, white zenithial, pink ink from underneath. Step 2: Two layers of indian yellow ink. I'm trying to do a grasslands/savanna camo pattern but I'm really not sure what I'm doing...