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LPC 2012 - Dark Angels Tactical Squad


Buyback

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Hi everyone,

 

I've vowed to assemble and paint a full Tactical Squad. I would like this topic to be my step by step work. Hopefully it will go the way I want and if you enjoy it, I will turn it onto an article.

 

for starters I bought a Tactical Squad box and a Dark Angels Veteran Squad box. I will use one of the robed marine as my Sargent. the Squad will be composed of:

7x Space Marines with Bolters

1x Space Marine with Meltagun

1x Space Marine with Missle Launcher

1x Space Marine Sargent with Power Weapon and Bolt Pistol ( DA Veteran Marine model with magnetized arms for weapon swapping)

 

All marines will be equipped with bits from the Veteran box

 

I also bought an airbrush to paint my models. First I need to learn how to use it and paint with it properly and also decide on the color of the Armour ( the proper shade of green).

 

Thats it for now, I will keep you posted

Top man buyback! Best of luck with your vow!

 

if you're using citadel paints, dark Angels green (the clue is in the name :jaw:) is a good place to start

 

Hehe, thanks for the advice :D That was going to be my base coat :) The only thing i have doubts is to highlight to Goblin Green or to Snot Green ;) My previous Marines were highlighted to Snot Green. But I do want a darker feel. I will have to test and find out. Luckily I have 3-4 black primed volunteers :)

I used to use a bit of snot green for highlighting, but i just feel that it's an entirely different shade of green altogether.

 

What I tend to do is Basecoat with DA green, ink black, then paint the areas to be highlighted with skull white. A line of white for 'extreme' edge highlights, and a drybrush for those generally somewhat highlighted areas, and then paint over with a second coat of DA green. Yellow ink on the highlighted areas, and dark green ink all over.

 

Bob's your uncle!

Thanks Tengo for the tip. Do you have any pics of Power Armour DA painted this way ?

Back to the Step by step:

gallery_27983_6871_332792.jpg

After taking the pic I forgot to add a power fist and the bolters from the Veteran Spure. With these parts I'm hoping to change the standard Tactical Squad into a Dark Angel Tactical Squad. I hope they will be worth of calling them Dark Angels :D

Next step is to cut them out of the frames and remove the mold lines. In case of those frames it will be difficult cause they are just horribly made. That has taught me to always check the frames in the shop and in cases like this return them. Its a bit frustrating that you pay a lot for a box of plastic men and in some cases they are poorly made... . I had hoped those days are behind GW. Guess I was wrong :(

It's the luck of the draw mate, sometimes you get a good quality batch, sometimes you get unlucky and they're not very good quality.

 

I don't have any pics of my Green marines at the moment, I could take some with my iPhone, but the quality wouldn't really be good enough for it to be worth it. Next time my mate comes down with his SLR, I'll grab a few for you.

I know that some of you think that this is a small vow, but I intend to do those models as to best of my abilities.

If I have time I'll post some of my old Marines. I'm not a good painter so please do not expect a Golden Daemon :)

 

There are two things that keep bugging me:

1) I can't decide in which company to put them. Probably I'l go with the 5th comapny. My older marines were of the 3rd, but i want something more than a red stripe. Do i represent the company only on the left knee ? or is there any place i have to consider painting it too ?

2) The color of the chest eagle. I can't decide between:

a) base-coat bestial brown, highlight snakebite leather, 2nd highlight bleached bone

B) base-coat codex gray, highlight fortress gray, 2nd highlight skull white

c) base-coat boltgun metal, badab black wash, chainmail highlight.

d) base-coat old gold, gryphon sepia wash, highlight white gold ( Valeo palette)

I seen some people paint gold and it look quite good, maybe i'll rstrict it to upper ranks. As to a standard Tactical brother, in the codex i see GW paints it something to the "a" option, but on page 58 the picture shows a marine with a silver chest eagle. So which is cannon ? I knwo this changes sometimes... (Smurfs changing trims from yellow to gold...). Whats your opinion on this ?

Good luck Buyback! Even a single squad looks like a daunting task when on the sprue! B)

 

EDIT: I used option c) for my Disciples and it looks great BUT the chest eagle in the artwork was black - which looked way too dark to me - hence the metal. In the case of DAs though the eagle is always depicted as bone-white. So it's a tough call - frankly I don't think option c) would be the best. I'd go option a)

 

Next time my mate comes down with his SLR, I'll grab a few for you.

 

So, where does your mate put the camera in the SLR? :)

I've changed over from doing the chest eagles in bone (base coat bone, devlan mud, highlight bone) to doing them in white (build up from grey to a final white highlight). I think the end result is more striking, but the main reason I switched was I was bored of bone from doing to many Deathwing B)

I use option C exactly as you point it.It gives a nice contrast to the green.I wanted to go gold at first,but then i had the idea of paintng the shoulder pad trim and exhaust ports trim on the power packs of my vets and officers in gold so i reconsidered.

 

This oath is not a painting skill contest you should not worry.In fact you should not worry at all.Neither i am a golden deamon painter,my work is 'decent' at best.

See this as an opportunity for practice and should the need arise i am sure our resident painters will throw in quite a few tricks as advice for you.

Waiting to see your work!

I wanted to go gold at first,but then i had the idea of paintng the shoulder pad trim and exhaust ports trim on the power packs of my vets and officers in gold so i reconsidered.

 

That's almost exactly what i was thinking about, except I was considering painting veteran shoulder pad trims silver and inner circle in gold. Still can't decide on the eagle, but I have a feeling the white would be the best. the bleached bone one is not looking good on robed marines ( which in fact are also bleached bone... )

Next time my mate comes down with his SLR, I'll grab a few for you.

 

So, where does your mate put the camera in the SLR? :D

 

 

He keeps it in the boot, stowed away with his other SLR ;D

 

 

I like to give my tacticals a brass chest eagle, once again, I'll try to get a picture for you when this trifecta of SLRs turn up! ;)

There are two things that keep bugging me:

1) I can't decide in which company to put them. Probably I'l go with the 5th comapny. My older marines were of the 3rd, but i want something more than a red stripe. Do i represent the company only on the left knee ? or is there any place i have to consider painting it too ?

2) The color of the chest eagle. I can't decide between:

a) base-coat bestial brown, highlight snakebite leather, 2nd highlight bleached bone

:lol: base-coat codex gray, highlight fortress gray, 2nd highlight skull white

c) base-coat boltgun metal, badab black wash, chainmail highlight.

d) base-coat old gold, gryphon sepia wash, highlight white gold ( Valeo palette)

I seen some people paint gold and it look quite good, maybe i'll rstrict it to upper ranks. As to a standard Tactical brother, in the codex i see GW paints it something to the "a" option, but on page 58 the picture shows a marine with a silver chest eagle. So which is cannon ? I knwo this changes sometimes... (Smurfs changing trims from yellow to gold...). Whats your opinion on this ?

 

1) The Codex Astartes only requires the company badge to be on the left knee. I use the same pattern for the sergeant's banners with the squad number in the corner, and of course the company's rhinos each have the badge on their front. I suppose my drop pods will too when I get round to painting any of them.

2) I use 'a' because that's the colour scheme I copied from Codex: Angels of Death and I've stuck with it to be consistent. I'm sure I've seen some done with grey and it looked ok, but a bit drab. My Deathwing get gold chest decoration, because bone against bone looks rubbish! :)

 

Those kind of decorations, like boltgun casings, aren't really part of the chapter's colours in the way that armour and heraldry are. You can't paint them 'wrong'.

1) The Codex Astartes only requires the company badge to be on the left knee. I use the same pattern for the sergeant's banners with the squad number in the corner, and of course the company's rhinos each have the badge on their front. I suppose my drop pods will too when I get round to painting any of them.

2) I use 'a' because that's the color scheme I copied from Codex: Angels of Death and I've stuck with it to be consistent. I'm sure I've seen some done with grey and it looked ok, but a bit drab. My Deathwing get gold chest decoration, because bone against bone looks rubbish! :tu:

 

Those kind of decorations, like boltgun casings, aren't really part of the chapter's colors in the way that armor and heraldry are. You can't paint them 'wrong'.

 

I seen then entry in the DA codex and you're right , left knee, banner, rhino/razor armour plate. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that DA, SW, BT, BA do not follow the codex astartes ?

 

Thanks for the tip Cactus, I'll look at older codex (3rd, 2nd), maybe I'll find good references there also. As to Deathwing i see there chest eagle should be green, but i agree that gold suits them much better, but I think I will leave this topic till LPC 2013 ( If the world doesn't end) :D

 

The problem with DA PA and DA TDA is there are too much different colors. Some say that Deathwing with bone, green, red, gold, silver, look like Christmas trees.

 

One think I'm sure is that I'm going to paint my bolter casings black. I just don't like the red casings ;)

 

As to my Step by Step, I've finished removing the mold lines from the bits and from the weapons tray. After the whole step I'll post a pic. I'll try to do a macro pic of the legs before and after removing the mold lines.

  • 1 month later...

My first update :lol: Sorry for taking so long, but I recently received my gray primer. This was an excellent exercise to using an airbrush. It was not easy at first, especially making the right mixture of primer and thinner... .

gallery_27983_6871_382449.jpg

So this this stage 2. I've primed most of the parts with Vallejo Gray Primer. Other parts (bases, weapons) were done using a black primer. Next step is the DA Green basecoat. I will try to do this by the end of the week

  • 4 weeks later...

Hi,

Its coming very sloooooow :) . I really hadn't got a lot of time to finish my models. My error was, that i didn't split it to two phases. Painting 10x part the same color all over kills the desire to paint. But I'm struggling. . My progress till the day before yesterday:

gallery_27983_6871_664778.jpg

Yesterday I mobilized and painted base color of all details:

Chest plate, cables and armor skulls - astronomical gray

purity seals - mechrite red

parchments - snakebite leather

weapons, armor joints - chainmail

weapon casings - chaos black

I also used gloss varnish on the shoulder pads to prepare them for the decals

Today I need to varnish ( Stain Varnish) on all the parts and then washing and highlighting.

Whats left is the Sergeant's body. He is still only primed gray. I have no idea how to paint the robes properly, this why I hesitate to start him.

The bases are glued with sand and cork and primed black. So i need to paint them also, but I think that will be quite quick.

So running close, but I doubt I will make it time :)

Hey Buyback, stick to your project mate - it seems you've made quite some progress there! I really hope you make it - it's still plenty of time until Saturday!

 

But if you don't make it on time - no worries! Get it complete when you can. I know I (and many others I'm sure) would love to see this finished!

HI,

 

I'm sorry to inform that its GAME OVER for me... :) The culprit is my stain varnish spray and the way i varnished my parts. I held the can to far, thus the effect was devastating... . The parts of the models have small mat dots, that really mess the model. At this point i don't want to see any more paints, brushes, models etc. Hope in time this will fade away. In the meantime I'm going for some car brake fluid to try to clean the parts. Maybe I'll have a second chance in a future far far away :lol:

Sorry to hear that Buyback. But your mental health is worth more than a "Vow Complete" banner. (probably ;))

 

In the meantime I'm going for some car brake fluid...

 

If you are to take up drinking, use more mainstream stuff :)

 

Maybe I'll have a second chance in a future far far away :(

 

Damn right! There is always next year! Sit back and enjoy the conclusion and I look forward to your thoughts on the forthcoming LPC - Phase III, The aftermath, to discuss statistics and generally comment on the whole LPC process! ;)

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