salamanders, etc.

[sal of manders]

Getting back into things. I'm sloooowly (due to work and other distractions) getting more of the infantry together, and I'm nearly done with the base coating for the rhino chassied vehicle. In other words lots of long, tedious work that isn't all that interesting for a WiP post. HOWEVER, a few models have gotten far enough along that I think it's worth an update post.

First up, this guy is slowly getting together.

Vulkan is getting put on hold for the moment though (he's a patient fellow, I'm sure he'll be fine with it). Why? Because of something else that's big and green, but ISN'T a marine. In this case, knights (the big stompy kind )

I decided to go with house Cadmus for my knights, partly for gameplay reasons, but also for aesthetics. The green normally used for Cadmus looks (to me) like heresy era salamanders green, and I've seen Cadmus done by others in warpstone or Caliban, rather than their usual castellan green, and found it to work pretty well, so I've decided to go with the warpstone green variation I've seen online. This is mostly for aesthetic cohesion when I run the knights and marines in the same force. The brush in the above pics seemed to me to be close to the yellow normally used for Cadmus, so I thought I'd include it for testing color schemes. I've noticed whenever others have gone with the more salamander-ish green for Cadmus they used a more orange-ish yellow than the normal Cadmus yellow. I'm inclined to say that it looks better with the warpstone than the normal yellow, but I figured I'd post to get people's opinions.

[sal of manders]

more progress on the knight; Did a dry fit to see how the colors are matching up, and where I may want to put more of the yellow; posting here in case anybody has suggestions.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

The Knight looks promising. Will you paint flames and/or scales on his armor, to visually reinforce his bond with the Salamanders? Edited November 18, 2018 by Bjorn Firewalker

[sal of manders]

The Knight looks promising. Will you paint flames and/or scales on his armor, to visually reinforce his bond with the Salamanders?

 

Probably not flames or scales. Unlike houses such as Hawkshroud, Cadmus doesn't seem to go for the overt incorporation of an ally's iconography into their livery/heraldry.  I'm not decided on the matter, but If I do include any salamander's iconography, it's probably going to be something subtle, like something on their banner. 

[sal of manders]

Posting progress for the week with another dry-fit. I've still got a fair bit to do obviously. I decided to swap the green and yellow on the chainsword since I thought it'd be a little too much visually to have the yellow on both the shoulder AND the sword blade.

[sal of manders]

So I think this knight is almost ready for decal's. Which means I now have to make up my mind on the personal heraldry

as it happens, I have a second gallant I'm going to be putting together, but I'm undecided as to the posing. With that said, I now submit the following pose variations for people's input. The fingers and thumb are already glued on the gauntlet, but the wrist joint hasn't been glued yet, nor any of the other arm joints.

1. attempted fencing pose on this one. Not sure how well it works in that regard.

2. the xeno/heretic tosser pose (hence the genestealer)

3. Friendly neighborhood murder machine, being neighborly.

4. the "this is how many I give about you" pose.

5. the "I'm sorry I killed half your army, or at least I'm pretending to be" pose

6. the "shoo, run along now" pose

7. the "stay back, I'll handle this" pose

8. the "slightly startled" pose

9. the "Is a knight gotta smack some heretic's??!!!!" pose

10. generic "bring it" pose number 932071597509.

[sal of manders]

My current project on the paint table while I figure out what else to do with the knights. I'll probably be alternating between the assault centurions and terminators mostly.

[Naryn]

Didn’t see the earlier post, but I quite like pose number 9. The terminators look to have some cool poses as well!

[Brother Christopher]

For the Knights, I'd vote 6 or 8. By the way, cool descriptions - spot on. I like people who approach 40K with a healthy sense of humour!

 

And I must say - you have an awesome army. It's great that you're starting work on some Centurions despite that GW has made them a liability in their current state. This works well for me too since I'm debating starting assembling and painting some Centurions of my own. Just curious, are intending to add any Primaris to your force?

[sal of manders]

For the Knights, I'd vote 6 or 8. By the way, cool descriptions - spot on. I like people who approach 40K with a healthy sense of humour!

 

And I must say - you have an awesome army. It's great that you're starting work on some Centurions despite that GW has made them a liability in their current state. This works well for me too since I'm debating starting assembling and painting some Centurions of my own. Just curious, are intending to add any Primaris to your force?

 

I would say that assault centurions at least still have some points in their favor.  They're a non-psychic source of mortal wounds, and S10 attacks on a 3+, instead of the 4+ needed by literally anything else that isn't a dreadnought is not to be sneezed at.  

 

 

 

Primaris are joining the chapter.  Between primaris, the introduction of split fire in the rules, and the introduction of five man squads as a standard in the fluff, I've been working on a restructuring of the squads to both accommodate and exploit said changes. With that said, here's the planned squad distribution changes:

 

(7th ed. composition -------------------> 8th ed. composition):

 

First company:  

2 ten-man vanguard -------------------> 3 five-man vanguard

3 ten-man sternguard -----------------> 4 five-man sternguard

2 ten-man assault terminators ------> 4 five-man assault terminators

2 ten-man terminators ----------------> 4 five-man terminators

2 ten-man tartaros ---------------------> 4 five-man tartaros

1 ten-man cataphractii ----------------> 2 five-man cataphractii

----------------------------------------------> 3 five-man reivers

 

Second company:                          

6 ten-man tacticals ---------------------> 9 five-man tacticals  

1 ten-man bikes -------------------------> 3 five-man intercessors

1 ten-man assault marines -----------> 1 ten-man bikes

1 two-vehicle attack bikes ------------> 1 ten-man assault marines 

2 three-vehicle speeders -------------> 1 two-vehicle attack bikes 

2 ten-man devastators ----------------> 1 three-vehicle speeders

1 six-man centurions ------------------> 2 five-man devastators

-----------------------------------------------> 2 three-man centurions

-----------------------------------------------> 1 five-man hellblasters

-----------------------------------------------> 1 three-man aggressors

 

3rd and 4th company underwent the same changes as Second

except their 1 ten-man assault squad became 1 five-man assault squad and 1 three-man inceptor squad

 

Fifth company:

8 ten-man tacticals ---------------------> 14 five-man tacticals

4 ten-man devastators ----------------> 2 five-man intercessors

-----------------------------------------------> 1 three-man aggressors

-----------------------------------------------> 1 five-man hellblasters

-----------------------------------------------> 6 five-man devastors

 

Sixth company: 

4 ten-man tacticals ---------------------> 8 five-man tacticals

8 ten-man devastators ----------------> 4 three-man aggressors

-----------------------------------------------> 12 five-man devastors

 

 

In order to still maintain the old 7:2:3 squad ratio of the salamanders battle companies, I count the 10-man bike squad as "mounted tacticals" and hence technically a battle line squad rather than close support. Also, aggressors and centurions are counted as heavy / fire support regardless of variant / loadout, so assault centurions are counted as "fire support" rather than "close support".

 

The old speeder numbers were largely dictated by a number of game-play factors that changed with 8th edition.  Universal split fire has eliminated a certain amount of the unit redundancy that at least felt necessary for making any given round of shooting effective.  I can now, for example, have the same speeder fire typhoons at the vehicle and heavy bolters at infantry in the same round of shooting, rather than having to choose between either ignoring the vehicle or effectively a wasted round with the heavy bolter. Knowing I can fire all weapons effectively, or at least fire each at a target it can actually hurt, almost every round (range limits on the heavy flamer not withstanding), I've been able to rationalize smaller and arguably more fluff consistent speeder numbers for the chapter.

 

Fun fact; the distribution of devastators and tacticals was partly so that their weapon loadout distribution would also work smoothly for horus heresy, so the tactical and devastator squads bring a combined 120 heavy weapons and 25 special weapons, allowing for 12 ten-man dev squads and 5 five-man special weapons squads in heresy. 

[sal of manders]

Reports of this project's demise have been greatly exaggerated.

While I've slowly been working on the sallies, it's mostly been clipping, trimming, basic assembly, with a prodigious dose of laziness.

in other words, not really anything to post about.

I've come to the conclusion that some of the inactivity on my part is me being tired of painting everything the same colors. I've therefore decided to change things up with the first of my ad mech. I haven't settled on eye color yet, but I think it's otherwise roughly the color scheme I'll be settling on.

I also (mostly) finished stripping the paint from this bad boy:

he's a little worse for wear, as I got him second hand, but he's in manageable condition. also, incase anybody was wondering where the center of mass is on the upper body...

...and yes, I did just balance all that onto a bottle of superglue. It may be a while before I get much further on the warhound though.

Edited March 25, 2020 by sal of manders

[sal of manders]

freshly base coated (except for the deredeo) recruits for the covid crusade.

task force Blurry consists of:

-35 intercessors

-24 devastator marines

-3 rapier quad mortars

-1 vindicator laser destroyer

-3 assault centurions

-plus other things

in other news, I've got a trio of knights finally getting some progress made on them. With some luck I may have a progress pic of them up tomorrow after I've gotten further along with them.

[sal of manders]

An update on the aforementioned knights. I've decided to commit to House Vyronii colors, partly because I like their color scheme on it's own, and also because it makes for a nice palette coordination with both the marines and the ad mech.

The shoulder and waist connections aren't actually glued yet, so this is really more just a preview of loadouts. The warpstone portions on the legs at least are done; I've still got to plan the color arrangements for the carapace, weapons, and personal heraldries.

and in other news....

VULKAN LIVES!

I've still got some more detail work and highlights to do, so he's not done yet.

[sal of manders]

quick dry fit to show current progress on the knights; I was pleasantly surprised how well the corax covers the caliban.

Here's an earlier progress shot of the checker pattern on the gauntlet. A lot of going back and forth between the red and white trying to get the squares to line up right.

Edited March 29, 2020 by sal of manders

[sal of manders]

Progress continues on the knights. I've nearly got all the retributor on them, then it's the liberator gold. One of the neck armour pieces seems to have gone missing; probably going to show up later though.

Edited April 1, 2020 by sal of manders

[sal of manders]

quick and blurry update on the salamanders.

Not the most exciting update, but felt like I needed to post something. While the knights are coming along, it's evident to me that my brain needs to switch gears; so while the above has been going on, I've also been getting the reivers assembled for the vanguard company.

On a broader note, some reevaluation over the past few months has led to a restructuring of the chapter's composition, and therefore my overall plans.

main changes:

squad type changes:

35 tacticals changed to intercessors, so chapter total is now 210 tacticals, 90 intercessors

1 aggressor squad and 2 dev squads changed to hellblasters, so new chapter total is 35 hellblasters.

company command changes:

I decided to make company veterans a supernumerary command element, so each company except the 7th effectively has an extra squad now.

I've filled part of resulting squad vacancies in 1st company by adding another squad of vanguard vets (so 20 total); so I've still got a ten-man squad to decide on for the rest of it.

transport demand changes:

razorback increase from 6 to 10

rhino reduction from 33 to 16

landraider reduction from 14 to 6

Current primaris tank plans:

2 impulsors, of which I have 0.

2 repulors, of which I have 1.

2 executioners, of which I have 1.

Also, 7th company plans:

1 Phobos Captain (have 1/1)
2 Phobos Lieutenants (have 1/2)
2 Invictor tactical war suits (have 0/2)
30 Infiltrators (have 10/30)
30 Incursors (have 10/30)
20 Reivers (have 20/20)
12 Suppressors (have 0/12)
12 Eliminators (have 3/12)
25 Sniper scouts (have 25/25)
25 Scouts (have 25/25)
6 Scout bikers (have 3/6)
5 Storm land speeders (have 5/5)

Edited April 3, 2020 by sal of manders

[sal of manders]

slowly making my way through the armoury backlog, starting with the vindicators. Not gonna lie; painting this many tanks was kind of intimidating before I discovered how effective a 1-inch brush is for this sort of thing.

Edited April 5, 2020 by sal of manders

[sal of manders]

quick and blurry update on the vindicator line. I'd say the chassis are in need of some highlights and washes, but I'm

going to mostly shift focus to the other tanks for now.

Edited April 7, 2020 by sal of manders

[Yosef Hausakluif]

WHOA!!!!! That Vindicator line is unreal. That’s a lot of firepower. Haven’t read the rest of your post about those bad boys; but are you considering painting the siege shields in a unified theme? I was thinking a head to tail fire wyrm dragon mural would be sick!

[sal of manders]

WHOA!!!!! That Vindicator line is unreal. That’s a lot of firepower. Haven’t read the rest of your post about those bad boys; but are you considering painting the siege shields in a unified theme? I was thinking a head to tail fire wyrm dragon mural would be sick!

Part of the reason I'm shifting to other things at the moment is to give myself time to figure out what I'm doing for the siege shields. If I'm going to do something that takes advantage of the "chorus line" formation, I'd like it to also work for solo vindicators.

Now for the REAL tank line...

For comparison, the 5th edition Space Marine codex lists the Ultramarines armoury as having 25 predators.

I decided that 16 was silly enough, even though fluff-wise the predator count should probably be higher.

Plus there's a serious fluff question of whether chapters have enough manpower in the first place to field literally their entire chapter's armoury at the same time.

The plan is to have four of each configuration, so:

x4 autocannon turret, heavy bolter sponsons

x4 autocannon turret, lascannon sponsons

x4 lascannon turret, heavy bolter sponsons

x4 lascannon turret, lascannon sponsons

[Sagentus]

Now that is a line of Tanks!!! 

[sal of manders]

The first seven predators so far with vindicator for color comparison. Sponsons and several of the hull bits on the remaining preds still need to be primed so completion is going to be somewhat at the mercy of the weather.

[sal of manders]

It's been a while, but let it be known that work continues apace and I thought I'd give an update.

I've now exhausted my supply of the army painter spray paint that I've been using to base coat both the sallies and the knights. While this means some models are going to remain bare plastic for a while, I have enough of the sallies primed that I'll have plenty to work on for quite a while.

Recent priming jobs include (i.e. the past week):

knights:

-four war glaives

-two helverins

marines:

-tanks bits, including the pile of remaining tread bits and some predator sponson weapons

-all the remaining helblasters and intercessors

-one vanguard space marines starter box

-executioner tank

-additional squad of eliminators

-two stormravens

-two stormhawks

-two primaris lieutenants

-three grav centurions

-one cataphractii captain

-roughly 20 old marines with mixed loadouts

-two scout bikes

ad mech:

-roughly 25 skitarrii

-one kastelan robots box

-one sicarians box

-two tech priest dominus

-one dune crawler

Anyway, here's a mustering of 2nd through (sorta) 6th company as they currently stand (left to right on the table), not counting what's in my painting area or yet to be assembled. A lot of the infantry in the space for 6th are actually models I need to repaint before assigning to a company, so as that portion of my backlog gets whittled down, 6th will start looking more like a proper company

[sal of manders]

waiting for the washes to dry on the purity seals before I start highlights on these guys. They'll be filling in some of those gaps from the muster pics.

Fun fact: since a lot of the old marines were originally ebay rescues, several of the sergeant load outs are how they were built when I got them, rather than being a deliberate decision on my part, the marine with the power sword here being one of the exceptions.

for those who can't make it out, that's 24 marines

-5 heavy bolters

-1 missile launcher

-4 sergeants

-14 bolters

[sal of manders]

an update with the latest addition to the chapter

earlier progress pic of the same group

also armiger assembly has begun