Not yer Daddy's Imperial Fists - Hellblasters 071817

[Honda]

First off, hello all. After lurking in your thread and having my mind blown by all the yellow, I finally have something worthwhile to add. I think.

By way of introduction, I should say that I am first and foremost a Black Templar player. However, those of us who are one of Dorn's own, have a little bit of the Fists in us and you never really know when it's going to come out.

For me, I thought it was going to be for Horus Heresy. Although there was quite a bit to be excited about regarding the VII Legion, from a modeling and gaming perspective, HH never really took off in our group. Part of the challenge was the fact that I could very easily get the Legion book and then play Scouring Era lists with my Templars and call it done.

It was important that any Fists army I came up with play differently than my Templars. I didn't just want the same thing, but in "Yellow".

Then 8th Edition came out...

And the Primaris...

And suddenly, it was game on.

I just love the new Primaris models. I love how easy they go together, the SWAT poses the bolters have, the very cool looking new armor. This has been a real win as far as I am concerned.

Which started the creative juices flowing. In particular, I decided to opt for a blend of concepts to get me where I want to go with my Primaris. I don't see them being included in my Tempars Crusade, but I could see them as supplemental forces attached to the crusade.

So, to harken back to our "roots", my first squad of Primaris Fists will be in the livery of the Legion during the Unification Wars and possibly the early Great Crusade. I'm not sure about that last part, as I don't have Book III of the HH, but it seems like a reasonable assumption.

So this is an approximation of what I'd like my Primaris squad to look like.

Now, it won't look exactly like that because the armor variants are different and I wanted a little more color on the figures. One of the changes is that I intend to have yellow on both pauldrons.

Also, I guess if you aren't familiar with my style of painting, I prefer a desaturated look, thus you're not going to see "yellow' Yellow on my Fists, but something with a little more brown in it. To be exact, my base yellow color is VMC Yellow Ochre.

So, here is a WIP shot of the first squad. I really wish the Primaris could come in squads of 10, but until that happens in a codex, then I'll just paint 10 guys the same.

One of the great things about taking pics of your work is that you can really see all the things you need to fix a lot better. In fact, pictures of single figures are one of the best ways of humbling yourself I've ever discovered.

Once I get the colors shaped up, I'll continue the self-flagellation by attempting to put this iconography on the shoulder pads.

The icon on the left with the Legion number will go on the right shoulder pad and the eagle head on the right. While I was doing research on our history, I came across the "Roma" honorific, which immediately got stuck in my head. So, I intend to add that honorific to the figures and for some reason keep coming back to the phrase, "7th Legion, Roma Division".

For some reason, I just like the sound of that.

tl;dr: Honda does Primaris Fists

Cheers,

Edited July 18, 2017 by Honda

[WAR]

Awesome Work Honda! was not expecting the changes you did but it looks great. 

[Dosjetka]

Promising start, Honda. Will be keeping an eye on this. :tu:

[Brother Captain Firelupus]

These look really nice

[Honda]

Hookay, first Intercessor squad is done <though I'm not happy with how the eyes turned out, so more effort there>.

All in all, I got pretty close to the concept I was working from and despite quite a bit of nervousness over the freehand, I'd say that it turned out ok. Certainly there's room for improvement.

Sergeant

Troopers

And now, off to the second squad!

Cheers,

[WAR]

Looks great man

[Lachdannan]

I like them a lot. Glad to finally see some Primaris in yellow.

[Honda]

Squad #2

Your basic "block and tackling" going on, just like last time. I did deviate a little bit in that I decided to go with a silver left pauldron and paint the eagle and lightning in yellow like the original artworks shows.

Initially, I wasn't sure that I'd have enough color on them and I didn't want them to look like Iron Warriors. However, in hindsight I think it may have been Ok. Nevertheless, I do like how the first squad turned out, so it's all good.

Here's the Sergeant for the same squad. For some reason, I wasn't crazy about the "weapons pointed up" arm, so I cut the pin and lowered it. It seems like a more natural resting pose. Not saying another Sergeant won't put his gun up, but this time around I went the other way. He also has a black left fist because <reasons>

Also, I shaved his head because if it's good enough for me, it's good enough for my men. :P

And finally, the Lieutenant. I liked the power sword pose better than the other one, so he got paint first. It's a good looking pose, but again, I lowered the right arm because it seemed more natural.

Cheers,

[Honda]

And here we are with my second Intercessor squad and a Lieutenant.

I'm still enjoying the scheme, so I expect to keep riding that horse for awhile. Originally, I thought that I'd do squads in different IF schemes, but now I'm liking the idea of a unified look.

I do think that I will come up with something for the Huscarls. However, I think next up will be some hot, hot plasma love.

LT

The Squad

As I said earlier, I wasn't sure that the metal left pauldron would cause the scheme to look too blase, but I think the yellow eagle gives it enough color to keep it interesting looking. So I'll do more of that on follow up squads.

I haven't sealed these guys yet as I want to look at them a little while longer and try to catch any touch ups that are necessary. Also, I'll eventually figure out what I want to do with the eyes and also add some desert dust to the lower legs.

But for the most part, they are ready to go.

Cheers,

[WAR]

I like the metal shoulder pads. Well done my Friend. Looking forward to seeing more

[Honda]

Ok, so here's two Hellblaster squads (primer coat drying as I type). One of the things I keep coming back to is, since we're most likely going to be using Power Levels for our games, why wouldn't someone maximize the number of these squads in their list?

The incremental power level cost isn't really that bad and it would seem the extra killing power would make them very dangerous. Literally, in a 100 power level list (being silly, mind you), you could have 90 Hellblasters and a LT.

It seems like that would be scary. I don't know, I'll have to play around with them some.

The figures are mostly built as is except for two of them. In my orders, apparently I was shorted two of the legs and torsos and not wanting to stop on these guys, I ended up co-opting one of the LTs (bare head) and then a Sergeant from another squad.

I didn't want both of the Sergeants to be bareheaded, so on one I clipped off the helmet on the waist (used on another figure) and covered it up with a SM ammo clip thingie....which is probably pretty useless considering Hellblasters. Then again, some of the Intercessors may want to hang around him cause he has extra.

The other guy has some slight mods and I used the Sergeant head from the Hellblaster squad on him so that he looks a bit different.

I also cut off the Boltgun/AutoBolt/Hellblaster guns and then did a swap. That was fairly straight forward.

x 2 of these

Cheers,

[WAR]

Sweet conversions Honda!

[Ishagu]

Lovely stuff in here :-D

 

You getting the Redemptor?

[Honda]

You getting the Redemptor?

 

 

I'm torn. I'm one of those that likes the model, but I also want to see what else is coming out. I'm curious if their flyer is going to be another design failure like the Storm Raven/Talon or whether it will look aerodynamic like the Dark Star.

 

Also, I should correct my math statement above. That would be 45 Hellblasters because there's only 5 in a squad. Still seems horrendous though.

 

I'm trying to see if I can get one of these squads ready for a game on Saturday.

 

Cheers,