Malevolence Reborn

[BitsHammer]

So I'm notoriously prone to picking up and dropping projects on a whim, largely due to a lack of a customization of the army (basically if I'm just copying a paint scheme and not converting anything it gets pretty stale pretty fast), but with luck this won't be one of those projects.

 

So after stumbling into a Renegade Lamenters army project online while looking up the unluckiest boys in the Imperium I started getting an itch. No, not a blessing from ol' Papa Nurgle, but rather a desire for some Chaos Marines in a brighter paint scheme than they normally rock around in. The problem with the use of Lamenters is that I can't freehand a straight line to save my life, so doing an army with all those checks was pretty much off the table. This lead me to poking around for a different loyalist chapter wearing yellow and may have given me the best Astartes for the job: the Marines Malevolent. 

 

Yes, those glorious jerks fit the bill of not only a chapter that had a lot of room to work with (with so little information about them being spelled out), but also fit by their nature. They are the closest thing I've seen to loyalist traitors this side of the Soul Drinkers. 

 

Now there were some issues involving trying to pin down how to build an army for them, and it's not something I can say I've 100% nailed, but I decided that they are fairly close to both the prideful swagger of Slaanesh and the angry martial prowess of Khorne that really it was impossible to claim one or the other, leading me to pair up these two gods for the army. Basically if it punches people it'll likely be running the Mark of Khorne (for strategem and Icon of Wrath access to go with the Renegade Legion Tactic (making them pretty darn fast across the board and into melee)), otherwise it'll be Slaanesh (allowing for the strategem access as well as other Slaanesh options that can support the army (as well as give the army psyker support like Warptiming the Khorne-ier parts of the army)).

 

Basically the end goal is going to be 1-2 of every unit in the codex (bar special Characters, though I may pick up Fabulous Bill for the shenanigans he can provide now and then)

 

This has lead to a new quandry though: paint scheme. Now they Marines Malevolent have a pretty simple scheme:

 

Yellow and Black with company colors in a helmet stripe. Hazard stripes on weapons to denote veterans and a silver aquila to mark it out on the chest. 

 

The thing is we all know that even the old CSM models have a fair amount of trim and just painting it yellow doesn't really work, leading me to the first part of the project I'm looking for feedback on: trim color. I've narrowed it down to two choices, the first one being silver (to match the Aquila color):

 

And the second, which focuses more on complimenting the yellow with purple (though this could also represent a purple wash over silver just as easily, just not as easily replicated in the CSM Painter):

 

So what do people think? Does the look work better with purple or silver trim?

 

Also any tips for running a Renegade based CSM army? I know I'm skipping on some cool toys and options (and losing some options that I would have if I ran C:SM instead, but I feel like this works more for what I want out of the army: a neat theme and conversion project I can work with that will translate to something interesting on the tabletop as it grows into a full army).

[Slan Drakkos]

Cool topic. I'd suggest going with purple over silver for the trim. With that said, could you show me what a black trim as well as a red trim would look like on these guys?

[Trevak Dal]

Purple over silver-if you are feeling experimental, maybe try some of that gem shade/wash stuff if there is a purple for a metallic purple.

 

Are you set on using chaos marine kits, or are you going to mix and match kits? Those mark 4 and 3 marines are pretty awesome looking.

[BitsHammer]

Cool topic. I'd suggest going with purple over silver for the trim. With that said, could you show me what a black trim as well as a red trim would look like on these guys?

Yeah, silver is probably going to be an icon only thing (to match the aquila color of the original MM). And sure, here they are:

 

Black:

Red:

 

I think the red looks pretty decent, but the black loses something (likely because of the large portion of the model being black already).

 

Purple over silver-if you are feeling experimental, maybe try some of that gem shade/wash stuff if there is a purple for a metallic purple.

 

Are you set on using chaos marine kits, or are you going to mix and match kits? Those mark 4 and 3 marines are pretty awesome looking.

Doing a purple wash over silver was one of the ideas I thought of as well (like how GW did the silver bits on the Slaanesh Flayer chariots). It does lend more to the army being a bit more Slaaneshi in nature, but honestly I just think the purple works better than the red one I did above.

 

I haven't fully committed on how exactly I plan on doing the models. I would be pretty well set on CSM only if they'd updated the kit to match the style they gave us in the Dark Vengence set (because I love that corrupted Marine look), but with the Chaos Warriors in Space thing we current have to work with I'm open to some kitbashing to spice things up. My thought is that the Marines Malevolent that I'm doing were caught in the Great Rift when it opened leading to their already poorly supplied force to be pushed to the brink and resulting in them capturing wargear from chaos forces they fought only to be corrupted by it and now they bounce in and out of the rift as a kind of Chaos Marine pirate fleet that launches raids on other forces and pillages planets as they run around, so mixing less corrupted and more corrupted things together is definitely an option.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Personally, I prefer the silver.

 

I suspect that the paint program doesn't give an accurate representation of the final effect for each colour.  One thing you could do is do 2 or 3 test figures with your favorite trim colours.  No need to fully complete the figures, just put down their base colours and the trim and don't worry about tidying it up. - Once you decide on the trim you want, it shouldn't be too much work to change the trim on the other test minis to match.

[BitsHammer]

Personally, I prefer the silver.

 

I suspect that the paint program doesn't give an accurate representation of the final effect for each colour.  One thing you could do is do 2 or 3 test figures with your favorite trim colours.  No need to fully complete the figures, just put down their base colours and the trim and don't worry about tidying it up. - Once you decide on the trim you want, it shouldn't be too much work to change the trim on the other test minis to match.

Yeah, it's the B&C paint app, but I was using the Space Marine one for the paint colors and all the color options that one lists are from around 10 years ago at this point so the colors aren't as varied or as good as the modern colors.

 

I'm looking at either running a wash of Nightshade over the silver to give it a purple tone (like the metals on Slaanesh daemon models), or go for a dark purple to balance the brighter yellow I'm shooting for while bridging it with the black to give it a cohesive feel. It'll probably come down to a couple of color tests to pick which method I end up using in the end, but I definitely feel the purple has a little more pop to it than silver does.

[ZaelART]

I personally like the purple best, an interesting metallic purple would look good.

 

Have you considered changing it up depending on what mark of chaos the units have?

 

Purple for Slaanesh and red for Khorne?

[Slan Drakkos]

I personally like the purple best, an interesting metallic purple would look good.

Have you considered changing it up depending on what mark of chaos the units have?

Purple for Slaanesh and red for Khorne?

that's exactly what I was going to suggest.

[BitsHammer]

I personally like the purple best, an interesting metallic purple would look good.

 

Have you considered changing it up depending on what mark of chaos the units have?

 

Purple for Slaanesh and red for Khorne?

I've thought about it, but honestly I chose purple initially as a complimentary color for yellow long before I was considering marks and icons (icons I'm looking to do custom to keep the army future proofed as they can represent anything instead of needing to make more icons just to match the army), and not as a tie to Slaanesh. I mean, it's definitely an idea that works, but I want to leave myself room to work around future updates and changes to CSM so I don't need to repaint or retire models if the rules drastically change in the future.

[BitsHammer]

So I did some test stuff on some extra Plague Marines I had sitting around and while actual purples were too dark (or too flourescent in the case of Hormagaunt Purple), I feel like the washes over silver work, though I may use a brighter silver than Ironbreaker anext time and see how well it pops. Here are my potato quality pictures (my digital camera is around a decade old and while it does a fine job for group shots and big models the macro just doesn't get the small details as well as I'd like).

 

First up I have the Druichi Violet wash:

 

And then I have the Drakenhoff Nightshade wash:

 

The yellow was just Averland Sunset with a couple of coats of Flash Gitz yellow over it and a Agrax Earthshade wash for rivets and the like to get a feel of how it'd look on models proper. While I like the darker color of the Nightshade, at least over Ironbreaker, the Violet looks a bit brighter and has a bit more pop at a distance, but that might be because I went with a darker base color that doesn't show off the metal as well as it could.

 

Any thoughts?

[Slan Drakkos]

Go with violet. It's an actual discernable color. I didn't even know that you'd painted the leg in that second picture.....

[BitsHammer]

Go with violet. It's an actual discernable color. I didn't even know that you'd painted the leg in that second picture.....

The yellow didn't give it away? :P

 

Fair enough. Potato quality image or not, it at least made the color stand out enough to get an opinion on (which is what I wanted since my partially colorblind eyes can't be trusted on their own at times). I'm probably going to push the silver up to Stormhost Silver to give it more pop with the violet since the wash brings the metal glint down.