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The Ophelia Crusade


Haldredd

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“Following the opening of the Great Rift, the Black Templars – now reinforced with Primaris Space Marines – send forth four crusade fleets, tasking each with the same mission: protect the shrine worlds.”

The Ophelia Crusade was dispatched to the shrine world of Ophelia VII to reinforce the Adeptus Ministorum compound there whose reports of an assault from Death Guard forces describe a threat that could take the planet from the Imperium.

++-++-++-++

I returned to the hobby after a break of 16 years or so, just before Dark Imperium and 8th edition were released in 2017. I picked up a box of Tactical Marines and painted a few up in different chapter colours. I decided to go for the Black Templars for their lore as much as anything else. I love the gothic zealotry and their close ties to the Ministorum.

I've mostly been a painter rather than a gamer (I’ve played a few games of Kill Team but no proper games of 8th ed yet) or a writer so I haven’t yet come up with much of a background for my crusade. Maybe that’s something to come.

I started out with a squad of Intercessors:

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My thinking with the Primaris is that they’re still fairly fresh to the battlefield, so their armour is clean (although that may change as time goes on) and they’ve not had much time to add many of the adornments that their older brethren will have done. That said, some have added chains or tweaked their armour/weapon colours here and there.

Next up we’re the Inceptors:

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Similar principles here but with the special weapons we bring in classic yellow casings.

Then some Hellblasters:

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Some chains again here and our first tabard on the Sergeant (resin from Spellcrow). Plus I tried my first freehand for the flames on a couple of the plasma weapons.

Next, on to some characters. The Emperor's Champion, of course:

med_gallery_141295_15361_81963.jpeg

Grimaldus:

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And his Cenobites:

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All of the models use transfers/decals that I designed and printed on decal paper. I’m hoping to do some more soon, using white ink so that I can get some crusade shield markings, white crosses, etc. But they’ll have to be printed by a pro so it’ll be a while before I get the designs right and sent off.

I’m currenting working on finishing some Sector Imperialis buildings and I’ve been building the Initiates for my first Crusader squad. I’ve taken on board lots of advice from other posts in the forum, especially from Schlitzaf (thank you!), and I have my Sword Brother with power sword and combi flamer, then 6 Initiates; one with a flamer, one with a power sword and the rest with chainswords. I’ve really been enjoying kitbashing them from 7 or 8 different sets, plus a few third party bits. Some WIP photos to come once I’m happy with all their builds. I’ll be trying my first green stuff tabards on them too.

After the Initiates, of course there will be some Neophytes. 5 to start with but I’ll get a couple more at some point. They’ll all have head swaps from the original scout heads.

Longer term I’ve got a Terminator assault squad, Sword Brethren squad, a Rhino/Razorback, an Ironclad Dreadnought, some Aggressors, and a kitbashed Helbrecht. Mostly units I like because of their aesthetic as part of a Templar force rather than because I have a solid plan for an army!

Let me know what you think and whether you have any questions or comments. I'm glad to have finally started a thread here. My Crusade feels official now!

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Well done. Are the Hellblasters' yellow weapons meant to honor the Imperial Fists Legion?

I’d love to be able to say yes, but in fact my colour scheme is inspired by the John Blanche box art from 40k 3rd edition, as well as the GW artists Maxime Corbeil and Martin Peterson, who both painted Templar miniatures based on John's art. I really love the combination of black, red and yellow, especially against the backdrop of the rusty desert wastes. I’m not sure if John had the Imperial Fists in mind when he chose to add in the yellow - perhaps he did!

I wanted to pull off the yellow weapons myself but couldn't get it to look right. Mad props for not only doing it, but doing it so well!

Thanks Reinhard! I base coated averland, then sprayed yriel yellow from above and a very thin coat of fuegan orange from below. More fuegan as a recess wash, then a little agrax in the darkest recesses. Finally an edge highlight of screaming skull.

You honour us all with your startlingly excellent painting skills, though I must confess a certain trepidation at the prospect of your customised Crusader Squad - how can we hope to contain ourselves when faced with such Zeal?
  • 3 weeks later...

I finished painting some terrain last week and gave it a test run with the Templars.

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Time to crack on with the Crusader squad now, but I’ve been distracted by the temptation of doing them “true scale” so I’ve been prototyping to see if I can convincingly combine the top half of an standard space marine with the bottom half of a Primaris marine.

I think it can be done so the question is, should I do it? They’ll still be visually different from the Primaris but the same height.

I think combining the two would look odd. I my eye the scale is big enough to see it, unless you could bulk it out with something. I will be making a Primaris Crusader squad or two as well at some point soon. Planning on using the bottom half of the tabbard and greenstuffing the top half. 

How are you at sculpting ? 

 

But if the question is should a Primaris Crusader squad be made, then yes! 

I love your BT. They're clean, the basing contrasts well with the armor, and the 3rd edition weapon colors look great without being gaudy.

 

How do you paint your bases, bolters, and plasma weapon casing? Are your decals FW? Are the shoulder pads airbrushed white?

Thank you Zeller! I’m glad you like them. Their paint scheme is very much 3rd edition, in fact I’m aiming to keep it as close to the 3rd edition cover art as possible. As for the recipes:

 

Bases

Base coat ungor flesh

Base coat any rocks screaming skull

Wash eshin grey

Mix washes from dark red ochre and rust pigments and apply in blotches

Drybrush everything screaming skull

Drybrush any rocks white

Paint rims rhinox hide

 

Bolters

Basecoat leadbelcher

Wash 1:1 nuln oil & nuln oil gloss

Edge highlight runefang steel

Any parts you want to be gold:

Basecoat Balthasar gold

Wash 1:1 reikland fleshshade & gloss

Edge highlight gehenna's gold

 

Special weapons

Basecoat averland

Airbrush from below fuegan orange

Airbrush from above yriel yellow

(Airbrush only necessary for curved weapons like the plasma incinerators, boxy weapons can be done with a brush on the upper and lower surfaces)

Recess shade Agrax earthshade

Edge highlight screaming skull

 

Decals

The decals are ones I designed myself and printed onto transparent decal paper I got from eBay. Just make sure you by the right type for your printer inkjet or laser) and if you use inkjet then you’ll need to spray with varnish to stop the ink running. Laser printed ones won’t run but the ink can rub off on the paper, so you might want to spray those anyway.

 

Shoulder pads

The shoulder pads are primed white as the first thing I do on the while model, then I mask them off with Blu-Tack before priming the rest of the model black.

Then basecoat ceramite White

Glaze screaming skull around the edges

 

Hope that’s useful! Let me know if you have any other questions!

You posted about how you do the Black in the airbrushing thread right? Because I am really interested in improving that via airbrush.

I am currently doing a squad of terminators and I am airbrushing some parts of them in. Your models look top notch as always

You posted about how you do the Black in the airbrushing thread right? Because I am really interested in improving that via airbrush.

I am currently doing a squad of terminators and I am airbrushing some parts of them in. Your models look top notch as always

I did, yes. For these guys I used incubii darkness as the airbrush highlight, but as I said in the other thread, in not entirely happen somehow they don’t quite look black enough. So I think next time I’ll do a more selective highlight and I might not do an initial highlight with white like I did before, so that it all comes out a bit darker/blacker. I’ve also bought some other colours to try out - P3 coal black, and Vallejo game “extra opaque” heavy charcoal. I’ll have to do some test models.

  • 3 weeks later...

Haldredd, can you please explain a bit more about 'glazing' the Screaming skull?

 

Certainly! Glazing is a process of diluting a paint (usually just with water but sometimes people will use a medium like lahmian medium as well) to create a very thin version of the paint, almost as thin as a wash/shade. The trick though is that you put much less of it on your brush, so usually this means dipping your brush a little and then dabbing it onto a paper towel to take away most of the liquid. You can test it out on your thumbnail - if you brush the side of the brush against your nail you should see a very translucent streak ending in a slightly more opaque blob where your brush stroke ended, but there should be very little pooling of paint.

 

So on the model itself you use the glaze by brushing with the side of the brush rather than just the tip and using the fact that the paint will accumulate a bit more at the point your brush stroke ends. So in the shoulder pad I would start my brush stroke more towards the middle of the shoulder pad and the draw it towards the edge - the paint will then be most transparent near the middle and most opaque near the edge.

 

The great thing is that the glaze will dry quickly and so you can do multiple layers one over the other to build up the paint where you want it and get the transition of colour you want.

 

Hope that helps!

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