Mortarion's Flesh tearers - the collected thread

[Mortarion]

A squad of Tactical marines. These were some of the first models i made for this army.

 

First combat squad.

 

Second combat squad.

 

Some close-ups. I tried to convey a sense of movement in many of the models. The Flesh tearers are all about assaults, so even tactical squads will advance towards the enemy.

 

And the sergeant. I always try to add something to sergeants to make them special and give them some personality. This guy got a pair of knives attached to his backpack, ready to be drawn.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

I admire the battle damage you added to the SGT's armor, to give him character.

[Mortarion]

Some transports:

 

Rhino. For the freehand on the top hatch, I wanted a mix between religious painting, horror movie poster and heavy metal album cover. I am happy with the result.

 

Another rhino.

 

Razorback with converted Heavy flamer turret. I have an assault cannon turret for it as well.

 

Another razorback.

[Mortarion]

And some Drop pods.

 

A Dreadnought drop pod. This was built before the drop pod kit was released so it is made completely out of plasticard and some random spare bitz.

 

A normal infantry drop pod.

 

And a Death company drop pod. "Why is it grey and not black?" some of you might wonder. Well, when I started building the army the information about the Flesh tearers was mostly limited to an Index Astartes article in White dwarf. The Death company models shown in the article were painted grey, but that was just some gamers army. It never actually said anything about the "official" colours. But I decided to paint my Death company grey, as it would make them stand out from the army more. Much later it became "official" that the Flesh tearers Death company was black, but at that point I did not want to repaint my models.

Edited August 7, 2019 by Mortarion

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Great job on the Rhinos, Razorbacks, and drop pods. The freehand art on the vehicle hatches are well done.

[ranulf the revenant]

The chainsaw angel is really something else :D...

[ixzion]

This is fantastic! I'm especially impressed with the freehand! I recently ran out of Flesh Tearers transfers and GW are not producing any new ones. Do you mind sharing with me how you freehand the chapter symbol? 

[Mortarion]

This is fantastic! I'm especially impressed with the freehand! I recently ran out of Flesh Tearers transfers and GW are not producing any new ones. Do you mind sharing with me how you freehand the chapter symbol? 

Thank you. Sure. This is how I do the symbol:

Since circles are quite hard to draw, I start with four dots (at 12, 3, 6 and 9 o'clock). I then connect two of them with a curve, then the opposite two and finally the other ones. This will help get a round circle, but if not you can keep modifying it until it is right. This is all done in a very light grey rather then white. I then add the "spikes/blades" in a similiar fashion. My symbol uses twelve of those, as do most versions of the FT chapter symbol (the number twelve is used in a lot of Imperial iconography to symbolise the twelve High Lords of Terra). I start with the four at 12, 3, 6 and 9 o'clock again and then add two more between each of them. This way helps the spacing to get more even. Next I add some shading in the bottom right corner and some highlight in the upper right corner of the symbol, but this step can be skipped if you wish. I then draw the blood drop in black and then fill it with dark red. I finally paint a lighter red highlight at the lower right corner of the drop and a small white dot at the middle left. And on some models I do a very, VERY light drybrush (with almost no paint at all on the brush) with brown so that the symbol appears a little dirty.

 

Time for some new models. An assault squad with jump packs.

First combat squad.

 

Second combat squad.

 

Closeup of the sergeant.

 

And some special weapons to add when needed.

[Oshikai]

Yes, these are still as awesome as I remember. Back then you actually made me consider a Flesh Tearer Force, but they wouldn`t have turned out nearly as flavourful.

 

Edit: I feel bad about bringing this up since I can see how much work went in to your Basing, but have you ever considered 32mm ones? I reckon it would make them even more awesome

Edited August 11, 2019 by Oshikai

[Mortarion]

Yes, these are still as awesome as I remember. Back then you actually made me consider a Flesh Tearer Force, but they wouldn`t have turned out nearly as flavourful.

 

Edit: I feel bad about bringing this up since I can see how much work went in to your Basing, but have you ever considered 32mm ones? I reckon it would make them even more awesome

Thank you. Yes, I have thought a great deal about 32 mm bases. I would like them to be on 32 mm, but unfortunately I have come to the conclusion that it simply would require too much work. Because of the way my bases are designed, I can't really use base extensions so changing the bases would mean redoing them all. And I have somewhere between 130-140 models on 25 mm bases. As you said, a lot of work have been put into those bases. And on the models where I have tried to give them a bit more movement, I have often used different tricks with the way the base is attached to the model (standing on rocks or piles of sand for example). So it would not just be doing 140 new bases, but transfering the models between them would be quite difficult in some cases. So in the end I felt that I would rather spend all the hours/days a complete rebasing would require on painting models instead.

[Mortarion]

Another Tactical squad.

 

First combat squad.

 

Second combat squad.

 

And a close up of the sergeant. I wanted him in a sort of calm pose. Like he was trying to focus his rage to find the balance between decending into madness and not using the gifts of Sanguinius to their full potential.

 

An alternate sergeant for when I want to use a melta/combimelta squad. I don't really like how this model turned out. I think it would look OK as a regular sternguard or something but it really does not have enough personality to be a sergeant.

[Mortarion]

Time for new models - Reivers!

When I started painting primaris marines for my Flesh tearers I realised that I had to get some Reivers. Killing enemies in close combat and spreading terror - it's what we do!

The squad.

 

Details of the sergeant. The population on the Flesh tearers' home planet, Cretacia, is really primitive. In many ways the Flesh tearers are formed by their Blood angel heritage, but I felt like their own culture might shine through in some places. And since Reivers are supposed to be headhunters in the sense that the seek out enemy leaders and kill them, I thought it would be interesting to have them be literal headhunters. Allthough Primaris marines would actually not be from Cretacia the original Flesh tearers might want to teach their new brothers something about their culture and train the primaris according to their customs. So many of the models carry the skulls of defeated enemies with them. And I gave the sergeant a primitive skull facepaint instead of a skull mask.

 

I wanted to make sure that the trophy taking did not seem like Chaos or Drukhari customs. The Flesh tearers are loyal to the Emperor and since the Inquisition is watching them closely they want to show their faith, but perhaps in a more savage way. I therefore painted all the purity seals for the squad like they were made of flayed skin with writing in blood and gave some models larger pieces of flayed skin. What better way to show your dedication to the Emperor than to display the remains of His defeated enemies. Painting the Imperial eagles was a bit strange since I wanted them to look almost like cave paintings and I had to paint them undetailed and simple on purpose. That really went against all instinct when painting freehand... 

[Oshikai]

So glad to see new Miniatures, was scared to ask if you are done with the Flesh Tearers and this is their Swan Song. Love it.

[ranulf the revenant]

No chain weapons on these? Buzzsaw D'Angelo would be disappointed

[Mortarion]

So glad to see new Miniatures, was scared to ask if you are done with the Flesh Tearers and this is their Swan Song. Love it.

Thank you. This is far from a swan song. Quite the opposite I would say. When painting the Intercessors I got inspired to paint more FT primaris stuff. So I wanted to gather and improve my old pictures to have somewhere to store my new stuff. So more new stuff is on the way!

[Mortarion]

Some more old stuff with better pictures.

 

A devastator squad.

Normal marines and a sergeant.

 

Missile launchers.

 

And a closeup of the sarge.

 

And an assault squad on foot (that rode into battle in a Razorback).

With the bionic head and arm and really damaged armour on that side, I wanted to give the impression that he had been hit by some explosive and nearly killed. But it takes a lot to bring a Space marine down.

[ranulf the revenant]

 

With the bionic head and arm and really damaged armour on that side, I wanted to give the impression that he had been hit by some explosive and nearly killed. But it takes a lot to bring a Space marine down.

Hmmm... But while getting a bionic arm, the damaged armour panels would have been replaced as well

[Mortarion]

 

With the bionic head and arm and really damaged armour on that side, I wanted to give the impression that he had been hit by some explosive and nearly killed. But it takes a lot to bring a Space marine down.

Hmmm... But while getting a bionic arm, the damaged armour panels would have been replaced as well ? So this would have to be another incident. Apparently things to his left explode all the time

 

I don't think I understand what you mean. The explosion was enough to make the arm unusable, destroy parts of the face and severely damage the shoulder pad and chestplate. When giving him bionics there would have been time to replace the armour plates, but since the Flesh tearers are really low on resources, they can only replace parts which are absolutely neccessary. Therefore he still wears the damaged armour.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

The explosion was enough to make the arm unusable, destroy parts of the face and severely damage the shoulder pad and chestplate. When giving him bionics there would have been time to replace the armour plates, but since the Flesh tearers are really low on resources, they can only replace parts which are absolutely neccessary. Therefore he still wears the damaged armour.

Well said. You put more thought into this than many of Games Workshop's own writers.

[ranulf the revenant]

So scarce ressources is the answer. I wasn't super serious about this, sorry if I caused irritation.

[Mortarion]

So scarce ressources is the answer. I wasn't super serious about this, sorry if I caused irritation.

No problems. I wasn't irritated. Sorry if I gave that impression. I just wanted to explain my thoughts behind the model. It was unclear in my original post. Since I have worked with the army so long I sometimes make the mistake of just assuming that everyone knows the background of the Flesh tearers. 

[ranulf the revenant]

They're very angry, they love chain weapons and their chapter master is a bald guy who really exemplifies these characteristics. He's also at odds with Dante sometimes. That's about all I know Edited August 19, 2019 by ranulf the revenant

[Mortarion]

Sorry for the lack of updates. I've had a lot to do at work. But here are my Death Company with jump packs.

 

 

This is a little mini-diorama I did of a Death Comapny marine losing control and giving in to the Red Thirst.

[ranulf the revenant]

Gruesome stuff...

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Excellent work on the Death Company Assault Marines.

Gruesome stuff...

As appropriate for the Death Company.