The Sons of the Condor - Phobos Tester

[BadgersinHills]

Excellent work!

[BrotherCaptainArkhan]

On 7/5/2026 at 3:19 AM, Disruptor_fe404 said:

 

Inspirational! There's a lot to like here, and certainly a lot I intend to imitate (it's the sincerest form of flattery, I swear).

 

Thanks mate - and good to see you again! Hope the Sentinels are still kicking butt these days :)

 

On 7/5/2026 at 11:59 AM, MoriyaSchism said:

These look brilliant. How did you make that flamer? 

 

Thanks very much. It's actually a very old, OOP Forgeworld heavy flamer. I'm not entirely sure where it came from, but suspect it was released around the time Badab was new?

 

On 7/5/2026 at 6:34 PM, Kurgan the Lurker said:

 

Just saw this over on IG. Great stuff!!!

 

Thanks - very high praise! Grateful you've kept the B&C going all these years :)

 

On 7/5/2026 at 9:54 PM, Kommisar_K said:

Lovely stuff going on here. I too am curious about the flamer. 

 

Also kudos for putting some cool details on the back of Sahorak's banner. 'Tis oft an underutilized space. Did you sculpt the feathers near the top?

 

Thanks a lot. As above, I think it's an OOP FW heavy flamer, possibly from a Badab-era release. I did indeed sculpt the feathers (and you can tell), but they'll get better over time.

 

On 7/6/2026 at 2:54 PM, BadgersinHills said:

Excellent work!

 

Thanks very much indeed!

[BrotherCaptainArkhan]

Right - it's time to kick this into overdrive. Finally, finally finished the entirety of Thunder Cadre for games of 3.5/4th ed 40k (and maybe other Middlehammer variants too). Plus of course Kill Team.

 

Edited July 11 by BrotherCaptainArkhan

[BrotherCaptainArkhan]

Including a slightly different background - haven't quite figured out which is better yet! 

[BadgersinHills]

Beautiful.

[Jhadzaan]

These are great! As for the photos I think I like the lighter background myself. The armor is off-white enough not to blend into the background whereas the with the black background the weapons and black parts of the armor are harder to see.

[BrotherCaptainArkhan]

We're back - this time with Devastators! In honour of the recently laid to rest...

 

[BrotherCaptainArkhan]

 

 

 

The cyber familiar stands in for the sergeant - in 3rd/4th ed Devastator sergeants do nothing and can't take heavy weapons, so figured run the familiar as a proxy for the Sarge (just armed with a bolter). Feels a bit themier than a whole Marine wasted on sentry duty. :)

[MoriyaSchism]

Impressive work. I recognized that old Devastator box Signum instantly, that was a really cool design. Great use of the Deathwatch colours and the Tyrannic War transfers. I quite like the bird, very interesting compromise. I usually stick to the Codex for the most part, but I tend to bend certain rules. 

[Kommisar_K]

Absolutely mind-blowing as always. This whole color palate just works beautifully for Marines. Lovely stuff

[WBRBloom]

These look fantastic @BrotherCaptainArkhan! Why I haven't seen these before!?

[space wolf]

Love the dirty white you've achieved with these guys! They are simply beautifully dark! Well done! It's a long thread, so I may have seen these before and forgot, but if I haven't, I'm amazed I haven't! Pure righteousness!

Edited September 2 by space wolf

[BadgersinHills]

Great work! 

[BrotherCaptainArkhan]

On 9/1/2026 at 10:41 PM, MoriyaSchism said:

Impressive work. I recognized that old Devastator box Signum instantly, that was a really cool design. Great use of the Deathwatch colours and the Tyrannic War transfers. I quite like the bird, very interesting compromise. I usually stick to the Codex for the most part, but I tend to bend certain rules. 

 

Thank you - I really enjoyed using the Tyrannic War vet transfers, they're a great way to give flavour and suggest that the Condors have seen a lot of action against the Tyranids. Re the cyber-familiar - I just proxy it as the squad sergeant. It never sat 'right' with me that Devastator sergeants are effectively bullet catchers/spotters. They're Astartes, damn it! So in the absence of actually being able to give them a weapon, I figured proxying a cyber-familiar with Sergeant rules made some sense.

 

On 9/1/2026 at 11:06 PM, Kommisar_K said:

Absolutely mind-blowing as always. This whole color palate just works beautifully for Marines. Lovely stuff

 

Thanks a lot! Really high praise and I appreciate the feedback. Having a lot of fun with the Condors :)

 

On 9/2/2026 at 10:00 AM, WBRBloom said:

These look fantastic @BrotherCaptainArkhan! Why I haven't seen these before!?

 

Haha, thank you very much. :) 

 

On 9/2/2026 at 5:30 PM, space wolf said:

Love the dirty white you've achieved with these guys! They are simply beautifully dark! Well done! It's a long thread, so I may have seen these before and forgot, but if I haven't, I'm amazed I haven't! Pure righteousness!

 

Thanks brother!

 

On 9/4/2026 at 3:12 AM, BadgersinHills said:

Great work! 

 

Cheers!

 

Next up - I've completed a tester for Phobos armour. It remains an armour mark I'm not 100% sold on, but I like it more with a Mk IV helm and some camo work. Any thoughts?

 

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I think he looks great - the snout-ey helm with its visible optics work great with the model and his heavily opticed rifle.

[Brother Ezra]

I think he looks great! The Mk IV helmet really suits him. Really digging the colour scheme too, really sells the recon/scout vibe!

 

My main issue with the Phobos plate is the legs - to me, they don't really 'read' as more stealthy, or sneaky, or something like that. They just look skinny. I got around this by sculpting pants in the area between the foot and the knee armour, and between the knee and the hip (basically, the same way that the Scouts have their legs). But then you might need to adjust the arms to look that way as well :) 

[MoriyaSchism]

Looks great. The helmet swap and other Recon Marine fittings really add a lot to the plain Phobos design. I'm not a huge fan of Phobos either, I enjoy some of their design elements like the different bolters, chest plate design, webbing and the various grenades. The thing about Phobos that bothers me is the exposed undersuit on the abdomen and the strange armour cut on the legs. It just makes them look like they were supposed to be wearing nothing but a chest plate and fatigues then some designer remembered that they needed power armour so we got this odd compromise. 
 

On 9/11/2026 at 2:41 PM, Brother Ezra said:

I think he looks great! The Mk IV helmet really suits him. Really digging the colour scheme too, really sells the recon/scout vibe!

 

My main issue with the Phobos plate is the legs - to me, they don't really 'read' as more stealthy, or sneaky, or something like that. They just look skinny. I got around this by sculpting pants in the area between the foot and the knee armour, and between the knee and the hip (basically, the same way that the Scouts have their legs). But then you might need to adjust the arms to look that way as well :) 

I came to the same conclusion and I ended up buying 15 pairs of loose intercessor legs when I bought the Shadow Spear box. The plan was to sculpt fatigues over the exposed abdominal ribbing joints and above the knee while keeping rest of the armour to give them the partially armoured look of the old metal Wolf Scout sergeants. I even sanded their backs flat and cut down the power packs to resemble the back plate of the scout armour, but I never got around to finishing this project by the time the new scouts came out. The Phobos arms ended up going to the bits box to be used as arms for Classic style Marine conversions and now I have 5 cut up Reivers in my grey pile waiting to be finished. 

Edited September 12 by MoriyaSchism