Since April, I have been slowly putting together and painting a Space Marine army for Warhammer 40,000. Not a particularly remarkable feat, in itself, although in ten years of being involved in the Hobby, and especially ten years of collecting Games Workshop miniatures, I have never properly collected an army.
There have been plenty of attempts, though - Blood Angels, Ultramarines, Necrons, Imperial Guard, Raven Guard, Witch Hunters, and successive attempts at creating my own chapter which never quite got off the ground. Yet it was this route I chose to follow in starting a new army.
I've always loved Space Marines, and always loved the idea of creating my own Chapter, which is probably why I've created more than few since I started playing 40k a decade ago. But that was the problem, I was young, and there seemed to be a new Chapter to create every month. I'd paint a unit, and get bored, or move onto one of the armies listed above.
About five years ago, though, I had more serious thoughts, and came up with the 'Sons of Remus', a typical Romans-In-Space style Chapter that with hindsight looked and felt pretty cheesy. But I still liked the basic colour scheme, even if it was difficult to paint effectively - drybrushed boltgun metal for power armour, red shoulder pads, and gold trim (seen below on the Captain I built as a test for them).
So, I'd decided I liked the idea behind the colour scheme, just not the practicality of it - it was very hard to ensure a consistent drybrush effect across even a single unit, and I didn't want to paint them with metallics, a la Grey Knights, so I needed to rethink - what about using flat colours instead of metallics?
Seeing as I'd already decided on a badge for this new Chapter, which would be a white version of the Eagle Warriors' chapter badge, putting together a squad to test the colour scheme was easy. So, squad assembled, and painted, I had an idea of what the army would look like. It's a bit rough, but the result can be seen below -
Overall I was pleased, I still need to go back and highlight them, but I managed to retain what I feel is a 'Roman' feel to them through the colours I chose, and they looked good on a tabletop. Only one thing changed, though, which was the white helmets - I felt that grey all over was a little too dark, and the white helped to 'break it up' a little.
So, not only had I got my colour scheme, I'd also learnt an important lesson - white is bloody hard to paint right!
