WIP Tactical Marines and Sternguard Veterans

So I happened to find a great deal online on DBA (danish equivalent to Ebay) for a bunch of second hand space marines and decided to go for it! Mainly to get another unit of Tactical Marines, but also to try and make my own Sternguard Veterans. This was before the new plastic models were announced and the finecast models were just way overpriced imo. Plus it would be fun to build my own models more or less from scratch :D

So this is what I got. It's something like 50 marines with various weapons, plus a few terminators and a captain. Quite a few seems to have been either Dark or Blood Angles models while the rest are just regular marine models.

As seen above most are painted a ghastly yellow (and not very nicely at that), so I decided to start by stripping them ALL of paint. After reading around the net a bit I decided to go for stripping in pure alcohol (96% ethanol) and using ultrasound and a toothbrush :) First a tester however to make sure the model itself wasn't damaged:

Test worked fine, so I went on to batch-stripping. Some of those models really had a ton of paint on em, just look at the "after" picture below :P

A shot of a few models before and after stripping for comparison. All paint went off extremely nicely, although it did leave the plastic surface slightly frosted on some models. Once painted again though, the texture disappears.

And finally I had most of the models stripped clean and back to their wonderful dull grey colour :)

I then selected 7 models to be converted into Sternguard Veterans as well as 7 normal tactical marines, along with a handful to be modified with special and heavy weapons. Furthermore, the box contained enough sergeants to make a few with different loadouts (chainsaws, power-sword and even a powerfist)

I then went ahead and spent around 50 euro on Megabitzshop on heavy and special weapons, scopes, insignia's, arms, bolters, purity seals and all sorts of other bling... This was both to pimp my Sternguard Veterans, but also build them some combi-weapons as well as give me a wide variety of weapon loadouts for my Tactical Marines... Then I set to work! :D

Bits for making a combi-melta. Sniper scope, normal bolter, magazine from terminator stormbolter and nozzle and fuel-tank from a regular Melta.

After weeks and weeks of on-and-off-building it was finally time to spraypaint all my little blue men with a coat of Chaos Black :)

The result is 7 regular marines with bolters:

One with multi-melta, one plasma-cannon, one flamer, one missile launcher and one heavy bolter:

And finally 3 sergeants, one with powersword, one chainsword and one powerfist (I have later added another two with chainsaws):

Now it's back to the trusted paint-scheme to get these fine marines turned into some awesome looking Ultramarines! :D

The finished Veterans I sadly forgot to take pictures of before I started painting, but I'm currently working on them so there will be pictures of the final models very soon :D Until then I can certainly recommend buying models second hand and "reset" them to paint them according to your own theme... You miss out on building them, creating fun/cool poses, but at least you save a bunch of cash :D

Space Marine Assault Terminators

Picking up from my previous post, it's finally time to get my Assault Terminators finished! :D As mentioned last time the models were prepped and magnetized to keep all weapon options available... All that was left was to paint them:D

Mind, this has still taken me almost 2 months on and off...

Following my usual Ultramarines paint-scheme the five models were undercoated with Chaos Black and the base covered in a thin layer of Scorched Brown...

The entire body was then covered in Macragge Blue, while the scenic rocks on the base were coloured with Dawnstone and then drybrushed with Administratum Grey:

Finally all metal areas are paitned with Boltgun Metal

All to-be-white elements were painted grey (Administratum Grey) to make proper covering easier later on

For the helmets the lenses were first painted with Red Gore, while the remainder was painted first grey and then Skull White, leaving recessed areas grey for shadows:

Time to glue the helmets on! :D

Time for the weapons which were also based with Macragge Blue...

The metal parts are again painted Boltgun Metal and white elements as on the armour... Gold elements are first covered with Calthan Brown followed by Shining Gold.:

With all areas now covered in their correct colours and any mistakes cleaned up, its time for shading with a blue wash. This is followed by some line-highlights, first fairly thick liens with Ultramarine Blue:

followed by thin selected highlights of a 50:50 mix of Ultramarine Blue and Administratum Grey:

To finish off, the bases are drubrushed with Calthan Brown and Bleached Bone and static grass is applied in small tuffs...

Another result which I'm very proud of! I'm really happy with my paint-scheme and the end-result :) Now if I could only speed up my painting... Below I've added some close-ups of all 5 beasts, enjoy! :D

WIP Magnetising Assault Terminators weapons and Quad-cannon

So this post is about something slightly different than my normal painting posts. Usually prepping models is pretty straight forward (although sometimes time-consuming), but sometimes you get models with multiple weapon options and miniatures being as pricey as they are, you wanna keep your options open. Enter magnetisation!

The idea is simple, add small (but strong) magnets to your model and you have the option to exchange parts freely depending on what you want to use the model for. The necessary tools are quite straight forward, as all you need is plenty of magnets (rare-earth magnets for proper strength), some superglue and a drill in the appropriate size. I also opted to get a small hand-vice for better drilling. All items are readily available on Ebay for a few quid.  

The main reason for getting started on this project was to magnetise the weapons on my Assault Terminators as they come with both a Stormshields + Thunderhammer load-out or dual Lightening Claws, both which are viable options depending on opponents and other units in the army. 

After having removed mold-lines etc from the models i glued the bodies together as normal and then drilled a 3 mm hole in each shoulder. Testing the size of the hole with a magnet before gluing is a must as you want it flush with the surface. Also, be sure to watch the polarity of the magnets! I marked one end of a rod-magnet and made sure the inserted magnet always stuck to my rod.... After adding a drop of superglue you have to be quite fast and precise with positioning the magnet as it dries almost instantly. 

Finally the torsos will look something like this...

Same procedure for arms containing claws, shields and hammers..

After leaving the models to dry completely for an hour or so you basically have 10 models for the price of 5 :D

 

Now the models are ready to be painted, which I've been working on for quite many weeks now. Expect another post on this soon :D

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Secondly, I also recently bought the Aegis defense line, which is turning our to be an almost must-have in larger 6'th edition games. Apart from the wall itself, the model also comes with the very powerful Quad-Cannon which is great for sniping flyers and other pesky vehicles from the distance. As the weapon is turret-mounted I opted to magnetise it to allow it to spin 360° without feeling flimsy.

After putting the parts of the gun together I took a piece of steel plate and cut it to fit inside the housing. I then glued a 5 mm magnet to a steel nut to get the correct distance from plate to gun.

The plate was super-glued to the mount and the nut to the gun...

And voila! A turret-mounted gun that can spin 360° and now has some grip so it wont spin randomly around in its socket. Furthermore, the added weight of the metal plate makes the whole gun feel more stable on rough surfaces...

Using magnets in models are easy, fast and cheap and really adds to the value of our expensive models. Definitely something I will be using a lot in the future :D