Scots from Spaaaaace – Sorting my Storm Wardens

This blog is turning into more of a stream of consciousness than I thought.

Anyway, I decided to just give myself a bit of a painting order to stick to so here it goes:

• Shadowspear Infiltrators
• Shadowspear Eliminators
• Shadowspear Supressors – SHADOWSPEAR FINISHED
• Finish Stormtalon 2
• Finish Landraider
• 5 man Assault team
• Ad Mech – Techpriest Engineseer
• Ad Mech – Techpriest Manipulus
• Ad Mech – finish Onagar
• Cataphractii Termies
• Everything Else

Right there’s an already daunting list to complete. That should make a bit of a dent! Need to sort out my cabinet too to order things a bit better so I am not scrambling around trying to make a squad before each game.

I usually start painting boxes with the characters or ‘models of more interest’ first. This has so far been the case with shadowspear with the characters however I wanted to do a test scheme on the infiltrators first.

I love the pose of the guy chucking the smoke grenade so had a pop at him first. Now these guys sit somewhere between a Riever and an Intercessor on the table top so I didn’t want to use the same scheme as either of those.

I went for a hybrid for the phobos armour instead. The Rievers are predominantly silver (more of an unpolished/rougher paint scheme in my head for them to blend in), and the Intercessors was the ‘standard’ scheme. So for the Infiltrators I went with completely silver legs and arms with a blue torso. All in all I am really happy with it, especially this first marine…

(p.s. something I also played around with was the highlighting on the silver. I am trying to remove large patches of plain leadbelcher to make it more chrome-esque. I am yet to crack it but I think it’s getting there.)

Here’s a bonus Lieutenant with the same colour scheme as I imagine him dropping in with this squad. That polishes off the characters. Really loving this box so far.

Decorations and details

I haven’t experimented around too much with adding more flavour to the models but its defineatly something I would like to try when modelling going forward. Some ideas include…

• Pelts – it would be good to add some pelts or more capes to the units, particularly the higher ranks. It would fit in with their whole highlander feel and the cold environment.
• Tartan – I’ve muddled around with this one in the past and whilst it is interesting I would like to find a way of doing tartan more subtlety. I feel a whole tartan cloak looks a bit silly and I’m not sure kilts would look any better!
• Claymores and force swords – Where can I get bigger swords from? I need to have a look around some bits websites. I think Grey Knights have some bits that would work for larger two handed swords.
• Face paint- Again, I’ve messed around with this a bit and I love adding face paint onto my models. The counter to this is that I hate painting daces and avoid bare heads where I can. Perhaps it’s another thing for the higher ranks?

Those are just a few things to play around with going forward I think. I’m not massively experienced with kitbashing but you gotta start somewhere!

Oh and quickly I thought I would just note down helmet colours for rankings. I seem to have forgotten lately and messed it up so worth putting it in writing now:

• Trooper – Silver or Blue
• Sargeant – Bronze
• Lieutenant- Purple
• Captain and above – Red

Basing

It’s all about a tundra feel.

Thinking about how the weather gets here in Scotland then it had to be something cold. Rain would be a pain, so snow it was.

I think the cold feel really suits them and makes the colours pop. Combined with a bit of cork rockage and some muted foliage I think it really suits their whole feel.

Painting – colours and styles

Whilst it’s fairly clear that for Storm Wardens ‘base’ colour is a strong blue, from doing a bit of looking around it seems the secondary colour can either be an off-white/light grey or a metallic silver. For this project (as can see in the last posts) I’ve gone for the metallic option.

I think it really pops and I like the idea of them having stripped back colours on their armour, as if it’s more undecorated (if that makes sense).

Below is a standard layout of armour colours I found on good old google. I’ve kind of stuck to this, keeping the legs consistently silver along with the hand/arms, but I am a big fan of mixing it up from squad type to squad type. Keeps it nice and fresh on the board. A good example of this was choosing silver as the base colour for my Rievers over the blue.

I like to use Balthasar Gold as the main accent colour. Sticks with the metallic feeling but adds a nice flash.

Here is a list of the standard arrangement of Citadel colours I have to hand when painting the Storm Wardens:

• Macragge Blue
• Caledor Sky
• Teclis Blue
• Leadbelcher
• Stormhost Silver
• Screamer Pink
• Balthasar Gold
• Hashut Copper

There’s a few more but I consider all those the main base for painting these guys. Alongside Nuln Oil and Agrax Earthsade for washes.

A few more Brucey Bonus pictures whilst i have them.

DISCLAIMER – this was also my first time taking ‘proper’ pictures of minatures fo excuse and blurriness 🙂

Some MVPs – the best

I wanted to show off a few of my best/favouriote models fdrom what I have done so far.

It’s a vairety of all sorts of stuff from all sorts of times. Hopefully you can see a bit of an improvement between the painting from the older models to the newer Primaris stuff.

None of these models are from the ‘genesis’ era of my Warhammer journey but I have included a little old next to new at the end.

Nontheless it should give you an idea about the colours I have used. Basically Leadbelcher and Macragge Blue with a bit of Balthasar Gold (which is totally bronze).

I’ve tried to keep the livery similar for each rank but somewhere along the way I’ve got confused about helmet colours and things like that. I’ll cover that in the next part.

My Grey Shame – Cabinet and models

For the ‘Foundation’ Part of this project blog I’m just going to run through a few bits, namely:

• My cabinet and what I have to paint (Space Marines only for this blog)
• Some MVPs form my collection – either models I am proud of or ones that show a bit of the Storm Warden flare (tartan and big swords)
• Painting and modelling details – things like helmet colours for ranks and other bits around how I am currenlty painting the Storm Wardens
• Where I am hopefully going with the blog

Anyway, here are a few pictures of my tide of grey. It’s a variety of all sorts of stuff from boxed games to models I’ve just liked the look of. Something I haven’t really done is collect models to represent a typical Storm Wardens force org. Which would probably be fast attack and armoured assualt. I rather keep it fresh with a whole random bunch of stuff.

So in an effort to sort my marines out here we are. If anyone is reading this that is uninitated with the Storm Wardens here is a bit of lore (copied from the wiki):

The Storm Wardens are stoic defenders of Mankind often found upon the borders of the Imperium. Until just recently, these Astartes were most focused upon the great Warp Storms that troubled the Halo Stars region of the Segmentum Obscurus on the galaxy’s western edge. There, they protect Imperial frontier planets from the predatory actions of xenos, Chaos Renegades and Heretics. They are often unknown and unsung heroes to the worlds that they defend, as the Storm Wardens are a highly insular Chapter and there are only a small handful of monuments and Imperial records outside of their fortress-monastery on their homeworld of Sacris’ moon of Highcastle that celebrate their long list of battle honours.

The long and short of it, like a lot of other chapters, they have a basic theme. In this case it’s celts/scots. Fantasy Flight did a good job of adding some lovely juicy lore points into the chapter but left their founding and intricacies about their link a specific primarch vaugue. This give a bit of wiggle room regarding play-style which is nice. When I have played I usually choose Iron Hands due to their love of armoured assault.

I already have a hefty amount of models to this date, and ashamedly they are are bit of a grey tide. Next post I will throw up some pictures of what I have and where I want to go (currently Shadowspear).

I would like to try a bit more conversion work going forward to build on the modest amount I have already done. This may involve a bit of kitbashing with Space Wolves pelts and the like but it’s all new territory for me.

Hopefully this project log will keep me motivated and on track to get these guys sorted as they really are my first love (well maybe second after Ad Mech).