...actually, I'm getting ahead of myself. So lemme back up a bit and explain.
So, the Primaris marines...yeah those, more of a gorilla in the room than monkeys, but we'll get there. Their fluff is in general hideous, no need to revisit that. Personally i think that the Intercessors look alright though and I gotta cheap squad aways back to bolster my Rainbow Warriors.
However aesthetically they don't fit. My rainbows are the last dregs of the chapter, adorned in a motley assortment of scavenged and standard issue armor, and all have at least one chapter specific, and time consuming to paint shoulder pauldron. Whereas the Primaris' armor all conforms and being easy-build models, they have generic pauldrons meaning I'd have to come up with something more even more difficult (like free-hand painting) for the chapter iconography. In a word: no.
Then there's the Salamanders. I did paint one Primaris marine for them but...originally being a 30k force, with a color scheme as laborious to paint as the Alpha Legionnaires they were supposed to replace...I think I'll just ebay the last of 'em and be done with that failed project.
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| Yeah I can't paint this good! This was lifted straight from the Chucking Monkeys blog, which is linked below... |
Which brings us to Chucking Monkeys, and his beautifully painted Primaris 'scouts'. Actually all of it is beautiful, check out that Ancient! Anyways, the idea of Primaris scouts struck a chord...no doubt harkening back to my Aurora 10th Company debacle of an army. I like the idea of scouts...well, the old scouts, with the WS/BS of 3 (hitting on a 4+ for you 8th ed only noobs out there), and I thought: Why not take the ol' Primaris' down a peg and use 'em as poorly trained scouts? Might make 'em a bit more palatable too (kinda like Space Wolf Blood Claws, just without the pretending to be the ANGRY MAHREENZ!!! part)!
So that's what I set out to do. Great Idea MC, glad you thought of it! Given the 5-6 painted models that I average befor-squirrel!, I decided to just do a Kill Team of them, and skip 40k proper in its entirety.
First up I needed a chapter. I figured I'd just make 'em an Ultramarine Ultima Founding chapter, but none in the SM codex caught my interest. I dunno, with each just having a color scheme/name/icon, and fluff blurb, you can tell the GW game designer's hearts weren't really into the primaris marines. Then I pondered making up my own chapter from scratch, and was going to go that route till I found a good halfway point: The Silver Drakes (The warhammer wiki page seems to be far more detailed, until you realize that its just a repost of the generic Primaris fluff).
The Silver Drakes are a canon chapter who's sole existence is a small blurb on pg. 39 of the Nid codex. They have no colors, chapter icon or anything else known about them. Talk about lazy...sure I'll just use that, write up a blurb of my own which (hopefully) justifies the 2nd rate stat line, come up with my own colors and to top it off, I can use the fallout hobbies decals I had made for my abortive Black Dragons army (which totaled just that one mini...).
So here ya go, the Silver Drakes in Kill Team:
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| I won't make any changes to the point values as those are already nonsensically allotted. |
Well that was easy enough to do. Next up, and easy but good looking color scheme. My first test model was kinda meh and after it was finished, I gave it a good once over and summarily submerged it in some simple green. Here's my 2nd try:
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| In all honesty, the couple-three layers of white on the base felt like the hardest part. Also the aquila color denotes the company, the 7th in this case. |
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| A detail view of his wrist comms. |
Much better me thinks, and relatively quick and easy to paint as well! Speaking of the paint recipe (just so I don't forget) is: GW's leadbelcher for the silver, Coat D'arms' enchanted blue for the metallic blue, GW's mechanicus standard grey for the gun, Army Painter strong tone for the wash, GW's bleached bone drybrush as per the norm, and whatever shade of Vallejo's white that I have for the base (its the only white paint I have). The remaining colors for the other little details, bits, and bobs don't really matter for consistency.
I'm hoping that I can manage to paint up the squad before I inevitably get distracted yet again...