Friday, March 20, 2015

Heresy Era Imperial Fists - Few more test models and bases

A bit more dabbling with the yellow scheme for the Imperial Fists, and I think I've settled on a recipe that is a good combo of looks and speed - Heresy armies tend to be very infantry heavy, and at the moment it's looking like there's going to be nearly 100 marines in the list I have planned, so I did want to keep things relatively simple so as not to lose my mind during the inevitable batch painting process. Speaking of planning, before I buy anything I generally start off by setting up a painting chart to see what things look like - this time around I didn't bother trying to fool myself into thinking "it'll be a little boutique army". Nope, let's plan for a 5000 point monster right out of the gate:


Front and center in any self-respecting Heresy force are a whole mess of objective-holding Troops. The mandatory 20-man blob of Tac Marines, and a pair of 10-man Breachers in Proteus Land Raiders should be able to take and hold most critical objectives, while a 20-man assault squad will act as a mobile reserve or strike force depending on what the situation calls for. I wanted to include both of the Imperial Fists' specialist troop types (the Templar Brethren and Phalanx Warders), both of which are essentially further assault troops so they'll get a pair of Phobos-pattern Mark IIb land raiders to take advantage of the assault ramp lacking on the Proteus variant. I am a huge fan of the models for Cataphractii terminators and Contemptor dreadnoughts, so those units are an auto-include as well. A pair of Sicaran Venators (love the model, been itching to build and paint one!) and a 5-man lascannon heavy support squad will provide some much-needed anti-tank capability to round things out!


The test models got a re-primering and a further test of the color scheme, though they're starting to get a bit gummed up with paint and losing definition - still, that's the point of test models! Going with a Scrofulous Brown basecoat (Vallejo's Tausept Ochre analog) followed by sucessive layers of Averland Sunset and Golden Yellow, a light drybrush of Bald Moon yellow, and a sepia wash. Once that's done I go in and black over all of the armor edging, weapons, and metallic areas - more pics to come!


While rooting around in the Closet of Doom I uncovered a whole mess of bases I'd ordered for a project that petered out ages ago, but think they may be just the thing for the Imperial Fist project! These come from a company called Fantascape, and are from their Gothic Ruins set. The ones on the left are some examples of the 40mm bases, and I quite like the flying base on the right - I'm scheming on using it for one of the upcoming Xiphon Interceptors that FW previewed a month or so ago!

The initial Forge World order has been placed (consisting of the boxes in white in the painting chart above), now just have to wait patiently for the box of joy to arrive so I can get cracking!

8 comments:

  1. I like the yellow you have going there. I find it an incredibly hard colour to paint, but yours comes out really well.

    I have always been intrigued by the imperial fists, so am looking forward to see how this army turns out.

    You talked about may e doing some weathering on this project too. Is that still going ahead? I think it would look fab

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  2. You are never one to go small, 100 yellow marines? crazy! Your test minis look great

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  3. Oh i like that dread! I have one of those myself and a MK1 termie too. These guys are better in terms of colors and saturation despite the lack of detail. I got Pollux the other day and he is one of the nicest of the character series. I find a lot of them have too much detail crammed onto them - fine for primarches, but crusade era marines were more spartan in my mind.

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  4. Can not wait to watch this project develop. Love your test color scheme

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  5. I love the old dreadnaught models and look forward to the finished product.

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  6. You had me at yellow. Seriously though, this is awesome and ambitious. I may have to dust off and finish the iron warriors heresy marines I have.

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  7. @NafNaf: Thanks very much! Definitely going to be adding some weathering - pics to come!

    @Joe B: Hah! I'll usually try and fool myself "oh it'll just be a little 1850", but we all know how that turns out. :)

    @Dan Yen: I appreciate it!

    @Baconfat: Aye! Always fun to give an ooooold model a moment in the sun again. :)

    @TJ Atwell: Haha! I would love to see more of your Iron Warriors, man!

    @Jakub Furlanetto: Thanks! Sorry man, I'm not changing the name of my blog. One of these days I'll get back to the glorious 7th, but it's all aboard the heresy train for now! :)

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  8. At least you're being honest with yourself. :) I look forward to how cool this project is going to look!

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