I promised my audience that my next unit was going to be a little different.
Historically, when other divergent chapters have received exciting new toys, I have left them in the hands of other chapters – or played those armies, which is how I spent most of fifth edition playing Space Wolves, and a small amount of sixth edition before I quit the game playing Dark Angels.
Skip forward a decade and four editions and we're here with Dark Angels being a dominant force, and the Space Marine unit roster being massive and unwieldy, with Games Workshop promising three month balance passes.
My mentality for 9th edition and 10th edition has been a simple one – whatever the Green Machine needs, they'll get – and with Dark Angels looking like they're going to be leading the edition for the rest of the way, along with my disinterest in painting up yet another force of slightly differently coloured green marines, I decided to try my hand at "Salamander-ing" a unit of Deathwing Knights.
Was I successful? You be the judge:
Now, in the process of painting this unit, I was presented with several challenges. Firstly, I had to scrape the shoulder pad, as it's a moulded Dark Angel pad. I considered using 3D printed alternatives, but the shoulder trim was different, and I knew it would bother me. The scraping went fine, but the surface was not as smooth as I had initially hoped, and so I needed to cross my fingers than AK Ultra Matte would once again save the day.
And, fortunately, it did. Yes, if you look extremely closely at the pads, you can see flat spots, but I do mean extremely closely.
Secondly, the shields carried each had open scrolls with a place for text. Now I can barely write my own name, let alone write gothic script with a brush, and so I scoured the web for decals that might bail me out. As regular readers would know, I did find some, the review for which you can find here.
Lastly, I experimented with the new bane of my hobby existence, which is metallics. My preference of using a brighter metal colour (traditionally GW Ironbreaker) on some types of metal (decorative keys, chains, and belt loops) means that it's difficult to highlight them, even after a spot coat of matte varnish.
I have found Ironbreaker to be awful – it's clumpy and thick and just didn't go on the maces right. Considering this was the grounds for termination of Leadbelcher almost twelve months ago, I decided to hunt for an alternative to Ironbreaker.
Some spot colour checks confirmed that Ironbreaker produces an almost identical finish to VJMC Silver, and the rest was history. Immediately I had a much smoother midtone metallic, even if the problems I had with highlighting it remained the same.
So I just decided to shade and not highlight, coming to the conclusion that highlighting an already bright metal was too much of a hat on a hat, and it was better to just add definition to the darker spots. I may revisit this in time, or experiment a little bit further. Time will tell.
At the conclusion of this project I considered weaving in the captain from the Company Heroes box, but I decided I just wanted to do the company heroes in one go, so my next project is another unit of Deathwing Knights.
For those keeping score at home, that means I have the following models to assemble before my 2k Librarius Conclave list is done:
- Salamander Company Heroes (inc. stand in Uriel Ventris)
- Ultramarine Company Heroes
Catch you next time,
Vulkan
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