by It’s taken a while, but I finally got my first set of the new plastic Plague Marines finished. I should say, these are the Plague Marines from the Dark Imperium box set, not the multi-part kit. Still it’s nice to have them off the painting bench and ready for the table.
As you can see from the picture, I’ve kept the motif of using Goblin Green on the rim of the bases. I realize some might say the use of green on the rim is old-fashioned, but I’ve used it on all my Chaos Space Marine models, and I wanted to keep that theme going in the new models. As far as the paint scheme goes, I found the Ogryn Camo paint to be an excellent highlight of the Vallejo GC Camouflage Green. I thought it did so well I didn’t do a second highlight for the armor plates.
On my old metal Plague Marine models, I used the old Citadel Camo Green, then highlighted with Rotting Flesh after I dipped them. That worked pretty well, but I like the new scheme better. On the ballast, I did my standard for the “ash waste” look, which is Mechanicum Standard Grey, highlight with Dawnstone, with a last brushing of Administratum Grey. I think the scheme came out well this time, and matches up well with my older Plague Marine bases.
Varnishing didn’t take long even though I used ‘Ardcoat. I was really concerned about paint scraping off the edges on these models. I usually use Testor’s Dull Cote spray as varnish since its relatively cheap and I’ve had issues in the past with Citadel Purity Seal. The ‘Ardcoat goes on pretty thick but dries nicely. And that’s what happened here. I got a nice coat of varnish. It did make the models shiny, but a once over with Lahmian Medium took nearly all the shine off. So these models are now officially ready to go.
Which is good, because I have a new set of Plague Marines ready to go. This batch is a mix of the new Plague Marines multi-part kit and the Plague Marines from the First Strike box set. I’m the type of player who still clings to the idea of WYSIWYG and I needed two champions with plasma guns for my army. One will go with a squad with two plasma gunners, and the other will go with a squad carrying two blight launchers. As I posted before, I modified the champion from the plastic box with a plasma gun from the Chaos Raptors box. I also slightly modified the champion from the first strike box.
As you can see, I dumped his power fist option for a bolt pistol are from the multi-part box. The First Strike champion has a plasma gun already molded on his backpack. That gives me the two plasma gunning champions I want. As with the other multi-part plastic Plague Marines, getting the unorthodox kit on the First Strike champion took a little bit of modification. Not much, but it does require some clipping and shaving of parts that are in the way.
I’ve also mentioned before that the multi-part Plague Marines don’t have a lot of flexibility in changing poses. That also includes swapping weapons around the squad to those that are designed to be equipped with a specific weapon. In my Death Guard army, I run a squad with two meltaguns. Unfortunately, the squad’s model to carry the special weapon is only supposed to be for either the plasma gun or the meltagun. That would mean an extra purchase even though I will have two meltaguns when I purchase the next Plague Marine box. But I was undeterred.
As you can see, I forced a meltagun onto one of the other squad members, and it actually doesn’t look too bad. This Plague Marine is supposed to be kitted with a bolter. And luckily, he’s supposed to be holding it with two hands. With a little bit of work I was able to fit the meltagun in there.
But the change did leave a large divot in his gauntlet that is visible. I’ve got a pot of liquid green stuff and I’ll use that to clean it up. For anyone else looking to get two plasma gunners and two meltagunners out of two boxes of Plague Marines – it is possible. No need to buy more boxes or scrape ebay for a single model.
My next step is to get some more white primer. My old can must have gotten too hot in the garage at some point because its developed bubbles on the bottom, which means it’s bad. Hopefully I can do that and get these guys primed this weekend.
