Painted: Blood Angels Intercessors

As per my previous entry, the new Primaris marines have dominated my painting table over the past week or so. In my fifteen plus years in the hobby I’ve never tired of painting the Adeptus Astartes, but I haven’t been this excited to paint up a squad since the dawn of 3rd edition and my first box of multi-part Tactical Marines.

I, like most other hobbyists, was a little skeptical at first of these new models and the fact that they rendered two decades of Marine models seemingly obsolete. But after spending a week putting paint to model, I can confidently say that I have been won over by these models.

More pics and my color recipe for Blood Angels red after the break.

The first step is, of course, assembly. In this respect Games Workshop have continued their streak of excellent easy-to-build/snapfit/monopose/whatever-you-wanna-call-them minis in their starter sets. The minis come together cleverly, avoiding obvious seam lines as much as possible while allowing some variation in head poses (over my ten Intercessors, not one pose is exactly the same). I used to be one of those elitist modellers who preferred multi-pose plastic kits to the exclusion of all else (I still am, to some extent), but these models have me changing my mind on easy-to-build models. It occurred to me while building them that even if this was a multi-part kit, I’d probably end up with poses similar to the mono-pose kits, anyway!

I added a couple of Blood Angels bits to the Sergeants because I wanted them to stand out a little bit more (and also because I reasoned that they would probably be experienced Veteran “standard” Marines that have undergone the Primaris conversion, so could have a few more icons on their armor). I resisted the urge to add Blood Angels shoulder pads to the troops as doing so would be difficult modelling work (the shoulder pads are moulded to the rest of the body); besides, these are brand new marines fresh from the lab, so their armor probably wouldn’t be as ornate as the rest of their Blood Angel brothers.

I decided to go with a deeper, darker red for my newest Blood Angels, and while I stuck with the appropriately named Mephiston Red for my basecoat, I switched from a recess shade of Agrax Earthshade to an all-over wash of Carroburg Crimson. This resulted in the deeper and darker red I wanted, while still providing sufficient shading and saving me some time in the process (as washing an entire mini is significantly quicker than doing a targeted recess shade). The recipe is as follows:

1. Red: basecoat Mephiston Red, all-over wash Carroburg Crimson, edge highlight Evil Sunz Skarlet
2. Black: basecoat Abaddon black, highlight Eshin Grey
3. Metal: basecoat Ironbreaker, all-over wash Nuln Oil, highlight Ironbreaker
4. Leather: basecoat Mournfang Brown, all-over wash Nuln Oil, highlight Mournfang Brown
5. Green: basecoat old GW Snot Green, recess wash Nuln Oil, highlight Skarsnik Green
6. Gold: basecoat Retributor Armor, all-over wash Reikland Fleshshade, highlight Liberator Gold
7. Weathering: sponge Rhinox Hide, highlight Evil Sunz Skarlet
8. Dust: drybrush Steel Legion Drab
9. Skintone: basecoat Cadian Fleshtone, all-over wash Reikland Fleshshade, highlight Cadian Fleshtone (additional highlight of Pallid Wych Flesh if you really want it to stand out)

I’m very pleased with how the scheme looks, particularly the richness of the red. I initially thought the waistlines/upper legs of the Primaris models were a little busy looking with the added armor plates and raised ridges on the knees, but in retrospect these hard edges allow for more places for the shades and highlights to stand out.

Matt joked the other day that Harry and I will probably never buy “normal” marines again; after painting these guys up it’s becoming more and more likely that he’ll be right.