What? A Castraferrum Dreadnought? Are those even still a thing? It’s ok. I have a Contemptor lined up for later. Anyway, enough sarcasm.
The Minotaurs Space Marine project that I’ve been working on (albeit slowly) has featured a lot of models that aren’t considered particularly exciting these days. Late-RT/2nd Edition Metals, Assault on Black Reach marines, 2e starter box marines and so many refurbished marines. On that very same theme, my first Minotaurs Dreadnought is simply an AoBR (5th Edition starter, 2008) plastic dreadnought.
As with most of these things, I started it ages ago (less than a year ago this time!) and only completed it recently. Almost by accident, really. One positive (I guess) of my “butterfly” painting style is that there’s pretty much always something reasonably cool that just needs a little bit more to push it to completion. My randomly picking up this dread off the desk on a Saturday afternoon and making myself actually complete it being a prime example…
The model is pretty much stock AoBR. The only additions being the smoke launcher on top and a few bits of Forge World’s Minotaurs Brass Etch – the Icon on the front of the sarcophagus and the Lambda with wreathed Phi on the left shoulder. A single Minotaurs transfer on the right shoulder and a Lambda (from Warlord Games’ Spartan set) on the right greave.
Luckily, the arms are tight enough that they don’t require any glue or anything at all to leave them both poseable and potentially swappable. The painting method was achieved with the same method as the regular Minotaurs – the model was sprayed silver, then zenithally highlight-sprayed a brighter shade of silver and then the bright brass was achieved with washes and a very careful highlight drybrush and some edging. Various elements of the dreadnought’s “skeleton” were subtly shaded with a blue tone, while others were done with brown, or only with black. Red was the only accent colour used, aside from green on the lenses and bone scrolls.
While I considered using some additional colour, or adding something to the left shoulder-front, I didn’t want to get too carried away as I feel that the Minotaurs should feel quite Spartan. (Pun intended, obviously!) The whole thing was finished with a satin varnish rather than the usual matte since I wanted to retain some of the soft shine that the model had when the paint was done. I’ll need to matte in the drilled-out holes of the multi-melta barrels, though.
Coming up with appropriate text for the small scrolls was annoying. A simple reference to Minos which has just got to be the name of a world they recruit from, or at least a key vessel in their warfleet. Aeres of course is the name of the warrior entombed in this Dreadnought. Chosen because it sounds good, fits nicely in the small frame of the scroll, because I could paint it decently enough, and probably because I was listening to a podcast talking about Austin Aries the other day when I was working on the dread.
Finally, a shot of Aeres alongside a few of his battle-brothers. May their enemies quake in fear!
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Lovely job mate – he’s a handsome chap!
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Thanks Alex!
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I really like the colour that you have got with these guys.
Great work.
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Thanks Cheetor. I’ve seen some really nice Minotaurs with a more coppery finish, but Sas0mg’s ones really sold me on the brighter, more brassy look to the bronze.
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Great paint job and I like the fact you’re using a mix of models from different era’s. Nice one 🙂
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Cheers mate. It felt like a good chance to get some of the older stuff out of storage, painted and into the fray!
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also agree these look really good. Yes, they aren’t the newest stuff, but then again the Imperium, if one thinks about it, (for the most part) isn’t developing new stuff, so this “old” dreadnought from AoBr is quite fitting.
In any case, I think an old model that is basically at a level of being pro painted, as imo this is, is much better than the newest stuff badly painted. 🙂
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An excellent point, Ann. Pretty much Everything is “old”, with maybe the exception of some of the Deathwatch’s stuff. I’m also very flattered at your compliment. Thank you!
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You’re quite welcome; I call it as I see it — I think if I ever get skilled enough to produce a dreadnought that good, I’d be very proud of myself. 🙂
Taking what I saying before familiar, it isn’t even like the Imperium of Man as a whole is doing much more than just maintaining what they have and building stuff from STC’s/plans that they can operate but don’t really understand. Really, they are a sort of Asimovesque star empire falling into barbarism. Their idea of “developing new technology” is to go find an unknown STC and hope when it all shakes out that it isn’t “heretical.”
So in the backdrop of all of that I’d say they would appreciate their 10,000 year old pattern dreadnoughts and be rather suspicious of anything that smacked of the taint of newness.
I think a lot of space marine players, who claim to be interested in the lore, forget about this aspect of the Imperium sometimes.
*climbs down off soap box*
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Sorry for the typos. Had too many Rock Star drinks in my 40K game last night and it is 3:00 am and I can’t sleep, lol, and I don’t see any way to edit my previous post.
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Another good set of points there.
I’ve just seen SO many new toys introduced over the years and retconned into the fluff in “yeah, they were always there, no really” – along with not really taking notice of the updates to the fluff in the last 5-10 years that I no longer know which things are actually new, and which have “always” been there. Centurions?
Then there’s a long, long list of Chapter-exclusive War Machines that nowadays everyone can play with. Tornado and Dark Angels? LR Crusader and the Templars? Stormraven and the GK/BAs. Now open to all, which is fine, but was the tech shared, or did the fluff get retconned so that everyone actually had them in their vehicle bays all along and simply didn’t notice?
That sort of thing, along with “NO! Dreadnoughts/Land Raiders/Rhinos/Land Speeders/etc ALWAYS looked this way, those older designs never existed. Let us never speak of them again.” (Until FW took up the older designs, at least) – With their dealing with things in such a way for the past couple of decades, it’s no wonder people can’t keep track of what’s “old” and what’s “new” in the Imperium.
Meanwhile, FW slowly tries to sort out and make sense of 20 years worth of all the Chaos wargear being simply spikier versions of the still-current Imperial toys of the mid-1990’s rather than being based on the stuff they were actually using during the Heresy…
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No probs Ann. You’re getting in more games than I am at least! I fixed the “climbs” for you. Wasn’t sure how you wanted the first sentence changed.
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Looks really good mate. You’ve done so well with this one. The highlighting and colour choices are perfect. A really nice piece.
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Cheers mate. I’m happy with how well what is essentially a stock model came out.
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Very nice, though the 40k is after my entry into the hobby and before my reentry! Love the details
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Thanks Mark. 40k was a huge influence in getting me right into miniatures. I had some fantasy and historical Minifigs that my older brother had passed on to me, but seeing a demo game of Rogue Trader in ’88 was what blew me away. And the rest is history!
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Excellent colouration and detail, very nicely done.
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Thanks Tarmor. Hopefully I’ll manage to get some more painted before too long.
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Very nice, this army is going from strength to strength. Interesting to see that the washing method works so well on large, flat areas also. The contrast between the bronze and the blue steel makes a perfect composition.
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Thanks, and yeah, it was an experiment of sorts to see if it would work. I wonder if it’ll work on something truly vehicle-sized? I guess we’ll find out eventually. Probably need some sort of army list to work from for that, though… 😦
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The metals look fantastic! Very nice work!
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Cheers mate – I’m very happy with the final result!
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