Minotaurs Space Marines – Librarian Theophanes (Chief Librarian Tigurius V1, 1995): Dauntless December ’18

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Minotaurs Space Marines - Librarian, Chief Librarian Tigurius V1, 1995

My final model for the month of December – and as such, of 2018 is this model of Chief Librarian Tigurius, sculpted by Jes Goodwin. As I had a spare, I decided to do a minimal amount of work and use him for my Minotaurs Librarian. A tiny little brass-etch Minotaur over the top of the Ultramarines “U” icon in the middle of his chest, and we’re golden.

Minotaurs Space Marines - Librarian, Chief Librarian Tigurius V1, 1995

He’s a pretty busy model, absolutely covered with bling, but a great one nonetheless. I also think he’s a far superior sculpt to the completely unnecessary resculpt that came later on. I can only guess that the resculpt happened because models of this vintage were often quite flat, and “2D” in their posing. While the newer one isn’t objectively bad, it doesn’t really appeal to me. No matter, I’m sure it’ll be replaced by a plastic Primaris-ised version sometime soon.

Minotaurs Space Marines - Librarian, Chief Librarian Tigurius V1, 1995

In terms of paint, I’ve never been fond of Ultramarines Blue as a Librarian designation, despite not having a problem with White for Apothecaries/Medics, Black for Chaplains or even Red for Techmarines. With this in mind, I still gave a nod to the blue by combining my usual Minotaurs Brassy Bronze with some metallic blue on both pauldrons and his left arm. There’s a golden Minotaurs decal on that shoulder that no-one will ever see, too.

Minotaurs Space Marines - Librarian, Chief Librarian Tigurius V1, 1995

Aside from that, I kept to the usual elements. Mostly using silver and iron for (most of) the skull iconography, but using metallic green rather than blue for his Force Staff. I also did the “glowing eyes” thing using white and Nihilakh Oxide. Freehand Lambdas/Chevrons on his tabard because they fill the empty space in a way that looks good and because I can.

Minotaurs Space Marines - Librarian, Chief Librarian Tigurius V1, 1995, Minotaurs Space Marine Terminators

December (finally) brings reinforcements to the Minotaurs Space Marines.

And with that, 2018’s new models come to and end. To wrap up, expect my personal December wrap-up shortly, followed by the Community Round-Up for Diabolical/Dauntless December, and then a 2018 wrap-up/reflection/”New Year”/2019 goals post sometime after that. Probably around the middle of January at the rate I seem to get these things done!

43 thoughts on “Minotaurs Space Marines – Librarian Theophanes (Chief Librarian Tigurius V1, 1995): Dauntless December ’18”

  4. Great looking Minotaur Librarian, I do something similar with my space marine chapter, having some parts of the model in the designated colour, but parts in the chapter colour

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  8. The blue for Librarians is actually my fave of the “Specialist” SM colours. The Minotaurs scheme you’ve got here looks really good, tho. I didn’t even realize that was based on an Ultramarines character until you mentioned it.

    Speaking of which, I’d never done a side by side comparison of the Tigurius sculpts before. The one you’ve got there really is much better, and they probably would have been better served by just “re-mastering” that one with the right arm as a separate bit (or as close as they could get) that trading the whole thing in for the rather awkward sculpt he has now.

    I’ve got one more post for Dauntless December sometime in the next couple of days, and then I’ll link all the stuff I got done over in that post.

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    • I think for me the blue just feels forced. The black Chaplains and White (or partially-white) Apothecaries were established early on in Rogue Trader, and despite it coming much later for Techmarines (remember those claw shoulders? WTF was that about?) it still “fit” very nicely, due to the AdMech association. Librarians just felt like someone in GW saying “hey, all the other specialists have their own colour – we should do the same for Librarians”. Though at least Wolf Priests dodged that particular bullet.

      On top of that their poster-boy army being Ultramarines, and so most of the seen ones being in the standard army colour just makes it more jarring when you have a Blood Angels or Dark Angels or White Scars (or whatever) army with this singular blue dude hanging around.

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      • I think it helps that I always used a deeper or more saturated blue for them, so mine don’t really look like Ultramarines, despite being mostly blue. Also, they were already blue by the time I really got started in 40K, so it doesn’t feel like something added later to me.

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      • Yeah, that makes sense. The fact that they always painted them exactly like Ultrmarines, and then showed 90% Ultrmarines made them look much more jarring when shown alongside others. Using different shades and varying it I think is a more aesthetically pleasing option. 🙂

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  10. I like how you approached the model here, as you’ve managed to capture that he’s a Librarian and part of the Minotaurs chapter. As you said already, many Librarians look like an out of place Ultramarine in their blue armour.

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    • Thanks Pete. Most librarians aren’t my faves as far as the sculpts go – it’s the outlandish hoods – but I do like this one. Maybe even moreso because I finally got it painted! 🙂

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    • Thank you. Jes always put out such amazing sculpts, detail and character. An absolute shame that being promoted also took him out of the hands-on aspect of an area where he’s so bloody talented!

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  13. I like the blue arm, I hadn’t considered that. I too don’t like the way Librarians are painted entirely in blue – it just makes them look like an Ultramarine on holiday in your army (although like you I’ve got no issue with the colours used to designate the other specialists). I’d been planning to give mine just a blue shoulder-pad but painting the whole arm blue works well here. Great work overall – love the metallics.

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    • Yeah, it’s a bit of a throwback to when they used to just paint a marine’s arm white, or red, or black or what have you, and then not explain why (because using imagination/not explaining every little thing was much more prevalent then – yet there could be a ton of meaning in a helmet stripe). Every so often, I like to do something like that with my models, and in this case I thought it was a nice way of maintaining the Minotaurs’ identity while giving a nod to the Codex.

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  16. This is marvellous! I’m normally not a fan of reskinning special characters for another legion, but it works with Tigurius. I think it’s cos you’ve taken an Ultramarines dude (who are classically themed) and ported him into another Chapter than are also big on the classical themes. Nice work.

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    • Thanks Curis. It might also help that he’s a much older model and has a newer replacement? There’s also not much that’s really “Ultramarines” or distinctive about this original Tigger figure. He’s really just a slightly more blingy librarian model.

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  19. I never knew that Librarians were meant to be blue! I knew the others but that’s a new one for me. I’ve always completely ignored that. He looks great and as I say to others I feel we need a group shot of the Minotaurs 😀

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    • Yeah that was introduced in… I want to say with Codex: Ultramarines in second edition. It may have been slightly before that, but certainly around that era.
      As for a group Minotaurs shot, that is definitely on the agenda for the near future.
      I had planned to do one for my Orks which never happened last year, and I think the Iron Warriors and the Nurgle Daemons are also due some proper group shots by now. Certainly it will be worthwhile to record how they are now at the start of 2019!

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