Celestial Lions Space Marine Tactical Squad

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Assault on Black Reach Space Marines, Celestial Lions

I started painting this Tactical Squad of Celestial Lions on Christmas Day, and was originally on track to finish them before the end of 2017, but then it didn’t work out that way as I ended up busy with a bunch of other things. Still, I managed to complete the squad towards the end of January.

Assault on Black Reach Space Marines, Celestial Lions

The main reason it took so long was actually this pair – the Sergeant and Missile Launcher guy. Compared to the rest of the squad which I was able to pretty much batch paint, these two ended up being much more slowly painted individuals, due to the amount of individual fiddly bits between the pair of them. I also decided to paint the Sergeant’s right Pauldron with Imperial Fists livery – as a heirloom item from their primogenitors. In slightly battered condition.

Assault on Black Reach Space Marines, Celestial Lions

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed by now that these guys lack a squad badge on their tactical arrow. This is by design. My cunning plan is to paint another Lions Tactical squad worth of figures at some stage in the not-too-distant future, and then mix the two sets of figures together.

Assault on Black Reach Space Marines, Celestial Lions

The next 10 marines will be made of a mixture of 2nd Ed metals, multipose plastics, and maybe some FW resin/Calth plastics to give a variety of poses and armour types. I’m using 3-d printed icons throughout.

Assault on Black Reach Space Marines, Celestial Lions

When the two sets of figures are mixed together, it will remove a lot of the repetitive redundancy that they have at the moment, all being monopose push-fit figures from the Assault on Black Reach starter set. (40k 5th Edition starter, 2008). At that point I’ll either organise them into numbered squads or decide to paint a third set of 10 tacticals and really mix things up once they’re completed.

Assault on Black Reach Space Marines, Primaris Lieutenants, Celestial Lions

Here’s the completed squad alongside the two Primaris Lieutentants from Dark Imperium (40k 8th Edition starter, 2017). I’ll have to do some character models and probably a Dreadnought and vehicle – which will then place them firmly in “small playable faction” territory. I’ve got some other marines I want to finish off before I start to do that, though…

Fembruary Painting Challenge

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Alex over at Leadballoony has come up with another February painting challenge. That being Fembruary. Because Femme.

Rather than paraphasing Alex, I’ll just quote him here verbatim:

Now, challenge time… It is an increasingly congested market at the moment – it’s a challenge keeping up with all the challenges! But… I am issuing the call to all WIPsters and hipsters, painters of hammers old and new, Inq28ers, collectors and gamers. Dear reader, no doubt you have heard of Orctober, Deadcember, Slaanuary, and all the various themed months of the year… I would like to propose that we add Fembruary to the list – a time of year for us to collectively challenge the male domination of our collections, and commit to painting some female miniatures for a change… Sisters of Battle and/or Silence, Witch Elves, Sorceresses, Inquisitrixes, Escher gangers, Daemonettes and Shield Maidens – whatever female minis you have on the to-do list, I challenge you to bump them to number one in the queue for the month and get some paint on ‘em… Let’s do something cool ok? Ok???  Ok.

I’ve decided that this year (for the time being at least), I’ll participate in as many painting challenges as I can so long as they also intersect with my own painting goals for the year and are potentially doable in the timeframe. I’ve got enough backlog that I might be able to pull it off. We’ll see.

This slightly awful photo shows my entries. 3 Escher that have been rebased for the current era, and need to have some other bits and pieces updated. 3 more Escher that have also been rebased, but were never completed, and (if I have time) a Dark Elf Sorceress (who had her silly-looking OTT staff topper replaced by a skull).

The next few days will probably have daily posts. I’ve got a bit of other Jan stuff to post up that I haven’t had time to do and then a personal January wrap-up, a Decem-buary group final wrap-up, and a (theoretical) entry for something called Squaduary.

Oh, and Ann! Becky’s a girl, right? 😉