I’d be showing off the whole squad, but some of the photos turned out blurry. So… half of them it is.

This squad of Deathwatch Space Marines were started sometime after their rules were first published in White Dwarf 306, back in the mid-noughties. As with so many of my projects, I got a certain way through before getting distracted or what have you, and like many of them, I’ve dug these models out of a figure case a few months ago and gotten them finished in the last week.

I needed something to work on after completing the pair of Celestial Lions recently, as I needed to have something to continue working on. These had been sitting on my desk for ages, mostly forlorn after being rebased onto 32mm bases, and so they have been my focus in the last few days. And now they’re done.

This model originally had a chapter badge from …some transfer sheet or another. A skull with crossed lighting bolts or some such. It was pretty generic, but at least it worked for some Space marine chapter that wasn’t one of the big, well known ones. This model is from 1995/6, known at the time as Veteran Sergeant 1 with Bionic Eye, he’s been given a metal Deathwatch Shoulder Pad and Bolter added onto a 2nd Ed plastic marine arm, and a 3rd ed plastic backpack. The Lion-head icon again comes from Matrillo Y Cola on Shapeways.

Given recent events, when I came to try and finish this guy off, he was an easy induction into the Celestial Lions, especially given that his face and hair were already done. In a sense it furthers the tribute but more importantly it makes what was a pretty generic marine a little more meaningful to me – and I’d always liked how his face and complexion turned out, most of which is unfortunately lost in these photos. (It looks pretty average in that top photo!)

This next guy is the first of my Deathwatch that I completed. He was even kinda-completed when I fished him and his brothers out of that figure case, but he then needed rebasing, some additional work on his weapon and re-highlighting on his armour using Vallejo Panzer Aces 309 Periscopes – which is an idea I stole off a guy on Dakka (sorry, forgot the name! 😦 )because his Deathwatch looked great with it as the highlight colour instead of the usual greys.

Periscopes works especially well for me, as I’ve got a few different types of black-armoured marines going now (Legion of the Damned, Black Templars, plus more to come) and it allows for black armour with a very different feel, rather than more of the same. The model here is simply a 3rd Ed plastic marine using the metal Deathwatch parts (head, bolter, shoulder).

As with the Lion above, this guy was originally to be from some unknown, unnamed chapter. I may have come up with chapter and character names, and some fluff for these guys, but as I’ve said, the models were conceived a decade ago, and so that kind of stuff is now lost to time. While I’m able to paint at the moment, thinking up imaginative background isn’t my forte at the best of times, and right now I have no chance of concentrating well enough to create any…

So here we are. If anyone has an interesting chapter name for me to slap onto this guy, I’ll certainly consider it. I’ll try and get some more photos taken of the other three tomorrow, without any blurriness.

Once again my apologies to all who have written responses to my previous two posts. I’m still not up to reading them yet. I tried earlier, but it was …too much for the time being. Still, know I very much appreciate it.