Recently over a couple of posts I shared the 3rd Squad (Tactical) of what I am calling the 2nd Octavius Crusade Company – which is my Dark Angels army that I am rebuilding for the latest edition of Warhammer 40k. Today I’m sharing 2 Section of the 4th Squad (Tactical). The (Veteran) Sergeant of 1 Section is still a WIP on my desk – once completed, I’ll also post up 1 Section and the whole-squad pic.

The Corporal of this squad was originally a regular Sergeant. Back at the time I first started building these models, one would pay extra for a Veteran Sergeant who had an extra attack and was able to take additional wargear. In the current rules, Marine Squads just come with what would once have been called a Vet Sgt as standard, so I’m re-designating my non-Vet Sgt to a Corporal who will act as a section leader, and have also built a pair of Corporals for 3rd (already seen) and 7th (coming soon) Squads. When built, I gave him an Auspex scanner, which was purely decorative for awhile, then had rules, and now is back to being decorative. Shrug. I did bother to give it some detail, though.

The heavy weapon of 2 Section is a Missile Launcher, once again it comes from the 1993 Warhammer 40k 2nd Edition starter box set.

The other troopers in this section are all 2nd Edition Marines armed with 3rd edition Bolters and 3rd edition …arms. Two of the three were painted in my recent push to get this squad up to 10 men.

Finally, the section image. I’ve spent all day working on the sergeant to complete the other section and therefore the entire squad. One of the most fiddly figures I’ve painted in a long time, but I’ll complain about him more when I’m showing it – hopefully in a week or so since it’ll be dependant on the weather being nice enough for another coat of spray varnish and then having time to cure – and then the basing, and then the photography…

Here we have the newly-raised second 2 Section of 3rd Squad. Having previously been a seven-man squad, it necessitated the addition of three more models to being the unit up to legal 8th Edition. The first of these is the Corporal. I know that officially Corporals aren’t a thing in 40k, but then, Lieutenants were missing for 20-odd years before magically reappearing a month or so ago! The Corporals in my marine forces are the guys who run the other combat squads – usually the fire support bit. I’m giving the Dark Angels Corporals a metal should pad with a simple, embossed chapter badge, and black pauldrons.

This corporal is one of the three new builds for this squad – MkIV legs and helm, MkVIII torso, MkVII arms, a DA Backpack and a Tigrus pattern bolt gun. I wanted to give him a look of being a bit special with the archaic armour and weapon, yet tie him to his Sergeant via the MkVIII torso with its distinctive gorget.

The Heavy Bolter trooper is one of my originals from this unit and one of the older models available in this form factor, the metal-plastic hybrids. So his arms and backpack are (heavy) metal on 3rd edition plastic legs and torso. Having washers underneath the bases of models like this is very necessary for their stability. He has the shouty “sergeant” head from the 3rd edition sprue as I felt it looked cinematically appropriate for a nutter advancing while firing a hip-carried heavy machinegun

These three marines include the other pair of models added to the squad. The central model is one of the originals. The two flanking him here are 2nd edition Tactical marines. Since the rest of the squad is old-school and minimally-blinged, what better models to use in it than 2e Tactical marines. I have given them more modern arms and bolters – because frankly outside of a specific use, the chunky arms and bolters from those days just don’t work for me these days and those older base models look just fine with them.

Here we have 2 Section of 3rd Squad. Prepared to hunker down and give their brethren supporting fire so they can advance, or join them in the forward advance as needed.

Finally, the entire squad with both sections combined. Rebased, reinforced and ready for battle in Warhammer 40k 8th Edition. To find action on the table very soon if all goes to plan…