Monday, November 2, 2009

Chaos Space Marines

Chaos Space Marines Warhammer 40k
I've finished painting my first half squad from my custom Chaos Space Marine chapter, The Crusaders. Here are some pictures of the first 5 figures.
Warhammer 40k Chaos Space Marines painted
Warhammer 40k Chaos Space Marines painted
Warhammer 40k Chaos Space Marines painted
Warhammer 40k Chaos Space Marines painted
The one in the very old fashioned white armor is the aspiring champion with a combi-flamer. When the Crusaders where originally founded (a sucessor of the White Scars, incidentally), they were gifted by their parent chapter with a few ancient suits of power armor from the Great Crusade which had been worn by mighty heroes of the chapter's history. The Crusaders alway revered the ancient artifacts, and it was considered a great honor to wear them into battle.

After going renegade, the Crusaders changed their colors and heraldry so they would not be recognized. The Imperium believed their chapter to have been wiped out, and the Crusaders preferred it that way. But having such great respect for artifacts of the past and their ancestors who used them, they could not bring themselves to make any changes to the ancient suits of power armor. So they retain the Crusaders' old colors, and are now lent out to the most promising aspiring champions as signs of the favor of their lord.

At some point, I'll write up a more comprehensive background for the Crusaders chapter. For now I'm working on getting the paint scheme figured out. It's pretty simple, but I always find it difficult to paint anything white. And I'm not sure I'm happy with the trim color on the other ones. I was going for a kind of weathered bone look. The idea being that they typically attack at night, and it gives them a psycological advantage that the enemy will see a bunch of skull-looking helmets floating towards them through the darkness. But I didn't want to use pure white, since I think a black and white color scheme would look boring. I've heard that using a white or slightly off white color with a sepia wash gives pretty good results, so I may have to try that once I get some of the GW washes.

2 comments:

  1. Awesome backstory and cool concept. I like the chapters that recover ancient astartes artifacts and lovingling restore them. But the idea of to take them chaos is very interesting ... certainly the relectors are similar but your concept seems pretty original. Also what a great idea to use some of the different marine sculpts from the old days in a new army. Look forward to more posts on this ... :)

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  2. Thank you! I really appreciate the supportive comments. I have a lot of ideas about the background and workings of my Chaos Marine chapter, and I will definitely post more when I have them in a more organized format.

    Like you said, this part of their background gives me a good excuse to use some of the older miniatures I have, and also gives me a chance to paint something very different, and makes my Aspiring Champions easy to discern from the regular marines.

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