WIP: Heresy Era Dark Angels Breacher Siege Squad

In today's post, I am showing the completed Breacher squad from the workbench this month.  Bit-by-bit I replaced the poster-tac with epoxy and got the squad fully assembled.  I started with the weapon arms, first gluing the guns to the hands.  Then glued the completed arms to the bodies.  5-minute epoxy does a great job, but doesn't grip as quickly as fresh super-glue.  So the trick there was to apply some epoxy to the parts, then wait just a bit before assembly.  Timing is critical, esp. with a ten model squad.  wait too long and the epoxy sets on the last pieces before you get a chance to to stick them to the model.  Go to soon and the parts don't adhere and slip and slide off, leaving you to continually fuss around with each part trying to get it to stay in place until everything sets up.  In some cases, I did five models at a time instead of doing the whole ten at once. Mix small batches of epoxy at a time to avoid wasting too much.

After the weapon arms were done, I glued down the heads.  I left the heads to last so I could get good poses with the marines sighting down their weapons, or at least looking in a direction that made sense to the rest of the pose. Once the heads were in place, I attached the shoulder pads, starting with the right shoulders.  The Forge World Dark Angels pads went last on the left shoulders, positioned carefully on the upper arms so I would still be able to attach the arms after painting. As mention in the prior post, I'm using poster-tac for now to adhere the left arms so that they can come off for painting.

The Completed Squad

While wrapping things up, I realized that these marines carry standard war gear (bolt pistols and grenades) that are not represented in the Forge World kit. This omission is a shame for what are otherwise pretty cool looking models.  So I rummaged around in the vast bits collection to scrounge up ten holstered bolt pistols and an assortment of frag and krak grenades.  The Sergeant carries melta-bombs too, so I grabbed one of those from a Forge World upgrade kit I had.

Those with good eyesight may make out the extra war gear...

So there they are.  Ten breacher siege marines to add to my growing 30 Dark Angels army.  This squad completes the build for my 1K zone mortalis force. I'll write more about that in a later post.  If I complete the paintwork, I'll have 2K of painted pre-heresy Dark Angels. I'm going to have to take a break on infantry and dreads soon, though, to get some vehicles into the army.  So far, I have none of the tanks that roam the battlefields of Imperium, save for a lone dakka-dakka Predator (Auto-cannon and heavy bolter sponsons).  I do have some jet bikes waiting in the wings though, but no Sicarans or Land Raiders, etc..

There are just so many cool kits to acquire and build for Horus Heresy games!

What are you building?

Cheers and Happy Gaming!