WIP: Horus Heresy Dark Angels Characters - Part 4 - Happy New Year!

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Happy New Year and welcome to 2020 on 262Krieg.  The 2019/2020 gaming season is in full swing here after a brief holiday hiatus.  Lots of family fun was had with plenty of time to recharge the hobby batteries for the new year.

With the Holidays behind me, I sat back down to continue work on the heresy era Dark Angels characters I started in December.  This project started out as a batch painting exercise, but I quickly realized that I'd have to go one-on-one with these guys to get them painted well.  So I set asside the other characters for now and got to work completing the new(ish) Legion Praetor from Forge World.

The custom cork base got a coat of Vallejo Khaki Brown (71.024) and a wash of GW Agrax Earthshade.  Much more will go on here, but for now this was enough to prep it for final assembly.  Once the wash had dried, the model was pulled from its cork painting handle and pinned to the base using 5-minute two-part epoxy. The backpack was also attached at this point while I had mixed epoxy at hand.

When complete, I will have a very cool character to lead the force into battle. I love how the reds and whites pop against the black armor.  While I originally felt the Forge Wold paint jobs looked a bit too 40K, it's growing on me and I'm applying my own bit of 30k darkness to it.

The whites have been shaded with a couple coats of a 4:1 mix of GW Lamiam Medium and Nuln Oil.  It's pretty murky at this point, but I'll bring up the highlights in white as I go along so in the end it should all work out.  Some grime will also be shaded along the hem at some point as I weather the base and legs of the model. Straight GW Nuln Oil went over all the steel/metal bits and the reds.

Lots of highlighting and some more detail work (especially on the sword hilt) still to do, but this model is slowly crawling out of the "oh boy, what have I done now" phase and into the "wow, not too shabby!' phase.  Even the checkers are growing on me enough that I will likely free hand more on the vambraces.

It's going to be a busy hobby year.  I played some Blackstone Fortress over the holiday and have since primed the original set of characters.  I have an assembled Warlord Titan for Adeptus Titanicus to complete in Tempestus colors, and a host of AT scale knights as well that I plan to paint in the colors of House Taranis. There are many pre-heresy Dark Angels models waiting in the wings as well (the new Leviathan!) and a host of Blades of Vengeance Primaris space marines.

I'm now torn on the Primaris project and it awaits more from GW on where Dark Angels are headed once the new book(s) for the Psychic Awakening are out.  The Dark Angels are my original marine army going back to late 3rd edition (I started in 2nd with Space Orks) and if they now accept (and indeed embrace) their Primaris brethren, then I really don't need to paint my existing host as Blades of Vengeance after all, other then for some variety.  I was originally following he early fluff that had the Dark Angels keeping the Primaris at arms length.

Fortunately, I have many, many things to paint and model on while I wait to see where I want the Primaris models to go.  Expect Blackstone Fortress character models here next (at least a couple).  Possibly before I complete all of the Pre-Heresy Dark Angels characters.  Then I'm looking ahead to possibilities for Squaduary2020 and #MonsterMarch4 should the traditions carry on.

That's it for now.  Hope everyone had a great New Year's celebrations and I look forward to reading and seeing all the hobby goodness from folks that the new year has to bring!

Cheers and Happy Gaming!