1st Company Ultramarines

These are something new I painted yesterday. As I was playing Epic I wanted to paint some Epic stuff. So I dug around in the bits box and came up with two marine stands. This one and an assault stand. They are not much use on there own but at least they are fun to paint. Sadly the Space Marine detachments are really inflexible and one can only add vehicles to them. So spare bases of infantry are useless. Maybe I have somewhere the other ones to match them I don't know. I also didn't have a photo of the ones I painted before so I have no idea how I did them. I do remember though that I painted the Ultrmarines Chaper symbol on them and tried to follow the Codex Astartes scheme. I think I have the entire 3rd Company and half of the first as the main part of the force. Hopefully there is more but I don't remember.I have a vague idea that I made most of another company too.

I converted the sergeant here just for fun. I added a small backbanner, a powersword and a purity seal. All of them are made out of plasticard, with the seal made from an amazingly tiny piece of greenstuff. At least the various marine stands can be upgraded with commanders and so I can probably swap this guy in instead of the librarian I suspect I have in the previously painted batch. I don't know how ambitious I can get with conversions. These models are tiny and surprisingly detailed. I don't think I could do anything that would really be good. I would love to convert some of my Rhinos into Razorbacks as I don't want to buy the metal ones. I can't imagine it being too easy though. The problem for me is the guns. Making the barrels causes me massive headaches as I can't get them to look quite right. It is why I made the Grotbot

I tried out an experimental basing scheme on these as I want to do something desert like. All of my armies essentially feature the same basing scheme with some variations. The forest scheme I use for my Hordes armies is just a fancy version of what I use on everything. Even the orks have the same though I put scrap metal pieces and rubble on their bases. I went with Baneblade Brown as a basecoat. Yellow desert bases always looked wrong to me. I also only put sand in a few spots. I did make the mistake of 'cow-patching' it. Next time I will try to scatter some single bits around the base a little better so that the flatter areas blend somewhat with the patches of sand. It is hard to get a good basing material for 6mm miniatures. The standard stuff makes them look like they are buried almost to the ankles while the smaller sized stuff just doesn't paint up well. I am going to experiment with a plaster and sand mix to see how that comes out. I will put the result up here so you can see what I did and copy it if any of them turns out good.