(More) Sons Of Horus Tactical Marines - Warhammer 30k

Horus for hope!

It's been quite a while since I've posted anything, but "1-to-1" scale issues have prevented me from painting at my preferred pace (i.e. all the damn time).  Work has been nuts, blah blah but finally I have finished another unit - a squad of Tactical Marines from the 16th Legion, the Sons of Horus.  These are Forge World figures, Marines equipped with Mark IV power armour.

Tactical Marines in Mark IV armour from the 16th Legion

Another reason these fellows took a little longer to paint is that I have started to mess around with a new painting technique - "glazing".  I don't know much about it, other than it is something that actual artists and pro-type miniature painters seem to do.  I could never tell the difference between glazing and washing, so I just avoided it.

A mid-point in the glazing process...seems...OK

Daze of glaze...

But I have found that my general painting approach suffers a bit with the broad, curved surfaces on the Space Marine power armour.  The edge highlighting approach I was using before was OK, but I wanted to try and up my game a little - so I tried to mess around with "glazing".  I used the same GW paints, but now tried to blend them with glazing medium to build some gradual highlights on certain parts of the power armour.

Almost ready to move on to the final colours...

Comparison - old style on the right, new style on the left...kind of...the same, but the newer style does seem a little more subtle in some respects...

Did it make much a difference? It did a bit, I think. But as they say, "you're not doing it right", and this is a bit of a trial and error process.  On some of the figures it worked better than others.  One thing I am learning about glazing (and that I already hate about glazing) is that getting the mix right isn't simple, and getting it consistent across 10 models is even less simple...I hope with experience I will get better at this.  Or at least not worse.

I just love the wacky combs on the officers with 30k marines...

Tried to weather these fellows up a bit...I find that to be difficult with Space Marines...

But they'll still do fine for the gaming table!  Another set of stout lads ready to fight for Humanity's Last Hope, Horus Lupercal, the Warmaster!

The embossed shoulder plates are addictive - and the Eye of Horus is fantastically menacing and spooky warm and inviting for Horus' 16th Legion

Dallas and I continue with our arms race to load for big mega-game (or perhaps even mini-campaign-linked-to-mega-game) for sometime later this year.  Dallas' Blood Drinkers are looking excellent, and while I have a wide assortment of Legion figures painted, it is not yet a coherent force for a game, so I'm trying to catch up.

Couple of individual marines - I experimented with a metal face plate for the fellow on the right. I like how it turned out.

Worst part of these figures was the casting quality on the back packs...lots of miscast vents etc. But overall they were decent to work with.

The Sons of Horus now have two 10-man tactical squads, a 10-man assault squad, a 5-man tactical support squad and a 5-man devastator squad, along with a Land Raider.  And of course they can call out "El Booze". This is a good base of stuff to build around, and that is what I'm going to try to keep focused on this summer.

Preview model from my next unit...

The next squad is already moving along the painting desk (see above for a preview), while other goodies are waiting for primer... I hope to post some photos of another finished bunch soon...or at least at a better pace than I have managed in the past month!