More (Doomed) Defenders of Terra

"To the walls!" - Space Marines of the VII Legion Astartes prepare to defend Terra.

The painting of Space Marines continues, this time, adding to the garrison on Terra, with another 10-man tactical squad for the VII Legion Astartes, the Imperial Fists. These are multi-part plastic figures from GW's "Age of Darkness", and they also have embossed resin shoulder plates from Forge World featuring the well known clenched-fist symbol of the VII Legion.

Painting yellow is famously tricky, especially for those of us who apply a black base coat to miniatures for  painting. This habit is deeply ingrained for me, such that the few yellow models I have painted over time have started with black undercoats - including the first squad of Mark VI Imperial Fists I had painted earlier in the fall. It worked OK, but in the end it was a bit underwhelming, and it is a real slog to build the paint from black to a highlighted yellow. It was clear that, if I was going to paint any more VII Legion figures, I would need to open my mind a little bit.

View of the rear detail on the armour - perhaps taken as they flee the walls in terror, unwilling to face the righteous might of Horus' mighty legions? Hard to say...

And I did want to paint some more of these guys...there is something about the yellow armour, and a temptation to have VII Legion Marines for games set on the Siege of Terra. So on this next squad, I experimented a little bit using some more logical paths to the colour yellow on these models. These experiments involved Army Painter spray primers, and GW's Contrast Paints, all to get a good base of bright yellow on the armour plating. Hopefully some pictures in this post can give you an idea of how it went.

Approach #1: Spray Army Painter Matte White as the base coat, and then apply a coat of Army Painter Daemonic Yellow to set a base coat of yellow.

Approach #2 on the right above, and approach #3 on the left.

Approach #2: Spray Army Painter Matte White as the base coat, and then apply a coat of GW's "Iyanden Yellow" Contrast Paint to set a base coat of yellow. Then paint GW's "Yriel Yellow" over top.

Here we have the GW Contrast Paint "Imperial Fist" painted over a coat of Matte White Spray from Army Painter.

"Imperial Fist" over Matte White Spray from Army Painter.

Approach #3: Spray Army Painter Matte White as the base coat, and then apply a coat of GW's "Imperial Fist" Contrast Paint to set a base coat of yellow. Then paint GW's "Yriel Yellow" over top.

So how did things work out? Well, #1 was in many ways the quickest path forward, as the "Daemonic Yellow" spray from Army Painter is very close to the colour of yellow I prefer on the VII Legion armour. BUT - and yes, it is a big BUT - this Army Painter spray is, in my view, much too thick/heavy. I only applied this on one figure as a test, and the results were enough to ensure I would never use "Daemonic Yellow" for anything else again. I was able to finish the figure to the point where he fits in with the others, but yeesh, it sucked. 

This officer gets a plain old bolt gun like the rest of his unit. Considering the Legion rules, this makes the most sense.

Approach #2 worked just fine. Again, this was done on a single figure as a test. There was no terrifying loss of details as with the Army Painter "Daemonic Yellow". In the picture you can hopefully see that this combination of yellows was a little warmer, a bit more orange, a shade of yellow preferred by many who paint this force. I only did one figure this way, but he fits in fine with the others.

Approach #3 also worked well - it ended up being my preferred approach, and so after testing one model, I painted the remaining seven models for the squad using this approach. The combination of the "Imperial Fist" base and "Yriel Yellow" over top yields a colour is a little colder and sharper, which is how I prefer my Imperial Fists to look.

As you can also note, I certainly did not scrimp on the weathering with these fellows, and that is just a matter of my own taste, and how I imagine the VII Legion Marines during the Seige of Terra, running from one battle to the next as Horus' forces hammer away at the defences. There would be little respite - and certainly no time to spend polishing up armour to remove damage and scratches (as opposed to, say, the Ultramarines, who would spend 80% of their time polishing their armour).

The Legion symbol on the shoulders...not so easy to paint...YMMV but I messed up on several of them.

One other note is that I have found the embossed shoulder pads to be quite difficult to paint. The detail on the resin is a bit soft, and I made a real hash of in on several of the shoulder plates. Normally I am used to the embossed shoulders being a real treat to paint (they certainly were for the Sons of Horus), but they are much trickier here. 

These are just ten blokes with bolt guns, but the Imperial Fists benefit from a (frankly absurd) special rule that gives them a bonus to hit when using bolt guns. This 10-man tactical squad will need all of the help it can get when confronted by the 20-man tactical squads from the XVI Legion... 

That's all for now - thanks for visiting! Hope to share more 30k stuff soon...