Lupercalia

Let's finish today (at least for a while) with the Black Legion miniatures. I've been showing you the same kind of minis for some time and I'm eager to move on different things. So, to end up with this army, I'm bringing you these two Squads. The first one is from Forge World, I bought it not so long ago.

 

Back to black

 It's a mix of Mk.II and Mk.III armours. I loved the models as soon as they were released and had a clear idea of what I wanted for them. Nevertheless, I'm not plenty satisfied with the results. Black is a tricky colour indeed and I think I haven't worked it out properly. The models just look too plain dark, I think there's more of them to be shown, but I haven't got the point for it. Don't know what they need. More metals? Different scales of black/grey? Highlights in blue or other colour? Here you can see them closer:

 

Eyes, eyes everywhere...

 

 I only converted the Squad Leader in order to give him a classic looking appearance.

Hey guys, I'm a decadent Roman Egyptian Space Marine

 The crest and the loincloth are made of greenstuff, and the gun holster, plasma pistol and chainsword are from the regular Chaos Space Marine sprues.

So that's it. I pretty much like the models, but I think I could have got out more from them. I still have these minis, so if you got any good idea on the matter, I'm still in time to improve the minis ;)

The other Squad I wanted to show you is this one:

Men in black

 It's a 2nd Edition plastic Space Marine squad with lots of greenstuff all over it. Instead of using a Sergeant, I rather got this man:

Do I look familiar to you?

 

Yep, it's the Ultramarines Captain designed by Jes Goodwin. There's a story about this mini. As a matter of fact, this one is which inspired me all the "classic concept" for the Black Legion. I had the mini and didn't really know what to do with it, as I had replaced my Space Marine Captain with the new model. Then I developed the idea of a classy Legion with proud martial skills, far from what everybody was doing with their armies. So I got my hands on it annnd...

 

From this...

 

...to this

 I repositioned the right leg and arm, worked out the full Roman concept on the helmet and sculpted some eyes an the armour. Looked like pre-Heresy Luna Wolves, so then I knew I had a new concept for this army. All I had to do was to implement it, I needed more figures. This was the result:

 

Yeah, it's a plasma gun. Old Space Crusade one

I also included an old metal standard bearer. This was the first time I used the image of the Eye of Horus to identify the army.

 

First attempt, I have improved it with time

 The idea of the hand on top looked funny to me, it's just a Space Marine plastic hand. The disc resembling the part of a Roman signum is made of geenstuff. Of course nothing of this is historically accurate, but it wasn't my idea at all, I just pretended to give them a classic Roman style. I thought of this army as "Chaos Ultramarines" and this was what ended up appearing.

As I sold most of the army, nowadays I only own the Forge World squad and the Land Raider (oh, well, and the Mad Max Predator). This army clearly needs to rise again ;) Though not beeing on the top ten of my priorities list, I bear it in mind. Any idea of how to restitute my numbers in a classy classic way?