Minotaurs Space Marines

Where have I been?

Been a bit lacking in hobby mojo recently, after a few failed starts on things I should paint (mainly the big piles of 40k Chaos Marines and Orks). I have found the something I have wanted to do for some time that floats my boat enough to keep motivation at a reasonable level.

Why Space Marines?
 
Something about blocks of Space Marine units on the table has always appealed to me, probably the cohesive colour scheme across all the whole army being visually striking, coupled with the forgiving nature of game play with them. Add that to a low model count and for a painfully slow painter like myself they are a gift.

Last time I started SMs was the end of 2nd Edition although the army didn't get up to playable strength til 3rd Ed. Red Scorpions was the choice then and I enjoyed them a fair bit. Forge World released minis too late for that and I always was regretted the loss of my fairly original choice of chapter as it became a pretty common army as well as the fact I couldn't justify buying into the FW bits for the biggest and most complete army I had duplicating what I had painted already.

Scroll forward in time and my old Red Scorps are gone, 3 rules editions later I'm ready to paint Marine again.

I always had a plan for my own chapter, but after some time have decided that getting the vehicle doors, shoulder pads and other bling sculpted across a whole army was just setting myself up for yet another failed or stalled project.

After a lot of Google I decided on one supported by Forgeworld as a sort of compromise between my own chapter ideas ( A Greek themed army) and my need to avoid getting into a sculpting painting nightmare.
This way I can buy a lot of extra detail from FW, yet still invest a bit of sculpting time into any particular unit of mini I want  to have an extra bit of presence.

Minotaurs Chapter

That decided time to get something started.

I grabbed a box of Blood Angel Tactical SMs from the local GW and a set of paints for the scheme. BAs were chosen because of the Sergeants GrecoRoman bodyform armour and of course the 32mm bases.

Hmm speaking of bases.....

Whilst waiting on ForgeWorld Minotaur shoulder pads I had a play with base designs to enforce the theme.

Home made Greek Key bases.

Starting with a Tactical squad using ForgeWorld shoulder pads seemed like a sensible place and a test mini was in order once the shoulder pads arrived, to work out which was the best way for me to paint them.

Minotaurs test mni.

 Overall I'm happy with the result, just a case of painting more to refine how I get there.