Heresy & Heroes

The summer holiday is over and I’m back on the Mortifactors project and here is my Chapter Champion. I have never put so much metallic paint onto a model this small and so I’ve been calling him the Bling Marine/Mr Shiny  throughout this project. In fact, it appears that he’s so shiny, my camera refused to focus properly on him so, yet again I’m hear apologising for my photography. One day, I’ll get it right.

The thing about a chapter champion though, is that he has to be a bit flashy. He’s the duelist, the finest swordsman in the chapter and a member of the Chapter Master’s personal retinue after all. To that end, I wanted to construct a very unique Space Marine. I used the power armour clad Praetor from Forge World as a base and, using a few other bits from other kits, I think I got a pretty unique-looking warrior. He’s got the asymmetrical look of a specialist who has adapted his armour setup to be a better swordsman.

I also made this chap a former member of the Deathwatch. This gave me a chance to use one of the old shoulder guards which still look really cool. This in turn allowed me to break up the gold and black base of the model without having to use bone (which is looking like a rather subtle touch on this chap). The sword comes from the other Praetor and of course I went for bronze to keep him in line with the rest of the army.

The kit was great to work with (just like the other Praetor) and I love the pose of the guy. It really looks like he’s stepping forward to meet an opponent in a battle or arena.

Not the best skull I’ve ever done but it’s still pretty good so it’s nice to learn that I’ve not lost that particular skill. The dagger comes from one of the FW weapon sets (seriously, such a great addition to the bits box) and I went with that over a boltgun because I like the idea of the duelist also being a close combat purist. Also, it gives him an extra attack on the table top too, which is nice.

And so that’s the Chapter Champion done. It’s nice to be back to work on the Mortifactors again, and of course a champion means an honour guard. This will come eventually, but I’ve got a few more things on the shelf that need painting so that might be a longer project (or I’ll cave next week and buy the kits from FW – we’ll see). Hopefully my photography and skull painting will be back on track soon. Onwards!