The Red Marked - Defenders of Imperium Secundus

[Jackalwolf]

Your troops really keep the spirit of Aeonid Thiel! They look fab and that tad rebellious that makes them part of the interesting Ultramarines. Especially like the one that has lost his helmet but then decided to bath his face in enemy blood (at least that was my mental story when I watched him :P)

[Grim Dog Studios]

Some fantastic work in here. I really like your take on the red-marked, they are pretty much as I imagined them!

[Pyroclast91]

I love Petronius man absolutely fantastic work. Brilliant idea with the face paint this guy just found himself a place on my favorite conversions list. Your models absolutely bleed character if these weren't based on a book I'd say they should have one based on them

[Knight of the Raven]

I am so stealing sergeant Thaddeus' pose. I don't know when or where but I will steal it.

[Lords of Preyspire]

LOVE THIS!!! Looks so good, I like the muted red helmets. It really does work well. I wish we had a book series of heresy heroes so characters could get a little more time.

 

I just listened to the audio. I can't shake the idea that Aeonid might be the heresy hero that inspires the 40k Sons of Oror chapter.

[foamy248]

These look great! Like quite a few people that commented, I'm not usually a fan of Ultramarines, but these look fantastic (and their fluff is awesome too!) Also, how did you do the red helmets and their lenses? They have a really nice glow effect....

Anywho, keep up the good work!

[Soric]

Ave friends! I have returned with more tidings from Ultramar. Apologies for the long absence from this thread, but real life along with a couple of other hobby projects have gotten in the way lately.

A few Tactical Legionaries, a Captain and a FW Praetor Tribune model ready for sealing.

Anyway I have some more Red Marked for you to feast your eyes upon (although I definitely need to get some better pics of them). Foremost among them is my Praetor Tribune Conversion who I will be using to represent the Captain of the Invictus Guard, Dracos Gorrod.

It was so nerve-wracking trying to paint that pattern along the edge of the cloak and even more so with the Legion symbol.

I know for a fact that when I went to paint the little shield on his right shoulder, I had no idea what to do. Luckily, after looking at Apologist's Ultramarines, I felt a little checkered pattern ought to do the trick

At the moment of writing this, he is currently sitting patiently on my desk, attached to his base awaiting his closeup. Hopefully I should have some time tomorrow morning to photograph him along with his other friends soon. Also I'll have some appropriate fluff to go alongside them as well.

Closeup of Draco's base with a filthy XVII Legion corpse.

I felt that the standard base that came with the Praetor Tribune model was a bit out of place with my Ultras and decided to make a new one for Dracos. So I cobbled together some spare parts and made this dead traitor for Dracos to tread over. The scheme was surprisingly simple and I'm looking forward to adopting it for my XVII representative (who is in the building stage atm).

While not content with just one Praetor, I also have this fellow.

He was originally made for my March of the Legions project (which can be found in my general WIP thread) and I plan to give him a retinue at some point. It was a lot of fun painting an ultramarine without the red of censure upon his helm and the gold shoulder pads were stolen from another thread on here with a similiar idea (think it was a Night Lords one, bit not sure which talented hobbyist it was :S)

Magnetised heads are the order of the day for this fellow

As usual I hope you enjoy the pics.

@ Maximvs - Thanks Brother, I used to feel the same when I first started the hobby (still do to an extent) until I started reading Graham McNeil's books and then the Heresy stuff and they've kind of grown on me a bit. Makes me a bit sad to see them during the Heresy being a regimented fighting force to turning into the starchy adherents of the Codex Astartes in the 41st Millenium.

@ jimbo13 - You honour me by holding me up to the same standard as the great Arkhan himself. His Black 100 were a great source of inspiration for starting these guys.

@ Grieux - I think that was one of the main reasons I enjoy the adventures of Aeonid Thiel so much, he likes to think outside outside the box when it comes to tactical norms. As for my rendition of Petronius, the audio describes him having the Red "cris-crossed over his features like an X", so I wasn't sure how to portray that other than having him with a Red X painted over his face (not necessarily in blood, but you never know). I'm glad you like them.

@ Wulox - I'm glad to have met your expectations brother. I've been watching your Kill Team project with great interest and like some of the ideas you've implemented with them.

@ Pyroclast91 - High praise indeed brother, I am humbled by your words. A lot of people seem to like Petronuis. I was looking at him recently and was thinking of rebuilding him. I feel I should have posed him differently and he's not as tall as he should have been. As for the fiction, I really hope we hear more about these characters in the next couple of books (still haven't read Pharos yet, so fingers crossed).

@ Knight of the Raven - Steal away brother. I shamelessly stole... I mean paid homage to Captain Titus's pose in the main menu for Space Marine.

@ Lords of Preyspire - I'm also curious to see where Theil's destiny lies. I thought that the Sons of Orar might be his eventual calling but then I remembered there is another Red Ultramarines Chapter. The Genesis Chapter.

@ foamy248 - I'm glad you like them so far. The red helmets are simple. It essentially boils down to using Mechrite Red, a wash of Nuln Oil, a tidy up with the base colour and then highlights using a 1:1 mix of Skull White and Mechrite Red. As for the eye glow, it's mainly Blood Red underneath the lenses and a line of white in the middle of the eyes.

[Soric]

This has been idle for too long. Shazam!! Instant update!

Captain Likane

"You are a leader, Aeonid Thiel. Two thousand Ultramarines stand ready to head your command, I am one of them. Lead us. We won't stand idle while Macragge and Ultramar are threatened. So we shall all be Red Marked..."

Duty. Honour. Respect. These were the tenets that were held by many Legionaries of the XIIIth Legion, none more so than Captain Likane. A veteran of the Great Crusade and later the Underworld War, Likane was an officer of umcomprimising strictness and harsh discipline. As the commander of Oran Garrison, he commanded a force of 2000 Ultramarines who were mustered and kept at readiness for whatever orders to be given by their Primarch. Initially seeing Aeonid Thiel and by extension the Red Marked as a source of shame, unfitting to wear the Cobalt Blue and Gold, events would later show him the error of his ways. From then on, out of respect and a need to take action, the captain volunteered the troops under his command to become members of Thiel's fledgling force.

Been very quiet for a while and I would blame my Blood Bowl set that I'm currently painting for the lack of Astartes updates but that would be very untrue as I'm stuck halfway through painting that also. Lack of enthusiam combined with magpie syndrome are the real culprits here, but I'm slowly trying to get back into the swing of things. Likane has been done for a while and has been happily living in my case alongside the rest of the Red Marked. Part of me wishes that he was more dynamic, but then again he's only featured in one audio drama, so I originally didn't think he'd be very active. I tried to carve a bit of the chin from the head to represent his bionic jaw, but I don't think it looks very bionic.

Apart from his legs and the helmet which are Forgeworld parts, he's made entirely from GW plastic parts. His helmet was my favourite part to paint along with the markings on his knee and shoulder pads.

He's also not the only model I have to show. My Drakus Gorod conversion has also been sitting in my case for a while and initially I was really happy with how he turned out. Unfortunately the main reason he hasn't made much of an appearance here is because he seems to have come down with a bit of a white rash :S

Basically when I finished painting him I sprayed him with GW's Purity Seal varnish. After leaving him to dry, I came back to see to my horror that the varnish had frosted over the details (primarily the cape and metallic parts). This was less than ideal as I didn't want to have to repaint these parts. After a brief panic, I checked online to see if there was any way I could salvage him and found an article advising the use of olive oil. Needless to say it worked well enough at the time, however it didn't seem to eradicate all the frosting and I'm begrudgingly thinking of having to repaint him. So my question to you fellow Fraters is: What can I do about it? Or will I have to repaint him? Any advice would be appreciated.

That disaster out of the way, here's what's next in the pipeline, I present the next set of tacticals. They're based on the cover art for the audio drama and my overall goal is to build all the marines featured (even the traitors) at some point to make another mini display.

Finally I've saved the best for last. I've decided to remake Aeonid Thiel. The reason being that for a long time, I've been looking at my original take on him and have been noticing alot of issues with him. Also having looked at the rest of the Red Marked, I realise he doesn't seem to stand out as much as I'd like. To that end I sketched up this redesign based on the cover of Censure.

After gathering up some materials, I've came up with this. The problem I'm having (and also another thing I'd like some feedback/advice on) with him at the moment is that I'm unsure whether to stick completely to the artwork pose (essentially him walking forward with his weapons at his side) or to change it up slightly to make him look more heroic. In addition I've also magnetised his neck so I can switch out his head for his unhelmeted version as well as his right hand to switch between a close combat weapon or a bolt pistol.

Hope you enjoy the pics and look forward to seeing what advice people have to give.

[Jarkaira]

Nice take on the Captain's name as in my native language it means dirty :)

[Achinadav]

Hitting the spray varnish with another coat might dissolve the frosting. Its certainly worked for me in the past. I'd test it on something you don't care about first, though, just in case.