Painting Question: Vanguard and Terminators

[Mordian Glory]

Greetings Brothers,

 

After building and painting 40 Crusaders I felt like it was time for my Crusade to include a few more elite units. To this end I purchased 5 Tactical Terminators and 5 Vanguard Veterans.

 

However, I am not sure what colours to paint them. Do they get the usual black and white shoulder pads or do they get the black and red shoulder pads? After all they are veterans so surely they would get the black and red or is there a difference between "veteran" and sword brother in the Black Templars?

 

 

Edited October 16, 2017 by Mordian Glory

[Kisada]

I paint my vets as sword brothers ... but that does leave the question of how to make the vet sarge stand out from the other vets ... answer ... helmet color

[kombatwombat]

Sword Brethren are the Black Templars’ veterans, analogous to Veterans, Veteran Sergeants, Terminators and Terminator Sergeants from other Chapters. They have the black shoulder pads with red Templar cross and red edging.

 

You should feel free to deviate from this though - Templars aren’t exactly known for following strict doctrine with this sort of thing. For instance, for my Sword Brethren leading my Crusader Squads, I give them a white shoulder pad with red edging to tie them into the squad they’re leading, whereas my Terminators and Vanguard use the black pad with red edging. Beyond that, my Marshal’s Household Guard (Honour Guard equivalents) use gold edging on their shoulder pads to denote their step above.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

If you want a dash more colour/contrast, white helmets on the Terminators are pretty standard.

[Firepower]

Purely sticking to red shoulder trim and crosses tends to mute their appearance among their black and white brethren (much more 'pop' contrast in the latter than the former).  A white helmet is a decent remedy.  Plus there's always the gold weapons like they have on the Sword Brethren box.  If taking power weapons, a high contrast color on those helps, too.