Black Templars for 3rd Edition

Gage (@noclearcoat) and Tyler (@tylerisalrightatpainting) got me really stoked on making a small 500 point list for a 3rd Edition City Fight idea they had. Tyler has been working on this insane board, which you'll see on here if we end up rocking some games.

I was with Gage at the Hive Scum studio late one night, bashing up some Orks for our ongoing Sargos 40k campaign, when I stumbled on a half-built firstborn marine in the bin. I always thought there was something charming about these little fellas, and they are, well everywhere, as no one seems to really want them.

I remembered then that I had a ziploc bag of 'em at home that I'd never done anything with, which I found in a tacklebox at a thrift store a few years ago:

So I went, dug them out, did some sorting, some listbuilding with what I had (newrecruit.eu) and added them to the dudes I had taken from the bits bin at the studio and came up with this ragtag team:

I bashed up a leader, Castellan Luthair Bremaan, wearing some snazzy Terminator Armor and onto the next step.  Here they are after being primed, sponged on with some gray, and then drybrushed white. I also went over the pauldrons in white to get ahead of it.

Next I debated on using decals (I've had microset and sol kicking around for ages) but ultimately decided that doing a messy freehand would give these guys a looser, more impressionist look.

Then I painted some red on the crew:

After this I painted the faces of the helmetless dudes, which I forgot to photograph, then I hit 'em all in streaking grime. Bottom pic is a little side-by-side because it's been a while since I've used the stuff and I was happy with the result.

After this it was all just clean up, a little highlighting, and I like to make my banners out of comic books, and then add some small freehand/unifying color work over the unwanted bits. I forgot to photograph this process, but I will at some point in the future. Here's how they came out! I'm stoked for 'em. Space Marines (firstborn specifically) are a blast to paint up. I'm gonna continue to add units to this army, and I'll post up with I do.