2018 Review: Space Marine Models Completed!

So 2018 has finally ended and we are now in the New Year. But before we move on completely the time has come for me to conduct a review into my wargaming activity for the year that was.

So for this first post let’s have a look at the noble brothers of the Space Marines that I’ve painted over the previous 12 months....

Adeptus Astartes: Crimson Fists

A lot of my focus this years has been around continuing to build up my primary army of Crimson Fists Space Marines. 

I assembled and painted the Lieutenant in Mk IV (Maximus) Armour above to provide some invaluable leadership to my pre-existing battle company of old-style (non-Primaris) Marines.

I am also gradually building up a seperate company of Primaris Crimson Fists and so I painted this mighty Captain in Gravis Armour to command them.

The Primaris Captain was then joined with two Primaris Lieutenants to support him. The first one was armed with an auto-bolt rifle to provide long range fire support...

...Whilst the second was equipped with a glowing power sword with which he could better cut up the vile foes of the Emperor in close combat.

To further bulk up this growing Primaris Force I painted a fresh squad of Intercessors with Bolt Rifles to fill out one of the troops choices...

I then completed two five man squads of Hellblasters whose high power plasma weapons would be able to cripple even the most powerful targets from across the table.

Adeptus Astartes: Flesh Tearers

Next up I decided to work on expanding my smaller force of Flesh Tearers who had been wallowing in a cupboard for almost a decade. 

I decided to theme this army as a highly aggressive melee Force (as befits their heritage within the fluff) and so I assembled and painted three drop pods to deploy them into the heart of combat. I am ashamed to say that these models had been sitting in my plastic pile since the models were first released (2004 I think)!

Whilst working on my Flesh Tearers I also reviewed the models that were already part of this force. As I had originally painted them back in 2011 I decided that they could do with a touch up in order to bring them up to my current standard of painting.

Primarily these touch ups involved painting over the models’ existing bare metal weapon blades with a more evocative blue power field.

This small step actually went a long way to improving the overall look of the miniatures.

I then painted up some fresh characters to reinforce these ferocious sons of Sanguinius; including this Thunder Hammer wielding officer in Mk III (Iron) Armour.

I also painted up this standard bearer to accompany Chapter Master Seth into battle. Again he wears MkIII armour and carries a Thunder Hammer.

And I finally added a final character also armed with a Thunder Hammer and again clad in an ancient suit of MkIII power armour.

Finally I further bulked out my Flesh Tearers troops with a new five man scout squad equipped with Sniper Rifles and a Missile Launcher.

Well that was certainly quite a productive year for my Space Marine forces. In fact I actually realised that I painted a lot more Adeptus Astartes than I thought. 

Overall I’m quite happy with the output and quality of these models and I have to say that GWs assorted new 40k based games (8th Edition, Kill Team, Blackstone Fortress) are so good that they have pushed me to paint far more toys for my games than I would otherwise have done. I sincerely hope they keep up the momentum and quality that they have established in the last couple of years!

Next time we’ll look at the filthy Xenos and other bits and bobs that I managed to paint up in 2018!!