Epic Proportions Second Unit Completed

Salamanders 1st Company "The Firedrakes"

There is something magical about a fully painted Epic company that lets you envision legions of Space Marines going into action.

This unit was technically finished before the end of May, but Real LifeTM has kept me too busy to post the full pictures of the finished product.  As I discussed in the WIP post about the origins of my first painted army, this unit needed some restoration due to their age (28 years old!) and I also added a few details but tried to keep the spirit of the original painter's work. 

The Rhinos received the most additions to the original paint work.  They had been painted and highlighted well but all ten Rhinos for the company had quartered yellow checks on the top hatch doors.  I wanted to be able to tell the separate detachments vehicles apart from above but didn't want to just paint over the yellow insignia.  Instead, I added red checks in different positions for each of the three detachments in the company.  For the 1st detachment I added one in the bottom left corner, 2nd detachment top right corner, and then for the 3rd detachment I painted both opposite quarters red.  Fortunately for someone who has a plethora of Dark Angels transfers, the Salamanders use the same number font so they will be used on all the vehicles and banners in the army.

Since the shoulder pad colors of the 1st company are black, I added black opposite quarters to the command stand's Rhino.  Also I added several decals to each to satisfy my insatiable need for unit designations.  I added red Iron Halo decals to the front and black skulls on a white circle to the left side door hatches of each Rhino to denote the veteran status of the Firedrakes.  On the right side door hatches I added detachment numbers for the three units that make up the company. 

Each individual infantry stand received a re-flocking, since the 28 year old flock on the bases had pretty much disintegrated.  I had to brush the glue on so as to not get too much glue and then flock on the painted miniatures.  Other than using too large a flock on the first detachment resulting in their stands looking like they were wading through a Death World jungle, the re-flocking went pretty well.  The only other alterations the infantry units received was painting their right shoulder pauldrons black to match the black shoulder pauldrons of the Salamanders 1st company.  Since they are Mark VI marines and would have studded left shoulder pauldrons I only painted the right side black. 

The HQ unit took the most restoration work, somewhere over the years of storage and several moves the banner and sword of the captain had broken off.  I tried to craft both out of green stuff, only the sword looked good so I settled for that and smoothed the area where the banner was broken off.  I added black shoulder pauldrons to both sides since the command stand is populated by Mark IV marines instead of the Mark VI marines that make up all the other stands in the company.  Finally for the command stand I tried to add some more modern shading and highlight to the commander and his cape to try and finish the command unit to a slightly higher standard.

The part of the project thta surprisingly turned out to be the most fun was the banners.  I haven't tried making paper banners since many failed attempts with marine back banners when I was 13 or 14.  I drew the diagonal quarters on in pencil taking inspiration from the sticker banners that came with the first Space Marine box set.  My only misstep was gluing them on before painting them, even though the glue kept them pretty rigid it was a lot of weird angles trying to support them on the poles while painting.  Next time I'm definitely painting them when they are nice and flat on a piece of paper.  The diagonal quarters, skull decal to represent veteran units, and detachment number were chosen instead of a modern Salamander decal because I did not want to overshadow the original company banner.  That kind of freehand work was amazing when I bought the army in 1993 but obviously now the Salamander symbol is much evolved.  I will use the modern symbol on the other units I paint, but I wanted not to undermine the company banner with the detachment banners.  The color diagonal quarters painted to match the tops of the Rhinos came out well, although a little unintentionally Rasta. 

I'm still not sure why I went with diagonal quarters of color to match the square quarters on the top hatch doors, maybe I was too fixated in imitating the look of the Space Marine 1st edition stick on banners...

Thanks for following along while I talked about this unit from last month's painting.  I have to squeeze in some more posts in the next few days in preparation for the June Epic Proportions challenge round up.  Speaking of which, Dr The Viking has redirected his blog efforts on a new site: Dr The Viking's Cowabunga Slice and Dice so be sure to follow along with all the great work everyone in the challenge is doing.