9th Squad, 4th Company

Devastator Squad Scalprum

Veteran battle brother Daskhorael has the honor of carrying one of the squad's two banners, while brother Malachai wields the Lascannon and brother Azathor hefts the ponderous Multi-Melta.

These 2nd edition beauties were completed for the first round of the 40K2ndAC back in November and December and are here to get the official finished unit post presentation.  In addition to wanting to feature them as a unit, I also had some details to finish up.  With the busy-ness of the holidays, I was pressed for painting time and I cheated by not painting the backs of the backs packs since I only submit one photo from the front for the challenge summary post each month.  Along with cleaning up any undone details, I added some transfers to various parts of the weapons that had broad flat open areas.  Follow along after the jump for pictures with all the angles and some more talking about the minis...

The wisdom of veteran sergeant Scalprum helps guide the powerful fire of the squad, ensuring that brothers Soriel and Astrovel find plentiful targets for their Missile Launcher and Heavy Bolter.

Although many marine accessories are far more detailed now, I feel like it's hard to beat those classic 2nd edition close combat sprue weapons, like the Power Axe pictured above.

Even though I carefully measured the last banners I made that were too long, and then thought I reasonably adjusted the size, I still managed to make this set a little too long as well.  Next time I'm sizing the banner on the model BEFORE I start painting it.

With the size of those Heavy Bolter magazines, brother Astrovel needs the really big ammo pouches on his belt :-)

Brother Astrovel with the Heavy Bolter is a 3rd edition Mark VI head, body, and torso combined with the heavy weapon arms from RTB01 and a 2nd edition Heavy Bolter.  I only have a scant few bitz left from my original RTB01 box that I got when I was twelve so it makes me really happy when I find a way to work one of those pieces into my squads that I'm building now.  It's sort of my own meta version of space marines passing down a particularly valued armor plate or weapon from veteran to veteran.  

I'm still trying to figure out what part of my brain misfired and made me misremember and think that every weapon in 2nd edition looked like a Fire Dragon's meltagun :-)

The Multi-Melta in the hands of brother Azathor was made of a RT era Multi-Melta grafted to a 3rd edition Missile Launcher in the late 90's when there was no available model with that weapon choice.  It was at least 15 years later when I figured out how I could have simply placed the Multi-Melta in the marines hands with out the ham-fisted kitbash I created many years ago, but at this point I'm sentimentally attached to that giant thing.  He's been shuffled around from squad to squad over the years when I played with my partially painted armies but he has been a major part of my infantry based anti-tank firepower for so long that I thought he deserved a place of honor in this Devastator squad of classics.  

This Devastator squad will add some heavy firepower to both my growing 2nd edition army, and my Dark Angels army as a whole since these fellows will also get used in 9th edition games as well.  They also help complete my grand (but slightly outdated in the meta of hobby projects) plan of trying to build and paint an entire Battle Company of Dark Angels space marines.  I am definitely taking the Major to do list badge for this squad, these models are the first fully painted Devastator squad I've owned and a key building block of many of my tabletop armies.  They have already made their way into my campaign roster for the crusade campaign my son and I have started.  Work on the 4th company page continues at a snail's pace but hopefully soon I can unveil a space on this blog to easily check in on the 4th company project and see what units I've completed so far.  Thanks for stopping by and stay safe out there...

Devastators!