Assault Intercessor Death Company (Next)

 

Steady aim, bringing pain.

 

Death Company number four in the assault intercessor range. Not much to say on the model really, everything is mostly the same as it was for the other models except for a lack of Blood Angel specific iconography. That was all painted or added with decals.

In the case of the left shoulder pad, the chapter symbol was a little too large, but I didn't have the proper size available.

The base is entirely from the moulded one supplied with the miniature. The rocks were given a very slight red tone on the base layer before drybrushing. There's a slight difference in appearance as a result, but it should still fit with the the other models overall.

Really enjoyed painting the assault Primaris, mostly because they reach the final assembly phase that much quicker for me.

-- silly painter.

Assault Intercessor Death Company - Part V

Quickly, run perpendicular to the enemy!

Abso-fraggin-lutely!

Stand still, I want to hit you with my chainsword.

And done. There could be a little more work on the base to make it more interesting, but I mostly just can't be bothered now. It's been a bit of a struggle to finish these guys actually; thinking over it, each Death Company ends up quite unique, and so painting each one feels like a character in their own right, naturally taking more effort and care each.

For painting, nothing really new to speak of, no new colours that haven't been tried before. I do like how the base and chestplate tie together, but don't like how my Windsor&Newton brush decided to split while trying to write out some words. I'm not going back over it now, but have to look at why that brush is doing so. Frustrating to say the least.

I've bought another Assault Intercessor, so this squad of Death Company will grow soon enough.

-- silly painter.

Assault Intercessor Death Company - Part IV

Here, catch.

A brief extra today just to take notes on what I'd actually done. They're not yet finished, but really aren't very far off now.

• The chestplate winged skull:
• Morghast Bone
• Skeleton Horde Contrast
• Agrax Earthshade in the deeper recessed areas to really make it stand out more. A little of this was needed at the end to fix some mistakes too.
• Ushabti Bone along the edges
• Screaming Skull as final edge highlight, mostly on the tips of the "feathers".

The engine of the chainsword is taken from Lieutenant Tolmeron's power sword hilt:

• Screaming Bell
• Reikland Fleshshade Gloss
• Hashut Copper as highlight.
• Fulgurite Copper as final edge highlight

The chapter badge:

• Celestra Grey. Two thin coats to get a nice solid colour.
• Blue Horror edge paint to give a hint of blue.
• Ulthuan Grey, focusing on the more prominent areas.

Note that the model pictured here does not have a blood drop gemstone in the chapter badge. This is intentional: as a full chapter badge is black, so the Death Company wear white. Where there's something to set the gemstone into, I will paint that in the usual red.

-- silly painter.

Assault Intercessor Death Company - Part III

Goblet and halo on the backpack. Why? Because he can.

 

Fully assembled now, I'm starting to pick back up the pace with painting these Death Company. None of the red has been highlighted yet, but the outline of the red crosses on the armour has been done. These will be brightened to make them stand out more.

The metallics are mostly done for this phase, and I'll come back to them after the varnish spray. I've used the gloss shades this time around because the base was already quite dark (Iron Hands Steel) and I didn't want to push it further. The gold is Balthasar Gold with Cryptek Armourshade Gloss just to see how it would look. The shade has a slightly red hue to it, and I've been looking for an excuse to see how it goes with the various golds.

Back in black.

 The holster is another new experiment with the Contrast range.

• Zandri Dust over the leather areas.
• Screaming Skull to add scratches, creases, and general wear along the edges.
• Gore Grunta Fur over the whole area. It was applied a little too heavily in this case.
• Agrax Earthshade around some recessed areas, or to darken as necessary.

I'm not entirely convinced that Gore Grunta Fur was the right choice, but I don't have much of the Contrast range and so it was the best choice at the time. It should have been applied just a little thinner however. The Screaming Skull doesn't show through particularly much either, so might need something a bit brighter in future. Still, while this might not work against full red armour, here it's better than the normal brown I've been using.

The purple gems on the right pauldron I was going to keep mostly as purple, but may try to highlight to a red just for something different.

-- silly painter.

 

Assault Intercessor Death Company - Part II

Death Company Primaris are all the Rage now.

 Just a small update on Assault Intercessor Death Company progress, now that there has been a little progress. The photo doesn't really show the effort put into the black - my own fault for the lighting and wanting a deeper black to the armour.

The problem with black is that it doesn't highlight well. Greys can be used, but then it's mixing two of the most troublesome colours: white and black. This is why there's often a little blue or purple added, just to help those transitions. I didn't want that, so I'm stuck with trying to be difficult.

Something that is helping is sharper edge highlights with Dawnstone. I've been moving away from such things, but it's really needed in this case to outline and give definition to the model. So if nothing else, I've learned that for black, sharp edge highlights matter.

In the past I've done all the blood drop symbols as red, and that will be the case on the model shown, but there are times when it's too much with the red crosses. For another of the Death Company I will likely try a deep purple instead - this worked well for Karlaen, and helps keep each member of the Death Company unique.

Green eye lenses are really working on this model too. I was concerned that it wouldn't give the right effect, but it contrasts nicely with the red and really draws attention to the face (at least for now - still much to be painted on the model yet). Death Company come with a lot of detail normally - red crosses, ropes, honour rolls, skull icons, and the usual winged blood drop of the Blood Angels. It can be easy to get carried away, so the trick will be adding just enough to make it interesting without unbalancing or overwhelming the model. It's going to be fun.

-- silly painter.

Assault Intercessor Death Company - Part I

I see a Blood Angel...

...and I want it painted black.

The recently released "start painting" kit of the Assault Intercessors provided an excellent opportunity to do a bit of kit bashing on limited numbers of models, and to practice some more on Death Company. The limited number is important if I'm to keep plastic mountain from growing much further.

The models came with Ultramarine insignias that needed to be chopped off, fortunately only the shoulder pads and therefore easily hidden behind the replacement spare Blood Angels variants. So converting to Blood Angels, and readying for Death Company, wasn't actually all that difficult.

Although I'm only showing the one at the moment, priming the models was done using black, naturally, for "battle ready" there's not a whole lot more that needs doing. I wanted to do more of course, so the airbrush came next:

• Corvus Black over the entire model. This isn't quite as pure a black as Abaddon Black, so it leaves some room to maneuver when it comes to highlighting and shading.
• Dawnstone for highlighting. I normally would choose Eshin Grey, but that's not available in the Air range from Citadel, so I used Dawnstone. It is much more saturated than I liked, but this can be fixed later. In future I might mix normal Eshin Grey with some thinner and use that directly in the airbrush.
  
• Abaddon Black for shading, but owing to it being slightly thin (at least with my usage) it also served to tone down the highlights as well.

The models still come out a little lighter than I like at this point, so some brush work was still required; I prefer Death Company to have a deep black armour, to represent their descent into madness.

Normally I would use thinned Abaddon Black as a glaze to darken areas, however I also tried Black Templar from the Contrast range. This was a bit hit & miss, and ultimately I might stick to Lahmian Medium with the former black. If I can tweak the airbrush stage, then this wouldn't require as much effort either.

Thinned Dawnstone to edge highlight in places, and Nuln Oil to really make the recesses black, and that's about it.  I don't edge highlight as much these days, but it's needed to define armour plating when everything is painted black.

I'll paint the head and helmets next, just to assemble that stage before starting on filling in some red crosses and getting started on blocking in other colours.

-- silly painter.