Although the past two weeks have ended up with me painting detachments for both legions, there is honestly no plan to do it that way! Nevertheless I have been painting transports for both the Blood Angels and Imperial Fists simultaneously. Again.
A pair of Spartans for the Blood Angels (although there maybe a third coming), and a quadruple helping of Land Raiders for the Fists. The Spartans were always in scope to be added to my demi-company for the IXth. They let me either swap out the Drop Pods for the second core tactical, or just let me switch up the mechanised detachment from Rhinos to Spartans. With a spare Transport slot available they felt like a nice fit,
Shown here, I have just mat varnished them ready for weathering and basing. hence the weapon sponsons are not glued in place yet. I’ll do that at the very end after I glue them to their bases. Makes it easier to add the ground work and pigments.
The Land Raiders are in a bit of a strange place for me list wise. As an assault transport they can act as transport for Terminators, but given they have transport (2) and Terminators are bulky, they can take only a single unit. This is of course entirely in keeping with the canon for a Land Raider, but it does mean even a minimum detachment of Terminators will need a minimum four land Raiders which is 160 points. A detachment that can deep strike for, well, free.
So then you are left with using them as a (comparatively) expensive transport for tacticals or non-bulky support detachments. I’m also not feeling that. It would be nice if you could mix-and-match transports in a transport detachment, but sadly, the rules as currently written don’t really allow that. All dedicated transport detachments must consist of the same vehicle and non-dedicated transports must be part of the same detachment. Equally, detachments opting to make use or a transport detachments (non-dedicated) must choose them from the same detachment.
All of this serves to give me a bit of a headache as Land Raiders are so OG I just want to include a ton in my army, but they just don’t make themselves an easy option to work in.
That being said, they are pretty speedy and the forward deployment rule is super valuable, so maybe I should just bite the bullet and pony up the points. Either way, four are on the painting station as we speak and I’m liking the new iteration of yellow which I tweaked ever so slightly.
All things being equal I hope to get them finished this week and added to the Fists.
In early progress
Officially started on the White Scars formations. I’ve a handful of Assault and Skyhunter frames primed for painting this week also. These are more to get a feel for the palette I want to use. if there’s one thing I’ve learned so far painting Legion forces is the process and palette evolves frequently. Both the Blood Angels and Fists are a good example of that. The former in particular has gone through several iterations before I got to a scheme I liked, that was quick to do and looked effective.
I think once these transports are done I’ll be focusing much more just on the White Scars. There is one further unit I do want to add to the Angels, some Xiphons. But it’s purely an indulgence as the flyer slot is already taken by the Thunderhawk, so they would be as an alternative force selection choice, or air support for a second (armoured) formation. No urgency however.
All of the above I will add to the gallery once they are fully complete. Until then, happy painting!
Just discovered your site, fantastic updates & beautiful paint jobs! I totally agree with your comments on the Epic Landraiders, I have included them as I am theming my marine force from “The Great Slaughter” book where they talk about the Imperial Fists having Land Raiders, but struggling to think about how to use them efficiently. However, I play against friends rather than competitively so that is a saving grace!
Thanks! They are such great models and thematically on point for epic. Similar to yourself, I’ve included them in my Imperial Fist for no other reason than that.
Confident when I make a start on the traitor legion however I’ll be adding a few more for narrative reasons, as I have a certain ‘old’ epic photo I’d like to recreate in the future. I hope they perform well for you in your legion, on paper they do create nice opportunities for getting troops deployed forward right at the start, or locking down detachments in an assault from a decent range out and surviving any point defence or overwatch on the way in to deploy cargo.
Regardless, they are still a gorgeous model and there was no way I wasn’t including them.