"Gazing into the Abyss" - Chaos Marines

Some time after the Great Rift's creation, 

the Servants of the Abyss's Dread Cruiser Impaler, 

was struck by a empyric cataclysm, 

that fused it to a new Blackstone Fortress

 that has appeared in the Galaxy. 

- Lexicanum

Hi everyone, thanks for joining me for another Friday on The Art of Caesura!

We're making our way through Blackstone Fortress. I'm loving the opportunity to paint models that I would never otherwise have painted; for example: Chaos Space Marines. 

Now we're really getting close. With these two chaos marines complete, I only have two more adversaries to paint aside from the big boss himself!

It's a theme in the Games Workshop painting community that most people feel the pull to chaos at some point in their mini painting hobby. Strangely, I've never really felt that pull (maybe it's the old Black Templar in me), but I can fully acknowledge that these "new" Black Legion minis are awesome!!

I was interested to learn some of the history of the Black Legion from this week's conveniently timed "Lore Masters" on Warhammer Plus, which focused on Abaddon Black...I mean "The Despoiler". 

Before we get into some of the painting, I just wanted to mention that I'm really impressed with how much basically just a head swap really changes the look of these two models. The design on the Blackstone Fortress "duplicates" is really clever. 

So, the painting. I started from a black base coat (shocker!) and painted the armour trim with Retributor Armour and the loincloth with Mephiston Red.

I shaded their armour with Nuln Oil (I do think this makes a bit of a difference, even over black). The trim received a wash of Druchii Violet and loincloth Carroburg Crimson.

With the shades complete, it was on to highlighting. I highlighted the armour with Incubi Darkness. I actually found this really tricky because there aren't really any raised edges to the black armour (it's surrounded with gold trim) so I tried to do the 'ol GW trick of kind of outlining the perimeter of some of the black armour panels with the Incubi Darkness.

I highlighted the trim with Retributor Armour and then with Retributor Armour + Vallejo metal medium. 

I worked the red up by adding Evil Sunz Scarlet and then Yriel Yellow. This is also how I did the flame effect on their right pauldrons, only I emphasized the yellow and pushed on through to white.

They ended up being really cool models to paint, and I'm happy with how they turned out. 

In the game these guys have been a little hit or miss. Knowing the lore, and being a human against a Chaos Space Marine, I was telling my wife how bad ass and difficult these guys would be and how we would have to focus everything we had against them. Suffice to say, they under performed (much to our benefit).

In another mission, when we came across them - buoyed by the previous ease with which we dispatched them - Janus Draik marched up to one marine, ready to hack it to bits in a flurry of sword strokes, only to get gunned down to within an inch of his life, necessitating us to abort the set of missions and return to Precipice. 

And there you have them, Obsidius Mallex' two right-hand men (right- and left-hand men?) I hope you enjoyed this foray into chaos, I'll see you next week on The Art of Caesura!

Reading: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century - Yuval Harari

Next Week:

Beep boop...