Alright, let’s get the hobby year 2020 started! I wanted to pick a small project to ease myself back to painting after a bit of a hiatus, so here’s Lieutenant Varras from the Battle for Macragge box.
I didn’t get any hobbying done during Christmas / New Year, due to not being home for the majority of them. But since then I’ve slowly been building and prepping models to eventually paint, and during last weekend and Epiphany Monday managed to paint up one of them. Varras had been sitting on my table for pretty long, and of course he’s been in my possession since the release of BfM in 2004. I had actually painted the model back then, but as he wasn’t really a part of my Ultramarine army, and I was never really happy with how he looked, I decided to strip him and give him a new paintjob.
Painting was rather straightforward, I used the same palette as for my Revelators, with the difference that I painted the pouches and holsters brown instead of black to bring in some additional color. I also tried out Citadel’s new paint triad for dark skin, and am very happy with the result. Definitely using it for some other models as well!
Painting this model pretty much finished the Space Marine side of BfM, as I have already painted the objective markers and a Tactical Squad (will have to do a marine with a flamer at some point). The squad is of course not the one from the box, but that’s fine as, to be frank, the BfM marine sculpts and casts were mostly terrible. I might get to the Tyranids at some point, as I think I’ve got most of the minis still in my possession. I’ve also tried to get hold of the Aquila lander terrain pieces (I still kick myself for binning those as a teenager), but so far the prices have been a bit too much.
Finally, I’ll begin filling the hobby bingo card as well. The card is a bit different than last year, as Rob redesigned it just this month. Let’s see if I’ll do better this time! I’ll cross off the “to-do pile model”, I think Varras qualifies.
He looks great mate. I would have like to have seen a shot of what the original paint job was too though for comparison though.
LikeLike
Cheers IRO! I was debating on whether to include a pic of the old one or not, and thought I’d leave him for later along with some of my other ancient models. But here’s the picture anyway, my old Varras with some BfM Tyranids.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wow big difference.
LikeLike
Such a nice one-off model GW model to have in your collection (mine is working as a hive enforcer in the retinue of an Inquisitor these days). Excellent paintjob, too! Quite a lovely way to get back into painting for the new year! 🙂
LikeLike
Thank you very much KS! Yes, I remember seeing your slightly modified Varras in one of your crews! I’d hesitate to call him a classic model, but he’s definitely nice and I wouldn’t mind having another for conversion purposes.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Make no mistake. the model’s about sixteen years old. Classic enough for me 😉
LikeLike
I really like what you’ve done with this guy – the subtle change of grey tone and chipping of his carapace armour to show the difference between his cloth parts and the hard armour especially. 🙂
LikeLike
Much appreciated! Yeah, I felt that gray clothes and armor would look suitably pilot-like, and both fit my Revelators and be universal as well. But one shade of gray would’ve been really boring, so I tried to differentiate them in a subtle way, and I’m glad it’s noticed!
LikeLike