Black Templar Bladeguard Ancient

More Templars! I’ve painted what I think is my second Marine from the Indomitus box, the Ancient.

It took me two weeks to finish this guy. Frankly speaking, I initially thought he’d be done in a week, but I guess the amount of detail was just too much. Case in point, I had to go back twice to paint a bit I had missed (after I had”finished” the armor, I noticed I hadn’t done one of the thigh plates; ditto for a purity seal). There were also more elements/colors to do, compared to the two previous Marines: (large) gold pieces, red trim, red leather and bone. But while I had to spend some time finding appropriate paints and techniques for these elements, I think they should come in handy with the other characters.

As the model has so many details, I took the opportunity to use multiple shades for the different reds and parchments. I think this was really important for separating all the elements, and to keep things more interesting. I also used different techniques for the gold bits: the small trinkets and skulls are painted in the standard “basecoat-shade-highlight” way, whereas the big banner was drybrushed to save time.

While I’m really happy with how the model came out overall, there’s one detail I’m not crazy about, and it’s the tilt shield. The black cross gets a bit lost on the background. Should’ve gone with a halved or quartered design, but as I didn’t want to repaint the shield, I’ll try to come up with (/borrow) a better design on a future model.

I claimed another bingo square with the Ancient: add a unit to your army and paint it before gaming. I suppose this is the first completed unit of the army, and I’ve certainly not done any gaming with it. (I doubt I ever will, but I think I can still count this…)