Legions Imperialis – Painting tiny marines

As we are going deep with the coverage and further projects using the new Epic scale Legions Imperialis miniatures, I grabbed a few miniatures from the Legiones Astartes Infantry set and prepared them to get them painted as that just looks nicer in the comparison pictures.

It will be two bases of Astartes, one with a few command miniatures in power armour and the second one with the Cataphracti terminators, and with this scope I thought, well that would be a great chance to paint something outside of my project idea. And what legion would be better than the Alpha Legion? Especially as the pictures from the Liber Hereticus really spoke to me. Beside that, it would be a great time to try out a translucent colour over metallics, using Contrast paints.

With miniatures of this scale, it is important to have a proper grip. If you would glue them to the base right away, that would make it difficult to reach everything, so I suggest putting them on a stick. I bought a batch of these a while ago, for scratch building, enhancing MDF buildings etc. and in case of 15mm and smaller, they make for a great painting stick. You should be able to buy them at your grocery store, or if you just need a few, grab some at your coffee shop or bakery.

As some people were arguing about the "not so nice" parts of the cast, as you can't to undercuts with injection mould plastic (unless you go for a rather expensive multi-part mould), but some of these you can simply scrape off / cut away, while you clean up the mould lines. And in my opinion it upgrades the final look by quite a bit.

I glued the miniatures on the wood with PVA / wood glue, as this would give them a solid hold but would be easy to remove after painting. After that, I gave them a black primer. You can use the rattle can or do it by brush. For these two strips I just applied P3 Thamar Black and after that dried a good coat of Vallejo Game Color 72052 Plata / Silver, as I wanted a metallic base to add a Contrast colour to.

Ontop of that, I used two coats of Aethermetic Blue from the Citadel Contrast range. I added some details (the strips and trim of the terminator shoulder pads and banner), using Astronomican Grey from the Foundation range (you can use white scar) for the light grey areas and Night Lords Blue for the weapons. The banner was painted with a turquoise, which I quickly mixed from Army Painter Electric Blue and Vallejo Game Colour 72028 Dark Green on a 1-on-1 ratio. After that, I gave it a black-lining of Army Painter Strong Tone and removed it from the raised area with a damp brush.

After all of that dried, I added highlights with Vallejo MC Off White and the VGC Silver, along with adding the decals from the Legions Imperialis Vehicle Decal sheet. Used the XX, as the legion number and the 3-headed Hydra. I prepared the bases with the P3 Thamar Black, P3 Greatcoat Grey and Army Painter Uniform Grey. You either have to scrap of the connecting areas to make plastic glue work, or just use super glue in tiny amounts, as you don't want frosting. Last step was cleaning up the base trim, and I'm done.

I am quite happy with the result, next up will be painting some vehicles and other units, as I want to do a brief introduction on the rules, along with taking a closer look on how terrain works. So stay tuned and drop by soon.