Warhammer 40,000 – Imperial Fists Call to Arms Pt 6

As the remaining time got less and less, I even brought the miniatures with me on my family trip and finished up the primer and added first colours. I was painting at the kitchen table after the kids went to bed.

As mentioned before, I primed the miniatures white and gave them a coat of Titan Hobby Imperial Yellow. Those areas that I didn't fully cover, were touched up with Citadel Yriel Yellow. Weapons and the soft spots between the armour panels were painted in Army Painter Matt Black. Everything that would be red, received a AP Pure Red first coat, and everything that would be green a first coat of Citadel Deathworld Forest.

The bases were painted with IONIC Goblin Green.

Space Marine Scouts

Not everyone in this army would wear a power armour. I planned to use a squad of Space Marine Scouts, as they were cheaper and gave me more flexibility in list building (Unless you go for combat squads, a unit of Space Marines covers 10 miniatures and costs around 300 points excl. gear).

I'll go into detail on the miniatures on an article of their own, and went for the updated sculpts of the 2nd edition, and not the Rogue Trader ones with puffed sleeves. A box set of five models with close combat weapons was released in 2nd edition and later with 3rd edition more sculpts were added, covering additional weapon options from the unit entry.

I assembled a colour card for orientation, from the box packaging (which covered a Blood Angel, Space Wolves and Dark Angel Scout as well on the sides and back) and some not era-accurate painted models from the Citadel Catalogue (but it was providing angled views), along with those from the Imperial Fists by MiniScape and from an eBay Lot.

I actually had two major issues with the Scouts. First of all was shifting the colours in a way, that would work for the Imperial Fists, while keeping the contrast and look of the 2nd edition without going to grim dark. And identifying some of the bits on the miniatures as the details on the sides weren't that great and I had some casting issues / damaged parts (one scout had a flat nose and the one looking to the side, had a slight mould slip on the head, giving him a squished face). Sometimes you can do something about that, like painting it like battle damage, in other cases you need to get out your green stuff and take care of it. In case of squished faces, there is little that you can do, beside a replacement.

Be seen or not be seen

Picking the proper camouflage for the miniatures was quite tricky. I am all for the lore and looked up, if I found something fitting or even lore accurate in the old books. There is even a large poster of Space Marines in camouflage, but it covers Badab War. You could build a bridge with one of the successor chapters, the Executioners, and use theirs. But those did not really speak to me.

Another source for inspiration would be the overview of camouflaged Rhinos, but once again nothing really fitting for the Imperial Fists.

So I moved on to the next best thing and especially focused on 2nd edition - the Imperial Guard. They have a lot of different camouflage schemes in their codex for various battle zones. But I needed a base colour to start from, and was thinking what would work well with the Yellow of the Imperial Fists but still would be plausible as camouflage. With a lot of the terrain in a blue-ish gray, I remembered my Knight Household, who used the old Space Wolves colour combination and I swapped that for the camouflage cloaks.

I did a quick test to see, if it would work, provide contrast and be a fit. And it did!

Now I just needed a pattern to go on top. Team Würfelkrieg used the british variant of the DPM (Disruptive Pattern Material) for their Blood Angels, which looks great against the red, but I didn't really see that in a blue-ish tone. And while searching the web for camouflaged Imperial Fists I came across the DBDU (chocolate chip) camouflage by Yota_Mota on reddit, and thought that would be a great base to adapt to the colour palette.

The camo cloaks were painted in Citadel Kantor Blue with a top coat of AP Wolf Grey, the "Stripes" done in P3 Battlefield Green with Citadel Deathworld Forest dots, who got a highlight in Citadel Averland Sunset. I then added a small rim to the dots in AP Matt Black.

Getting them battle ready

From there I could continue painting the Scouts.

• Bases - IONIC Goblin Green
• Skin - Tanned Flesh with Barbarian Flesh
• Hard Armour - Yriel Yellow
• Soft Armour - Vallejo Stonewall Grey 72049
• Weapons, Boots - AP Matt Black
• Metal Parts - AP Boltgun and True Copper
• Bags, Leather, Gloves etc. - Vallejo Bestial Brown
• Lenses, Gems, Laurels - Death World  Forest
• Cables with Citadel Kantor Blue or Death World  Forest

But that was only flat colours, I needed more depths, and I went for three different washes for the different base tones / areas.

• Wash mostly Casandora Yellow, often two coats
• Metal / Dark Parts with Nuln Oil
• Soft parts, Faces with Reikland Shade

They still need some clean up, but they are battle ready. I honestly didn't really fancy painting the Scouts so much. Maybe that will change once I added the further highlights. But they had partially tricky details that weren't casted that well, so it was difficult to distinguish them and add proper highlights/separations between those parts.

But I guess, if I spend the time and add the Citadel Dawnstone highlight on the black as well as add more highlights to the faces, I will be happy. Besides, there are still a few scout poses to cover.