Iannick's Red Templars Tactical Squad (250 points)

Rank & File month #1

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.

Credo of the Red Templars

Red Templars "Templiers Rouges" Chapter

Warcry : To the Emperor we give the glory!

Successors of Imperial Fists

Number : 1000

Primarch: Rogal Dorn

Chapter Master : Hugh Depayens

Homeworld : Fortuna III, Laanah sector

Fortress-Monastery : Basilica Honorius

Allegiance : Imperium of Man

Colours : Wine & Gold

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So for the first month of the challenge I went with a squad of tactical marines, i.e. the bread and butter of a Space Marine force. Which is not surprising, really, since I always start any painting project with the regular rank & files. 

What was a first, though, was painting space marines. Yes, you read that right, these are the first space marines I've ever painted in my life. As I mentionned in my previous post, while I did play some Rogue Trader in my youth I went with the Imperial Guards, and then went fantasy and never looked back. I wonder how many 40 something wargamers can make that claim? 

Anyways, it was fun. I never really noticed before how much of a marine is made up of one colour. So yeah, my red pots worked overtime on this! 

This squad is made-up entirely of metal marines, lovely old school sculpts with loads of personnality. There's a lot of small different details on the armour depending on the model, which I find adds to the realism and gives them a more realistic and campaign look than the current GW's marines.

They are a bit darker in real life but red is always such a bitch to photograph right

The gold details of the Red Templars are usually the aquila and the shoulder trims, i.e. two things missing from the Mark VI Corvus armour, and since I wanted the gold to be more than just tiny details I decided to give my marines a golden pauldron, and I'm happy with the results. As you see, the sargents and my other leaders will sport a white pauldron with golden details. I was hesitating between white or gold. You know, those minor details than drive you insane and sometimes paralyze you in your process! Lots of thinking was done in the shower on that one! But a decision was made in the end (shout out to my wife Laurie who also participated in that decision making).

Talking about first time, I hadn't used transfers in almost 20 years, dating back to shields on an ancient greek army in my college years! These are actually transfers for historical miniatures from Magister Militum, and they fit nicely. A nice bonus is that they sell them for 28mm scales down to 6mm, so I get a nice variety of size.

Stress was high on that one, as I hadn't made any tests prior (very reckless of me) and, well, this was the last step of the process with very little ways of fixing mistakes at this stage. Even more stressful I was using those MicroSol/Set transfer products, for which I had heard good reviews but had never tried for myself! In the end, all went very well and by the 3rd or 4th marines I was in a groove and it went really smoothly. I'm happy with the finished product and I completely recommend those two products.

The lovely bases are from Dragonforge. Great product but be advised we are talking about a 2 months turnaround. So plan in advance! I decided to go the opposite route of what I often see, and went with hex for my normal marines, and rounds for my leader. I just wanted to use as many hex as possible really. I find the muted grey of the stones contrasts well with the colourful marines.

A close-up of some of my favourites from the squad

So, the technical stuff :

Red Templars tactical squad : 250 pts

Next month? Well it's a short one. Nevetheless, my plan is to terminate the shit out of it.