Ben's Blood Drinkers Space Marines - Rank and File Month 3

This month sees my Blood Drinkers 5th Company receive reinforcement from the 1st Company - so not so much rank and file as highly elite, given that 11 models cost a whopping 849 points!

Whole intact squads are somewhat expensive, so they are pieced and patched together from various damaged and incomplete lots, including the plastic Terminator Squad which I think came out with a second edition of Space Hulk - I'm not a massive fan of the whole models, but they provided some useful parts to combine to produce whole suits.

First, squad Galin, the second Terminator Squad of the 1st Company who are close-combat specialists.  The sergeant is based on a Deathwing Sergeant's body, with RT arms donated by my friend.  I bent the Storm Shield arm to cover his front, partly to pose it more naturally, but mainly to cover the detail that had been roughly hacked off the model in a former life.  Two of the Lightning Claws use the plastic Terminator bodies to allow for a little twisting at the waist.  One set of Lightning Claws was liberated of its shoulder pads in a former life, so I mounted them on plastic arms giving them a slightly different pose to the rest of the squad.  Whole metal banner poles seem to be particularly hard to come by so this plastic terminator one was mounted with greenstuff and topped off with a later component from my bits box - unfortunate, but I couldn't justify the expense of an era-appropriate icon.  And lastly, the Heavy Flamer model once was a Wolf Guard, but he seems to fit in OK.

I considered the classic hazard stripes for the power fists but in the end I  felt there was enough contrasting colour with the helmets and skulls all over the place.  (And also I chickened out when I was quite happy with the base colours I'd laid down and didn't want to paint over it with something that might come out worse...)

Second, Squad Calibur, the fifth Terminator Squad, laying down some heavy supporting fire before charging in to chop things up with their chainfists.  I seem to remember the Assault Cannon being the heavy weapon of choice in 2nd Ed, but the Emperor provided me with a Cyclone Launcher - who was I to argue, and the silhouette is pretty cool.  Plastic Terminators again came in handy to replace the Sergeant's missing Power Sword and banner pole (fortunately the banner itself hides the socket that I 'sculpted' from greenstuff).

They are led by Chaplain Grimaldox who is there to provide some spiritual reinforcement and keep these valued veterans firmly away from the path of the Black Rage.  He was a late addition to the force when I decided it needed a character in Terminator Armour to lead it; I didn't think he needed any converting so he is exactly as he was straight out of the paint stripper.  I've slightly modified the half-and-half colour scheme I've been using for my specialists to take into account that Terminators carry the chapter badge on their right shoulder pad, so I made his right half black (the specialist colour for Chaplains) apart from the red shoulder pad, and vice versa - I'm pleased with the effect:

All in all time-consuming to paint but an intimidating presence on the battlefield.  They also complete and surpass my first objective which was to put together a force roughly equivalent to that in the first ever 2nd Ed battle report (Tacticals, Devastators, Terminators, Rhino and Dreadnought).  Next month I plan to go back to the 5th Company (or maybe even draft in some reserves from the 8th Company) for some much-needed mobility and paint some Assault Marines!