Ultramarines Command Squad

Sorry for the lack of new posts for the last week or so: I've not had time to feed my batteries of keyboard monkeys and they were hammering out gibberish. Something about being and not being, I don't know.

Anyway, time for another Ultramarines showcase. May I present my Second Company Command Squad.
I built these guys to run with Sicarius, the infamous Second Company Capitan who I will post about at a later date. This accounts for the plasma guns and the added punch of the power fist on the Standard Bearer. It also accounts for the running poses as my Sicarius is heavily converted to a running pose. In fact. you may have seen him on the Interwebz before ...

Standard Bearer

Speaking of which, here he is. I really like how this guy turned out. Just don't ask me how me manages to fight with a giant fist, and giant banner, and a bolt pistol.

The banner itself is from Forge World's Sevrin Loth set. It's a very nice kit and a lot of parts are used in this squad (including this Standard Bearer's torso and left shoulder pad). I managed to scrape all the Red Scorpions iconography off the banner and it works extremely well as a generic Space Marine banner upon which you can simply paint your chapter's symbol (or, indeed, use decals).

The banner was really nice to paint as the detail is all sculpted  It's raised enough to make it easy to paint, but not so far to prevent it looking like fabric. Good job Forge World.

I actually decided against trying to paint any script onto the grey panels on this banner as I just can't get it to work right on those tiny narrow panels.

I did wonder how wise it was to upgrade a one wound model with both a company banner and a power fist. But then I thought "rule of cool" and went ahead with it anyway. By the way, I made sure that this guy had a laurel wreath on him so as to fit in with the background. Fluff for the fluff gods.

Obviously, it is a rule that no Space Marine army is complete without at least one model dramatically standing with one leg on top of something. It's in the rulebook, honest. It gives him a 4+ Invulnerable Save due to his Aura of Epic Posing.

Apothecary

Obviously, at some point this squad is going to get beaten up. So, this is where an Apothecary may come in useful (unless he get's killed in the first minute, which I have no doubt will happen to this guy).

White is a proper pain to paint, though helpfully I started with a grey undercoat. I went with the traditional all-white Apothecary scheme as I'm not a huge fan of the more modern GW scheme of Apothecaries keeping the white to a minimum. It makes the model fit in with the army, so I can see the reasoning. But I just prefer the uniqueness of the all-white scheme.

I attempted to make the glass vials look like clear glass containing clear liquid. I'm not sure I quite pulled it off, but it's not too bad. For my taste, I prefer it to the brightly coloured liquids you often see but each to their own!

Company Champion

You may recall that I used the body of GW's Kor'sarro Khan model as the basis of my Wolf Priest conversion. Well, this is where the sword and arms ended up!

I had the idea of using those arms for a model posed like this for a little while and it ended up working quite nicely. It's not really a position that Space Marine arms fit well into, but whoever scuplted these found a way to make it work.

Once again I used my shimmery power weapon painting method on this guy. Note to self: do a tutorial on this.

I like the concept of a champion in an army, and the ability to take and issue challenges in sixth edition lends these models a lot more character in-game.

Plasma Gunners

Plasma guns are always good. And they kind of fit well with Sicarius's Plasma Pistol. This model is only slightly converted to make him look like he is shooting on the run, as, you know, he's just so awesome he doesn't need to stop to aim.

I actually really really like the fluted, riveted, shoulder pad trims that some of the Forge World armour marks have. I much prefer them to the plain old bands of colour on normal pads.

And here is a rather unique and unusual shoulder pad from the Sevrin Loth set. I'd love to see more of this sort of ridged style, and the iron halo logo adds a nice touch of character.

On to the last member of the unit.

There's something rather pleasing about Forge World's Mark III armour. It makes the model look so big and imposing.

I used another great shoulder pad from the Sevrin Loth set on this model and matched it with one of the Champion-style ones from the standard Command Squad kit (which comes with the Sevrin Loth set, which is nice).

So there we have it. Let me know your thoughts in the comments!