I've finally built both the five MKII marines and the Caestus Air Ram. Having a one month old baby has definitely changed my modelling habits (as well as the frequency of my blogging) but it is a happy change. I have opted to build the MKII marines as Sternguard, and plan to make them part of a Pre-Heresy Ultramarines army. To that end, I plan to get some more brass etched Ultramarines sheets so that i can add Ultramarine symbols to the armor of the other marines. They also all have the Umbra Ferrox pattern bolters. I intend to add some city ruins and brownish rocks to the base to give a city fight, and also a Battle for Calth kind of feel - so some Word Bearer bitz might end up on their as well. One aspect of this army I am still puzzling over is how to denote the company and chapter for them, as I plan to do a company in the higher numbers of the Ultramarines legion, I'm thinking either the 687th company or 918th. I plan to have the left shoulder pad have the company number in large roman numerals, with the squad number smaller in the bottom left corner and the squad designation in the bottom right corner. But the shoulder pad rims are a quandary. Most of the Ultramarines in the HH artwork books have gold rims, or no rims at all, so I could make the rims blue or gold and feel they are somewhat accurate. It is definitely a minute detail I want to get as right as possible.
The second item for display is my built Casetus Air Ram. It is pictured on a flying base for one of my Valkyries, so the base will not necessarily represent the finished product. Especially since I am leaning toward brown, rocky bases for my Ultramarines currently. This was an easy build for a Forgeworld model, with some nice tab and slot pieces to make the joins easy to achieve. One thing that is key for this model, like every other forgeworld kit, is making sure the edges of all the pieces are properly sanded. There are definitely noticeable parts where there are gaps showing that I may need to fix.
Another quandary for this model is whether to keep the doors open or not, especially since in my hast to build the kit, I left out the interior door pieces. The lightning for the interior will be poor due to the length and narrowness of the booms. Making it even worse than looking inside a land raider. Those tow factors alone will probably have me end up gluing the ramps shut.
Those MkII marines look so cool, I'm thinking about purchasing a set just to enjoy painting them. It's good to hear that the Caestus Air Ram was fairly easy to assemble, I've had a lot of problems with some of their older models and have been staying away from their larger kits because of that. I hope you're able to sort out those questions about the shoulder pad colors and whether to model the ramps open or shut... and of course best wishes to you and the new baby, congratulations!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback. I've found that most of the forgeworld big models are fairly well molded, same goes for their newer kits. The bigger parts are just easier to cast I think.
ReplyDeleteThe guys at the Bolter & Chainsword have suggested I use a chapter numeral, and then the shoulder colors of 1 through 10 depending on the company. While that may simplify things, Im not completely sold yet. And the more I think about it, the more likely I'll be glueing those doors shut. Especially since I already built the hole model. Seems a shame, but the lighting is so poor I don't think it would matter much.