Astral Claws Project Part 2

Despite the longer than normal breaks between my postings I am still working on the Astral Claws. The latest addition to my army is a unit of assault terminators. I envisioned them striding alongside Lugft Huron wreaking face.

Eventually I would like to have all of them mounted in a Land Raider Crusader since that is the best means of taking assault terminators into combat. It would be a great fire magnet, albeit expensive one.

I had a lot of fun painting this unit up and it was a nice break from painting ordinary line marines. The blue and the gun metal layered easily over the black primer. The only challenging part is the gold bits. I still use an old pot of citadel Burnished Gold, which is reaching the end of it's life sadly. I have to start with Vallejo copper, the work my way up to Shining Gold, and finally to Burnished with some 50/50 Mithral Silver highlights. I use plenty of Nuln Oil wash over 90 percent of the model.

If I am able to keep my motivation towards this project going I hope to finish up my line marines and start building up some transports. If I capitulate it will be because I couldn't resist the lure of the Genestealer Cult!

Astral Claws project

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted any content, but rest assured I’ve been active with hobby projects. Having hit past 2500 points on my Horus Heresy Emperor’s Children I found that I really needed a break from painting purple marines. I decided to get back to work on one of my old projects that I wished I put more effort into, the Astral Claws. I’m sticking with marines, but a largely metallic paint scheme is easier to work with and a nice change of pace. I’ve always wanted to represent a marine chapter apart from the standard well-known first founding variety.

I’m very close to hitting 1000 points of completed marines. Here is a selection of my first batch, where I started with a tactical squad.

After the tac squad I hadn’t put any serious work into this army for about 3 years so you may be able to tell with subtle color differences as I’m moving away from using only Citadel paints. I really like Vallejo paints, expect the gun metal, which I plan to go back to Citadel Boltgun or whatever they call it these days.

I’m quite happy with my Captain. I used the limited edition metal marine from the 2005 Space Marine army box and Korhil’s Cloak from High Elves. I thought the lion theme worked well since that was the pre-Huron chapter icon.

I also am fond of contemptor dreds so why not include one.

Valthex is also another HQ addition. Eventually I would like to run a 2^nd techmarine and have more vehicles to create some synergy.

I am mostly finished with my command squad. I did a lot of freehand work on my banner since the Astral Claws waterslide transfer was too big to fit. I look for shortcuts when I can, but taking the time to do some freehand work always makes the army look extra snazzy.

There will be more to come for sure on this project. If you haven’t read the Forge World Badab War books I highly recommend you check them out. They are chock full with great info on this period of 40K. I would very much like to see more of this support when the Horus Heresy has run it’s course.