A Little More Blue? My Ultramar PDF and Ultramarines Second Company

[Superdan21]

Hello,

So about 2 years ago going through my bits box and discovered I had so many spare Space Marine parts and old unpainted marines that i could probably knock together a decent sized space marine army. This was done mainly through hacking up my old 13th company army as they are now defunct and don't look right with all the new space wolf stuff around. Anyway long story short, with a small order through a bitz company mainly for a few legs and bolter arms I ended up with a company of marines. I decided that ultramarines would be super easy to paint on mass so set about going for the second company.

Now like many i never used to like ultramarines, but once i started i couldn't stop and ended up with a whole bunch of ultramarine characters and everything. Now that its 6th ed and my company is about 75% painted i thought I may do another army most likely as a detachment and after seeing the effectiveness of my friends guard in the new edition and StraightSilvers PDF i couldn't help but have a go myself.

This will likely be mainly an infantry based army as the plan is to have a couple of platoons sit back and provide covering fire for my marines but it wouldnt be guard without at least one leman russ at some point, annoyingly i used to have a platoon based guard army back in 4th edition but couldnt get along with them in that edition. So yeah hopefully this log will see me finish my ultramarines 2nd company and also build up my guardsmen, also hopefully this will be a bit more exciting than my sw plog which is on hold currently as is my empire

So first off Some pics of a couple of marine stuff (i appoligise now for lighting in pictures)

Of course being the 2nd company can't be without Sicarius



Here is a small selection of some of my painted tactical marines (3 of about 45 painted) Hopefully you can see my sergeants banner design as each squad has same but different numerals



now current WIP one of 2 Stormtalons i recently bought to strengthen up the army, these are my first use of a spray gun for speed



So thats that, now my company is basically an exact copy of the second company picture in the codex but with different weapon options, the only thing i do not own is rhinos.

Painted:
4 out of 6 tactical squads are finished
1 and a half of the devastator squads finished
both dreads are finished
land raider finished
command squad finished

I also have 10 terminators and 10 honour guard to get done as well as every ultramarine character except telion and chronus (dont like them much)

But onto the good stuff (hopefully)
I picked up the cadian command squad and got them built up and i also found an old model from my previous guard army, now neither models are finished yet but would really appreciate feedback so far as well as some advice, I'm not sure what to do for the squad marking for the command squad yet so any tips would be good, still playing around with some of the colours but yeah please let me know what you think

Regimental Standard Bearer Marcus Constantius




and Company Commander Aurelius Dio




I have named my characters, squads and sergeants so far and as you can guess bit of a Roman theme :P

Anyway any feedback will be hugely appreciated i hope you like and hopefully get some more pics up in the next few days

[Sqallum]

I love it, I am eager to see a whole painted Battle Company with an assortment of Guardsmen. I will be watching...

[Monsterzonk]

Looking good so far! I like the muted, dark(ish) way you've painted your Ultramarines, and the snow effect on the bases nicely supports that. Well done!
As for the PDF trooper, also looking really nice. Keep it up!

Cheers,
Monsterzonk

[Superdan21]

I love it, I am eager to see a whole painted Battle Company with an assortment of Guardsmen. I will be watching...

Cheers I'll try and take some pics of the space marines tomorrow so you can see what i have painted, should point out the quality varies as some models are very much recycled :P The guard should look good with any luck though as they will all be new and my painting is at a pretty good standard now.

Looking good so far! I like the muted, dark(ish) way you've painted your Ultramarines, and the snow effect on the bases nicely supports that. Well done!
As for the PDF trooper, also looking really nice. Keep it up!

Cheers,
Monsterzonk

Thanks, i need to touch up the snow on the bases its looks very grey now as a fair few had been sat in dust for a few months, I always thought the gw ultras seemed a tad to bright (i've done the same with my sw's) i think a darker tone looks a little less comic, glad you like the pdf guy hopefully more to follow, will probably base them the same to think snow should look good i hope.

So pretty much finished my Commander now, will finish off his base later and hopefully start on the rest of the command squad. I've also ordered a box of cadians which should hopefully arrive this week.



I'll replace with a better pic tomorrow if i can. Don't know if there are many guard players out there but got a question, what seems to be the best way to equip platoon squads special weapon wise? i was thinking plasmas but heard some people say flamers (will obviously load out on autocannons)

Thanks for the feedback so far, will hopefully get some more of the command squad done later might even try and finish them, as always commants and feedback always welcome

[StraightSilver]

Very cool, nice to see some more Macragge PDF, and very nice to see them looking very Codex Astartes too.

I especialy like the large Ultramar symbol around the halo on the banner, I never thought of that and would have been better that fiddling with brass etch...

Your Ultras are very nice too, I think we were seperated at birth as I also ended up with enough marines to do a full second company, we must be mad.....

As to your question regarding special weapon load out by far the best option is grenade launcher and autocannon.

Plasma guns have their merits as the AP2 is very useful, but they are best reserved for carapace vets or command squads as your average guardsman will die on a gets hot (only gets 5+ save).

I wish I had gone for grenade launchers in mine, as my plasma gunners in the infantry squads die about 1 a turn! I roll a lot of ones....

The way around that is using orders, you can make the plasma guns twin linked against MCs and Vehicles, allowing you to re-roll misses (and therfore 1s), but I would still take a grenade launcher.

Obviously melta guns are still awesome, although again I would equip vets with these.

Flamers are great, no BS required and they give good overwatch, but to use them you will need to get into assault range, which isn't always a good idea.

[Superdan21]

Thanks, as i said yours are my direct inspiration really i had been playing getting a guard army for a while and ultras colours are just perfect, i think i'm going to mix up plasma and flamers in my squads and might do a squad of vets with melta or something for objectives. Also going for a mix of las and auto cannons i think.

So anyway i finished building all the stuff i currently have so my almight guard army currently consists of 17 men, going to take a while for my guard to outnumber my marines company....

anyway i won some kasrkin on ebay, although i probably wont use stormtroopers i love the models always been a favourite of mine so had to get them (and i won them cheap) the command squad is nearly finished so ill get some pictures up in a few days hopefully, in the mean while i've started painting my first guardsmen squad and managed to get my sergeant finished so hope you like

I do feel his face has photo'd a bit funny on the one side





And to go with teh kasrkin models i managed to find a sergeant i had lying around from my old guard army so thought 'd post a wip picture



Hope you like comments and criticism always welcome hopefully more to come in the near future

[Memnon]

Very nice work! Guard look really good painted up in ultramarine colours, both you and StraightSilver have created something very cool!

How do you do your blue? I'd like to replicate it on a Librarian I'm doing.

Keep it up

Memnon

[Superdan21]

Very nice work! Guard look really good painted up in ultramarine colours, both you and StraightSilver have created something very cool!

How do you do your blue? I'd like to replicate it on a Librarian I'm doing.

Keep it up

Memnon

Really sorry to take so long to reply been somewhat busy the last month, my blue is done basing with regal blue, then the actual blue on top is Vallejo Dark Blue (pretty close to macragge blue but a touch lighter) then i highlight by just adding white though i'd like to try hoeth blue think its about the colour i use.

So yeah i did plan to keep this plog regularly updated but august flew by and i've been super busy and also with the DV set out i have put the imperial guard on hold, (though i may paint the odd one) I did paint a normal dude not that long ago and decided as my DV set didnt arrive yesterday i thought i'd start painting Marneus Calgar (who i stripped not that long back)

so pics yeah

This is what my standard dudes will look like



I do have the other 8 squad members not to far off finished so as i get bored of green i'll polish these guys off

And Calgar, realised pics look a bit rubbish as i havn't finished his face





As i said i will occasionally update this, still mean to take pictures of the rest of the army feel free to check out my DA plog will likely get a bit more love of the coming weeks than this one