I’ve been having kind of a boom year for gift marines for people. Not long ago I shared a look at a squad of Salamanders done for a local 40K friend, and I also wanted to show off a couple more that I did in the last while. I made a small army of gravis armour Black Dragons for Xenonmage’s brother that I featured ages ago, and since there’s a shiny new Apothecary in gravis armour, well, I had to make sure the squads were ready to roll. Likewise, I did an army of Black Templars for my dad ages ago that I haven’t contributed to in a while, so he’s getting a Chaplain. The Phobos Lieutenant? Well, that one’s for me.

The tricky part was working on a trio of characters that distinctly weren’t a batch paint, or at least not a coherent batch paint. These all got done at the same time but I paint a completely different black for the Black Dragons than I do for the Black Templars, so it was weird but also a fun challenge to keep straight in my head the steps that I was on and which colors needed to get applied next as I rotated between the three of these. The builds were relatively straightforward, with the exception of the Chaplain which I got second hand, which is why he’s wearing an Ultramarine pauldron. (It still looks very cool, even if it’s far from canon, and my dad won’t know the difference.)

I don’t know when this became my “Space Marine” year, but so far I can only complain so much. They’ve been kind of a blind spot for me for a long while in the Warhammer 40K hobby and I feel like this gives me a good new baseline to compare things like Eldar, Death Guard, and my other mainstays to. I’m happy with how these have turned out, and if I get my way there’s also gonna be lots more Blood Raven stuff to come down the road. I know what I like, and I like Dawn of War.