Sunday, May 9, 2010

Starting the 10th Company

Hi all,

I'm starting to make a bit of progress on the Aurora Chapter Scout company. I now have three finished scouts.



In the center is the squad Sergeant, flanked by two grunts. The one with the red armor & servo-skull is an initiate slated to join the ranks of the chapter's Techmarines. Should he survive his training he will them be sent to Mars for further training rather then joining a reserve company as would be normal. This color scheme is much easier than the yellow/black of the Marines Malevolent. The armor is snot green and gretchin green for the cloth.

I've also been working on my captain and command squad. This requires a bit more thought than your standard company command I think. Command squads are normally veterans from the company, and in many cases, senior sergeants that are also veterans from the venerated 1st. company. However, ALL marines are veterans of the 10th company!

Hmmm...

I figure that the 10th company's command squad should be made of grizzled veterans, survivors who've outlived their own squads, or have suffered grievous injury, yet still survived (after all, not everyone gets to be a dreadnought). I had a bunch of Iron Hands bionic arms bits, so after stripping & disassembling several old marines, i rebuilt them using these bits.



All but the Captain (guy with green base coat) and the marine with the flamer have bionics. From what I understand (wink, wink) the flamer marine was the lone survivor of a fluke drop pod 'incident'. The old devastator marine with the auspex will be my Apothecary. No company Champion or standard. I would imagine that these guys don't see the battlefield too often as the 10th company rarely deploys enmass, so their kindova basic outfit. Its real tempting to give these guys with all the bells & whistles, however that also makes them real expensive, and there are no models to receive the dubious honor of being the first to die to save the more valuable models. Aside from the Apothecary and flamer, the squad also has a single marine with a power sword, the rest just bolters.

The captain is also without bionics, I'm not sure on just how 10th company captains are chosen, so I've no idea how he's managed to keep all of his arms intact. This model was intended to be my captain for the MM scout company, hence the large power sarrissa attached to his forearm. The MM were said to use them on their bolters in the Salamander novel, and there was no other good option for giving him a power weapon that I could see. Given the MM's rumored conflicts with the Black Dragons, he apparently saw the value of having your weapon physically attached to one's arm, and had his modified accordingly. It looked cool, so i left it as is. His bolter is taken from an old metal captain kit. It varies from the standard pattern bolter, modified to better handle the Hellfire ammunition I would imagine. Call it the Uriel Ventris syndrome, but I rather like the sparsely armed SM commanders. These guys are fluffed to be virtual gods of war, well, time to prove it. Bolter withe Hellfire ammo, power weapon with digital weapon, frag & Krak. That's it. A bolter and CCW was all that was my original intention, but there was a gap on the back side of the sarrissa, so I trimmed down an auspex to give it a few buttons, so its a power weapon. Recently I've taken a liking to hellfire ammo & digital weapons, so he got those too. His backpack (not shown) has a trophy spike with a skull and Necron warrior head speared on it too. The backpack was from my Imperial Paladins captain, so this guy is kind of an amalgamation of previously ill-fated SM side projects.

Hopefully he will prevail, where his predecessors have failed.

4 comments:

Graeme said...

With regards to the 10th Company Captain, bear in mind that one of the "Masters of the Chapter" from the box released for Apocalypse is a 10th Company chap, the "Master of Recruits".

Might be worth looking at the model to see if it has any clues, what with it being designed as Ultramarines, and therefore the epitome of the Codex Astartes.

Da Masta Cheef said...

Yeah I was looking at that model online the other day. I dunno, its very gaudily attired, I think it would stand out a bit too much from the rest of the squad. I'll have to look to see if there's any fluff out there into 10th co. captain's backgrounds or not.

Papa JJ said...

Using bionics on your command squad is a cool way to distinguish the old timers and I really like your idea of them being the experienced survivors of squads almost wiped out. Maybe your captain is a rising star in his chapter and was promoted to captain the 10th after quickly progressing his way through the other companies, hence his lack of any old or serious wounds. I'm also a big fan of sticking with the simpler wargear options for marine commanders as I like to think of the ccw or power weapon as more a badge of office. All together it looks like a great start for the 10th!

Da Masta Cheef said...

QUOTE: 'Maybe your captain is a rising star in his chapter and was promoted to captain the 10th after quickly progressing his way through the other companies, hence his lack of any old or serious wounds.'


OOH! I rather like that idea!

Excellent, thank you!