Armies on Parade - Black Templar beginnings

For the second part of my build I'll discuss the army itself. The Black Templars!

**Scroll down for pics**

Being a rather fluff orientated gamer I took to the BT like a fish to a bicycle. I really didn't know too much about the chapter. Being a second founding there is not too much novel-based literature on them specifically. Of the little I have read they began to intrigue me as the only chapter still trying to behave like a true Legion; crusading through the galaxy to eradicate any threat to humanity!

To expand my knowledge (and make sure my initial choice was a sound one) I picked up a BT codex. I really am glad that GW puts so much thought into them. They are usually the true inspiration for me. I must confess now, that I have a few erroneous codices, just for the background fluff they contain. This galvanised my choice and got me thinking of a few choice details to add to the diorama, but more on that later.

Not being satisfied to just have your run of the mill marines I turned to a thread on Warseer by Guilliman (link here) on "classic" true-scaling his marines. Much nicer that some of the true-scaling I've seen (in my own opinion of course). He even gives us a nice little tutorial about half way down the first page. Sweet!

I had a test run with a random space marine I had lying around and ended up with what you see below. Sorry there are: a) no work in progress (WIP) shots, because I did it in a day before I had the inkling to start the blog; and b) no size comparison shots. I will get some up at some point. I just don't have any ordinary sized marines.

BT test mini

He's also painted in my test scheme. I assure you he looks better in real life. My camera just isn't very good. I tried to achieve a very dark grey for the edge highlight on the armour. I think any sort of grey is too light and you loose the true black, but it has got to have some depth to it otherwise it would be very boring to look at.

I also don't think the general positioning of the space marine legs fit with my intended idea of having a BT charging headlong towards his enemy. So I proceeded to hack up he next set of legs and reposition them (with much cursing and loud renditions of FETH!!!!) to appear as they did below.

Run Forrest. Run!

Much better. Now multiply by five and you have the beginnings of a very scary torso-less marathon team!

Do you think they noticed the highly powered, waist high laser trap?

Finally I ordered the BT sprue from GW today. Fingers crossed it'll be with me shortly and then I can start adding torsos to these guys. Don't panic though. I'll find something else to work on in the meantime. Perhaps I'll start the bunker. Perhaps not.

Oh, you'll get an update at some point! Till then.