Beakies Redux... In which I bring the readers up to date on the progress made on "The Beaky Project"

An early Space Marine from the Rogue Trader era.

Faithful readers of the blog will be aware that I have been working on getting some of my oldest minis painted up (or repainted), so I can replicate the army that was lost in the last move.   That army was one I assembled in the late 80s, but didn't take with me when I was stationed in Greece, so it was nicely painted in a clean, grey and white pattern with a rising sun on their shoulder pads by my friend Mike M., who moved to  Japan with them, but returned them to me a number of years later. 

These are some 2nd ed "statue marines" that Mike painted up in the same scheme as the missing company.

Those minis made up my shockingly competitive "Everybody Walks" 3rd edition Space Marine army (51 or 52 minis spread out over 6 tac squads, a veteran squad, an HQ, and an "on foot" assault squad.  All models but the commander had just one wound, and the commander only had two).  I put the army list together after my divorce, when most of my things were going into storage, and I needed to be able to transport my army, books, templates, dice, and other gaming supplies in a backpack, so I could take them places on my motorcycle, or easily bring them with me when I went TDY with the GA Air Guard.  Nobody thought it would be very competitive, lacking buffed characters, heavy support options, and vehicles, but I just wanted to play games, meet new friends, and enjoy the hobby - winning  was not the be-all, end-all.

The boxed set that made space marines the standard science fiction infantry for tabletop wargames.

I do not paint nearly as well as Mike does.   However, I experimented a bit with red and gold over black, and eventually came up with a down and dirty crimson and old gold over a heavy black wash color scheme for my marines way back in 1998, and painted up a single squad to test it (did I mention that I am a really slow painter?).  I never had to finish painting up an army in the red and gold, until the painted army was accidentally left behind during my last move (tragedy!).

Of course, there was a problem in that GW changed their entire paint line a couple of times since I painted my test squad, so I played around a bit with the new "contrast" paints, and made it work.

Here are the last few of my assembled (or re-assembled) plastic RTB-01 marines, along with a bunch of metal marines from the Rogue Trader era.  There are still about 30 more metal marines to finish up, and I have to decide whether or not to cut some more plastic beakies off of sprues to beef up the army - The Sun Dogs (according to my version of the backstory, the are the Sun Dogs Legion of the Adeptus Astartes - the expurgated 2nd legion).

I have several copies of the guy on the left with the long bayonet.  You'll see them mixed on with the older pictures from the project. This one is differentiated by the addition of an Ork shoulder pad.

I particularly like these sculpts, which have a lot of character when painted up.

More early metal marines.  Note the shuriken catapult - which was a valid SM option in RT days.

Melta gun on far left, and did you spot the autogun?

Love the guy with the chainsword bayonet.  And there's another copy of the autogun equipped marine. The three on the right are plastic.  Tiny kitbash in the center, as he has a later model bolter.

All five of these guys are plastic.  I ran out of beaky heads, so the one in the center has a bare head.

The flamer marine with the bare arm is a great sculpt to paint.

Not an action pose, but it has a lot of character.

The last things I do to my marines are adding backpacks - some won't have them, and some will have flight/jump packs - and painting the rims of the bases to indicate which squad each mini is in.   I will probably have to look at the current rules and create army lists before I get to that step.

I've started to acquire some classic rhinos to build appropriate transport for the army - since my RT era rhinos were also victims of the move.  Here is a work in progress, showing the way I like to builkd up frontal armor on the vehicles, using Ork Battlewagon wheel plates.

For those of you just joining the blog, I'm now going to include some pictures from previous blog entries about The Beaky Project.

Classic RT era dreadnought.

Techmarine, Standard Bearer, and Apothecary.

There's one marine in this squad who is from a later era - because that was only the second melta gunner sculpt available.

Classic tactical squad.

Another tactical squad.

Small tactical squad.

Assault squad - currently on foot.

Special weapons section - the grenade launchers are all kitbashed.

Heavy weapons section.

The commander (front) is actually a later model, but was one of the painting "test" models. 

Plastic scouts from the RT era.  The one at the front right is metal, and has a shuriken catapult.

A group shot of some of these minis.  As my friend Jim V. has said about his father's army painting style "While individually the models were painted to an ok standard, en-mass they looked fantastic as part of an army" - which is exactly what I am trying to do here.

A squad of "retro" marines - 3rd ed and more recent plastic SMs  assembled with beaky helmets.

 As always, I hope you find this blog post inspiring.   Please feel free to leave constructive comments, questions, or suggestions.