Decoding the Cypher – Dark Angels Successor Chapter (sorta)
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Warhammer 40k – The commissions just keep rolling in. This time around my client picked up several of the Dark Vengeance boxes to build a marine army. He started out playing Tau and Tyranids however given that most of our group plays some variety of marines he decided that it would be good to have a small marine force to keep on even ground.
Couple that with the really cool fluff about Cypher that rumours say might be rearing his head again and you have motivation to put together a secret fallen themed marine list. Come January I'm guessing he's going to have a bunch more dudes to add when the Dark Angels Codex releases. (mmmm plasma goodness and tons of terminators).
He used the marine painter on Bolter and Chainsword to come up with a pretty cool two color scheme. The top half is black and the bottom is green. I really like when I client provides me good reference material for a job. It keeps us on the same page and means less back and forth regarding basic color choice. (of course I also love when I client says do what you want and loves whatever I come up with). However after some hemming and hawing he decided to stick with the traditional Dark Angels color scheme.
One of the things he mentioned before turning the models over to me is that he planned on using them as Dark Angels and as whatever marine codex he felt like playing at the time. To accomplish that he did some nifty conversions including building his own "Cypher" model which has enough bitz and do-dads to count as whatever piece of wargear he might want to equip in any game. I personally find this to be a better way of building a multipurpose model. I know some guys love their magnets, but for me they seem to be more trouble than they're worth.
Painting is pretty straightforward. I started with an Orchide base coat and did a Biel-tan green wash. This gave me the basic shading I was looking for on these models. From there I went in and painted the cloaks Denab Stone. The plasma coils and power weapons with Mordheim Blue and then a gun metal and brass color for the metallic parts. I quick wash of Nuln Oil shaded the metallic bits and a sepia wash gave me the shading for the cloaks.
Next step is to pick out the details and edge highlight the models. The client requested tabletop quality so I'm not going to go overboard with the highlighting. The first batch he provided included a tactical squad, librarian, chaplain and two commanders.
