Assault Squad Arms!

With the release of 10th edition of 40k the Vanguard Veterans got some less than favorable changes.  But, luckily I anticipated the need to be very flexible with their loadouts and magnetized their arms.  While unfortunately the magnets are a bit weak and make them a bit fiddley - I'm able to change them into a basic assault squad with ye ol' humble bolt pistol and chainsword.  The assault squad rules might be someone more favorable, but also makes the squad a bit cheaper which is another benefit now that it is much harder to adjust army lists with how they are doing points right now.

Anyway - its just fun to have chainswords and I was able to create these fairly quickly for the upcoming narrative campaign at the 2023 US Open.

The greenstuff let me down a bit - I was going to hide it with gore, but maybe I'll add that later.  I'm really happy with how the hazard stripes turned out.  This was also the first time really trying to do the chipping effect.  Both the hazard stripes and the iconography were achieved using some stencils that I bought online.  The stencils are intended for use with airbrushes, but that's not something I have access to, so I tried a technique I saw that involved using a sponge to blot on the paint.  They had used the technique on flatter vehicle surfaces with stencils that were much bigger.  Here the technique didn't work so well on the curved shoulder pauldrons - and at first they were a complete disaster.  So much so that I only used the stencil for the Ultramarines icon, I ended up just free-handing the assault squad arrows.

In the end I was able to salvage it since I was intending on them looking chipped, and so after some effort touching them up in spots they turned out passible.  The stencil did much better on the flat sword surface, but also instead of blotting with a sponge, I used a brush and just tried to stay in the lines as close as possible without touching them.  I'll give it another go next project, this was sort of a test run for the Rhinos.  That project is still WIP and I'm making progress which I'll update on soon.