Painted Spears of Mawdryn Space Marine Scouts! (WIP)

Finally, after some time, I have the first painted Mawdryn miniatures to share with you all. They are still work in progress, but by the time you read this blog post, most of the work should have been finished....

Setting the Scene

These are the converted Scouts of my custom Space Marine Chapter, the Spears of Mawdryn. Just as a recap, and for the uninitiated, they have nothing to do with Peter Davison or Doctor Who, but the name is a not-so-subtle homage. The Chapter is based on Arthurian/Romano-British and Celtic historical elements, with a few nods to Arthurian myth and legend thrown in the pot too. They're not glorious heroes, nor are they particularly renowned throughout the Imperium; they're pretty scruffy underdogs that perhaps certain Chapters might look down their noses at.

In true Arthurian/Celtic fashion, their Librarians and Chaplain-Apothecaries are two different Orders of “Druids” and like the Late and “post” Romans (although this is being debated) they use rather a lot of cavalry – translated to Bikes for 40k purposes – and naturally the Honour Guard gather for councils of war at a very circular table... Second in tactical and social importance within the Chapter are the Scouts.

As mentioned in my previous post, the Scouts of the Spears of Mawdryn come in two forms

Accepted GW-issue fluff suggests that fully fledged Marines can, and occasionally do, deploy in Scout armour and act as Scouts (in addition to the veteran Sergeants and other training personnel presumably with them). It makes sense to me. So, as such I have the traditional newly recruited Neophytes acting as Scouts, these are known as Saethwyr, and take a role on the field closer to skirmishers/light infantry rather than elite infiltrators. This more elite, sneaky, stealthy role is taken by the Helwyr (just as I'm sure the British Army wouldn't send our chaps in Basic out to do the job of the SAS). The Helwyr are the scruffy lot often on extended deployment and are meant to look like they're living off the land – see my last post for more. The Helwyr are the Marines that have chosen to continue within the ranks of the Scouts, and are often those from the tribes of the mountains and foothills – mirroring history again.

Chap at bottom is a key inspiration*

The Scout Snipers of the Helwyr are best known beyond the Chapter for the “Mawdryn Shot” (this is my mirroring of the Welsh use of the longbow from the early iteration of the Chapter which was more medieval Welsh than early dark ages). The Mawdryn Shot is the tactic of the snipers which involves using their rifles at close range, with a home-brew modified round (much like the Germans of WWI) as an anti-tank rifle – using the power of the rifle to penetrate armour rather than flinging the bolt several miles.

The Miniatures 

Well, here they are at long last. They're still a little rough round the edges, but hopefully that can be tidied up, or masked with the weathering and damage that Mawdryn Marines were always going to have - these chaps in particular. I have been involved in this wonderful hobby of ours on and off for 17-odd years. In that time I have painted embarrassingly few miniatures (you could count them on a Tyranid's fingers). I have long had "Painting Doubts" myself, have never felt particularly good at it, but the more I do it the more comfortable I feel and the more I enjoy it. For more on this, look out for tomorrow's post for my paint-based philosophising (titled "Painting Doubts? Give it a go!").

Anyhoo, as I say they're a little rough. The webbing, small pack and boots of one of the chaps only has  Bubonic Brown basecoat. The green armour is Snot Green on Dark Angels green. I experimented a little with a hybrid of layering and wet blending on the shoulder pads, which hopefully I can get a done a little better on the next batch of three/four. I did feel the green was a little more luminous than intended, and will be trying Knarloc and Catachan, er, sorry Loren Forest and Castellan Green on the next batch. One reason I chose to paint the Scouts first was that they are meant to look rather ragtag in an already ragtag looking Chapter, so switching from old to new paints within the same unit wasn't going to pose too much of a problem (theoretically). Mostly on this models I have used entirely old paints, the only new one being Agrax Earthshade. This is the first time I have attempted to use a wash in about a decade and this time I went swimmingly well. The last attempt was the use of Brown Ink on something and it didn't go well and scarred me for 10 years :p Again more in tomorrow's post. The Earthshade did the job pretty well on the cloth sections, which had been based with Bleached Bone over Graveyard Earth, and was highlighted after the wash with more Bleached Bone, and Bleached Bone/Skull White mix.

For the webbing on the other chap, I may go with the new "XV88" just to get a bit of a mix and match with the ammou pouches and what not so they don't look identikit. With the blanket rolls on top (rolled up Camo Cloaks) these will be painted in the individuals tribal plaid. The knives will be a bronze/brass colour, although my Celtic influences are Iron Age, I thought the use of bronze weaponry throughout would make the look more "Not Medieval." The same with the bolt pistols, the metal sections (barrel, magazine etc) will be bronze but the outer case a more standard black. Gauntlets and belt will be Blood Red on Red Gore, and the hair colour will be anything but "orange" (I may be using Space Wolves components, but want to distance myselfs from them). The Scout that currently has basecoated webbing/pack may have some tribal tattooing painted onto his face if I feel up to it.

Even the clinically unobservant will have noticed that I undercoat in a dark brown (Scorched Earth). I first tried this many moons ago with some Copplestone Siberians and it seemed to work well with the slightly more organic look I prefer. The relatively few things I've attempted to paint since have used the same undercoat (including my Gladiators). Though now I'm not so sure whether it really makes a difference, or is something of a painting superstition. Any thoughts?

As mentioned previously, tune in for tomorrow's post in which I consider my thoughts and feelings about painting miniatures. Hopefully not as painful as it sounds..... That's all for now folks.

Useless Mawdryn Factoid #1

In the tongue of Mawdryn (er... Welsh, with bits of Breton and Cornish), the word Mawdryn itself should really be pronounced “maow-drin” rather than “morr-drin.” In Welsh, the "Y” in a word is usually “uh” ("a" in UK English "about") and pronounced “i” if it's in the final syllable. 

Despite that, I think “morr-drinn” actually sounds better and that is how the Chapter name shoud be pronounced.

* Image Credit: This is a British hill-tribe skirmisher taken from a plate by Angus McBride from Osprey's Arthur and the Anglo-Saxon Wars