Power Armoured Paint: Special Characters

Welcome back to the Vault!  My hobby time has taken something of an unforeseen turn this week, and it's been rather enjoyable.

One of my fellow First Founding club members fancies a change of pace for Octoberfest and has rather bravely taken up an offer to use my Grey Knights.  I love the Sons of Titan (the Terminators are some of my favourite 40K models), but they struggle somewhat on the table top in the current rule set.

We've bounced some list ideas back and forth and toyed with the idea of using Castellan Crowe; he's a Special Character with some very cool fluff (he keeps a Daemon Blade pacified so it can't corrupt anyone nearby), and is fairly cheap for a Grey Knights HQ (which is good given Octoberfest is limited to 1250 points).

I have the Crowe model but it's languished unloved at the bottom of my figure case for quite some time.  However if the Castellan is going to hit the table top, he would need a lick of paint, so he's pushed in at the front of the paint queue. 

I haven't painted Grey Knights in quite some time but I really enjoyed painting Crowe. There's some nice variation with the armour, filigree, banner and so on so there's an opportunity to use different colours and techniques.  

I may revisit Crowe at some point in the future to add some more detail to the cloak, banner and so on, but I'm pleased with the result for the (not really) lot of time spent on him.  He's certainly good enough for the Octoberfest tabletop. 

Here are some alternative views:

 

Crowe is joined here by a couple of Strike Marines who also needed to be based:

As well as painting Grey Knights, I've also been thinking about my next painting & gaming project; revisiting the Carcharodons Astra.  I've recently posted about some lore, and I've been poring over the new Codex and Raven Guard supplement juggling some list building ideas.  

I'd like to take a Primaris-based 1000 point list to take to next year's Doubles event so I'll have my work cut out painting a mostly new roster.  The Carcharadons Astra have their own Special Character, namely Tyberos the Red Wake, who like Crowe has sat unpainted for far too long!  Feeling suitably enthused from completing Crowe, I've spent an enjoyable couple of hours painting Chapter Master Jazz Hands:

Give me a hug!

In an uncharacteristic sense of restraint I've avoided edge highlighting the crap out of everything, applying only a few to the major armour panels.  I may have been slightly less restrained with the application of Blood for the Blood God to Hunger and Slake (the chain fist stabby hands).

I'm really pleased with the tribal tattoos on his shoulder; these have turned out a lot better than previous efforts.

Here are the other angles:

 

The gold of the bonding studs is a great contrast against the black and grey of the Terminator armour.

The Tyberos model is made by Forge World, and is a resin piece. This is the first Forge World model I've painted and I have a few more in the painting queue; completing the Red Wake has given me some confidence for handling the larger pieces.

I will write a future post covering my Carcharodons Astra army ideas, but I'm set on running them as Raven Guard Successors.  There are downsides to running Successors (no Shrike, and a CP tax to access the Chapter Relics) but there are some tasty Successor options if I choose not to use the Inheritors of the Primarch rule with straight Raven Guard Chapter Tactics.  I'm looking forward to play testing the Space Sharks (and surprising opponents with a Not Iron Hands list); I'll blog the results.