Indomitus: Painting the Box

Here at Goonhammer we were lucky enough to receive some Indomitus sets for our review team to pore over. With such a packed box we’re obviously still working on getting it all painted, but here’s where we’re at so far.

The Space Marines

Liam

There’s fewer Marines than Necrons in here, but there’s still 24 models including 5 characters, the character-like Bladeguard and the gigantic bikes. That is a lot of painting to do and if we wanted to get photo-ready models done in any reasonable time, it was going to take some work. Jack and I played this smart, making an early plan for what to prioritise painting between us so that we’d cover off having at least one model painted from each unit as quickly as possible. I took the Chaplain, the Bladeguard Ancient, the Bladeguard themselves, the Judiciar, and the bikes. We kind of agreed to mutually split the Intercessors since they’re the simplest models in the box and the basic Troops unit, so we might as well get them in a variety of schemes straight away.

In the end I didn’t quite stick to plan. I assembled the whole set before painting, and then since I was batching out the base colours on an Intercessor and a Bladeguard Veteran, I figured I might as well throw an Eradicator in the batch – they’re not super challenging as individual models and painting three things in the same scheme isn’t a lot more work than two.

Having rattled off these three models in fairly short order, I then moved on to finishing out my part of the plan, and painted the new Chaplain. I love Chaplains – they’re my favourite aesthetic in the Space Marine range and I already own a bunch, and the Indomitus guy is a return to the more traditional look that the previous Primaris Chaplain departed from. He was my clear first choice to paint, once I’d painted the first few basic guys. I finished him this weekend and I’m pretty proud of the paint job, though as ever once I’ve taken the pictures I can see a few things I wish I’d done better, particularly on the purity seals where some of the writing is a little rough.

Naturally I’d had this guy finished for about five minutes before Games Workshop announced another new Primaris Chaplain, this time the awesome looking new biker. It never rains but it pours, at least when it comes to Space Marine releases.

I have both Crimson Fists and Blood Angels, but the Crimson Fists are by far the bigger army of the two and anything Space Marine-related ends up getting painted for them first – plus I knew Jack was going to paint at least some of the set for his Blood Angels, so not only would mine not be adding anything new, they also would be totally outclassed. As such, most of the actual painting here was just mirroring techniques I’ve used a hundred times in the past – you can see my Crimson Fists army as at the end of 8th edition here and I talk about the painting method in our HTPE article here. The Intercessor is pretty much just an Intercessor and the Eradicator is similar.

The Bladeguard Veterans are more like character models than line infantry, and got a little more work in light of that – the freehanded stripe and skull transfer on the turning shield, the glow on the sword, etc. I have also just noticed I didn’t ever do the writing on the purity seals, which I guess I will fix when I finish the rest of the unit. Pro tip here, by the way – the shield has the easiest join in the world and you should definitely sub-assemble it and attach later, and not be a scrub like me who built the model completely.

The most recent thing I’ve finished is the Bladeguard Ancient, the second of my share of the characters. I was fairly cold on this guy until I realised his robes cover like 80% of his armour, and the thing I dislike most about painting Space Marines is edge highlighting, so he jumped to the top of the queue! Once I’d started on him I really enjoyed this guy – he has a ton of different things going on and fun details, and the skeleton banner is Extremely 40k.

That’s all from me right now – I have the other two Bladeguard Veterans basecoated and I’ll finish that unit out next. After those I’ll do a bike and the Judiciar and then I’ve more or less met my original commitment and it’s time to go hog wild painting everything else. I’m really enjoying the set – apart from the bikes, where the faring on the front takes a little thought, it’s super easy to build and looks great, and all the characters are bursting with detail and interesting touches. I’m not kidding when I say the new Chaplain may be my favourite ever iteration of the concept. I’m looking forward to working on all the rest!

Jack

As Liam mentioned, we broke up our initial Marine painting to get as many things done right away – though we’re both so excited about all these models that we’re going to end up painting everything in short order. While Liam was working on the spiritual leadership of the chapter, I started in on the new Captain and Lieutenant sculpts.

Imperial Fist Captain and Lieutenant from Indomitus
Imperial Fist Captain and Lieutenant from Indomitus. Credit: Jack Hunter

These two are, without a doubt, my absolute favorite plastic Marines GW has ever done. They both took ages to paint with how much detail is on them, but they subassembled easily (I kept the storm shields, backpacks, and heads off for painting). Strangely, this is the second footless skeleton in this box – what do the Primaris have against feet?

Beyond the two characters, I was working on getting paint on the Eradicators and two chapters of Assault Intercessors. Both these kits were great – assembly on the Eradicators was a little awkward at first, but I was easily able to separate the guns, backpacks, and helmets for painting, and they look terrific finished.

Imperial Fists Primaris Eradicators
Imperial Fists Primaris Eradicators. Credit: Jack Hunter

The Assault Intercessors are perfect. Everything fits together great, and all the arms are separate from bodies. With a little clipping of pegs the arms look to be completely swappable. If you didn’t know these were pushfit kits, you’d have absolutely no idea.

Blood Angels Assault Intercessor
Blood Angels Assault Intercessor. Credit: Jack Hunter

I painted up both Blood Angels and Imperial Fists Assault Intercessors. I wanted to see how the new models would look in both schemes, and I know I’m going to end up with at least a full squad of them in each army, so may as well start now.

Imperial Fists Assault Intercessor
Imperial Fists Assault Intercessor. Credit: Jack Hunter

Raf

I’ve had a pile of Space Marine models in various states of assembly and priming since the launch of 8th Edition but never actually finished them out. I’ve been bouncing between Warhammer Underworlds, Age of Sigmar, Warcry—basically everything but painting Space Marines. Part of why I avoided painting them was not knowing how I wanted to paint them. I jumped from Chapter to Chapter never really landing on a scheme. Well…it seems as if the imminent launch of 9th Edition lit a fire somewhere in my brain. Over the last month or so a scheme based in the nature and history of my home country of Guatemala finally crystallized. I painted a test Intercessor right before Indomitus arrived, loved how it turned out, and have since been off to the races. I plan to make the story of my Chapter the subject of a future full article, but for now here are some WIP shots of the Quetzales Jades Bladeguard Veterans. The name is Spanish for “Jade Quetzales”.

 

Credit: Raf Cordero

 

Credit: Raf Cordero
Credit: Raf Cordero

Their bright green armor and red/white aquila are patterned after our National Bird, the Quetzal. The blue and white heraldry on the last picture evokes the Guatemalan Flag. They’re obviously still detached, but their shields are painted to look like jade which is an important stone to the Mayan community and common in the country in general. Most of us Guatemalans share Mayan ancestry so I will be weaving some touchpoints into my chapter scheme.

Jade Quetzals
Group Shot. Credit: Raf Cordero

These Bladeguard are packed with character and are some of my favorite in the entire box. Lots of little details to pick up on and paint but they’ve been a fun paint. Just need to base them!

The Necrons

Rob

There’s a lot of detail on the Necrons and I really love what they’ve done with the models; they’re much dirtier and worn down than the 5th edition/recent Necrons, and harken back to that “eldritch horror” aesthetic that Necrons had when they got their first Codex in third edition. I’ve always preferred that look, but the new models really combine that old feel with the newer “Tomb Kings in space” look that I think works well. 

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Scheme-wise, I wanted to do something that wasn’t just metal and green, and so opted to paint mine red/Novokh tomb world. One of my college roommates did his Necrons in a similar style and I’ve always liked the red and silver look. Where I deviated from his scheme is on the orange weapons and bone faces. I saw another scheme online using the bone face colors that worked well and the orange weapons were a bit of a compromise since I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do Novokh or Mephrit and this way I can get away with both since no one cares about Dynasty colors anyways.

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Next up is probably the Skorpekh Lord, then some of the Warriors. Frankly I’ll be happy to be done with the orange blades for a while; they’re a huge pain in the ass to paint.

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Wings

I’ve only had the time to finish one unit thus far, but they’re a cool one – the Skorpekh Destroyers and their Canoptek Plasmocyte. These models are absolutely awesome, and I’ll definitely be getting them out on the table with my Necron army as soon as possible.

Scheme-wise, my existing army is painted as Sautekh, so that’s what I’ve done here as well. My choice of Sautekh was, I’ll freely admit, because way back in early 2018 my main requirement for a paint scheme was “easy”. Since then I’ve got way more confident at painting so have tried to find ways to add detail back in on top of what can be a bland scheme if you let it. With that in mind, I’m very happy with how these have turned out!

Skorpekh Destroyers. Credit: Wings

Leaning in to doing a good job on any of the various glowing green materials, and making sure to mix up metallics so things aren’t just all silver is the best way to make stuff pop within the Sautekh scheme. Here, I’ve used multiple non-silver metals to detail different parts, and used lots of highlighting on the claws and weapons to make them more eye-catching. Finally, for the rocks on their base I ended up choosing to do them as blue marble rather than basic browns or greys, aiming to give a bit more of a contrast to the other colours.

Once I’ve got a few more of the models done I’ll be putting together an HTPE guide on them – the scheme I’ve ended up with is a nice balance of something that’s fast and looks good on the table, which I’m sure will be helpful to my fellow tournament players if Necrons become the next big thing!