From JamieM - Horus Heresy Salamander Space Marines (150 Points)

Well, here they are...... Finally. These chaps turned into my own version of the Forth bridge, I just couldn't seem to finish the painting. I even turned to the Royal Marines in my last post in desperation, only to find they took a while too!

Taking a cue from Greg B, a little background on them in the 30k universe for those of you more interested in proper history who may not be aware of the 30k lore..... The Emperor created 20 legions to enforce his will across the universe and each one had its own peculiarities and idiosyncrasies.  The legion represented here is the Salamanders, who hailed from a volcanic world where only the hardiest survive and so they venerate heat, the application of said heat to ones enemies and blacksmithing, probably because that also uses heat.

They take the head of the salamander as their legion's emblem and also like painted flames (see above re: heat). In order to appease both sides of the decal/free hand schism within our community I have used decals for the salamander emblem on one shoulder and painted the flames freehand on the other.

The salamanders are famous for being sent to win the difficult, drawn out and glory-less conflicts without complaint, so I went for a muddy base, with plenty splashed on their legs as that description put me in mind of the trenches of WWI. I added Tajima tufts after seeing them recommended on a couple of posts and I couldn't be happier - I'll never go back to using anything else!

I seem to have accidentally picked virtually the same colour scheme as Greg B, but with a different shade of green, more suited to salamanders.  My thinking was leaving the faceplate bare metal added visual interest and also showed their veneration of the art of blacksmithing by highlighting the beauty of the wrought metal. Brass and black are more favourite colours of the salamanders, so that was sprinkled around liberally. I went with orange eyes to try to imitate the glow of a furnace, admittedly somewhat amateurishly on some.

The armour marks are mark 3 (the knightly looking one) and mark 4 and the more observant of you will have noted that there are also two versions of bolt gun. I just had to get a few of the type that mimics the ones that were in the original space marine plastic box from the 80's which I owned, RTB01, so I did. Forge world sure do know their customers at times.....

The salamanders remained loyal to the Emperor and were rewarded by being decimated at the Istvaan V drop site massacre by the newly turned traitor legions, with only pockets of them surviving to aid in the resistance to Horus for the rest of the Horus Heresy.

Thirty of the little blighters with bolters gives me the bulk of my infantry, although I did forget to do any sergeants, so they will come later with support weapons hopefully.