Are We The Baddies?

The Badab War was a conflict between Space Marine chapters that began with the blockading of trade routes, led to the devastation of numerous planets and ended with the remnants of the Astral Claws chapter fleeing into the Maelstrom to become Chaos Renegades.

Perhaps this all could have been avoided if somebody had spotted the signs that the Astral Claws had gone rogue: withholding their gene-seed tithe; expanding their forces beyond prescribed numbers and, perhaps most of all, when they created a combined formation of Space Marines and planetary defence forces called...

...the Tyrant's Legion.

This is the first proper squad for my Astral Claws/Tyrant's Legion project and is a basic Tactical Squad featuring a Sergeant with a chain sword, a heavy bolter and a flamer.

Tactical Squads are one of the few Space Marine units that a Tyrant's Legion force (according to the out of date army list in the Imperial Armour: The Badab War book) can use without needing to include specific other units, and it conveniently allows me to use six of them in Kill Team should I choose to do so.

In terms of miniatures, I've mainly used the monopose plastic Marines from the Assault on Black Reach box, although due to having already uses some of them, I have supplemented the unit with a couple of Marines from the 40k Second Edition starter box, and replace a couple of missing bolters with some from my Horus Heresy Mkiv sprues.

The Marine armed with a flamer came with the set, but the heavy bolter is another Horus Heresy spare as the missile launcher from the original unit, currently serves with my Blood Angels.

On the subject of Blood Angels, the Sergeant is actually making use of a metal Blood Angel Death Company miniature, but his original heritage is not too obvious.

When it came to iconography I've used transfers from a company on Etsy called Impatient Tabletop. I can highly recommend to transfers which are ready to apply very quickly after popping in water and the only fiddly element is the fact that you need to trim the transfer very close to the image as it's not done for you.

An interesting comparison came with the old Tactical Squad marking transfers I've used on the couple of shoulder pads that didn't have them already moulded on. These didn't need trimming, but did take an age to soak and had a very washed out colour that benefited from being painted over.

All in all I'm pleased with this very simple unit, and combined with the Goliaths I painted a couple of weeks ago brings me to around a whopping 300 points in 10th Edition 40k.

There's much more to do, but I don't actually own very much else to paint right now, so I might need to track down a bargain or two before proceeding.

Acquired: -82

Painted: 293

Lead Mountain: 677