SHOWCASE: Ultramarines legion praetor

Horus Heresy: Ultramarines legion praetor

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, aliens to whom gender definitions are meaningless, and anybody who doesn't fall into any of those categories... allow me to introduce you to my Ultramarines legion praetor. The astute among you may recognise this as the limited edition model available exclusively at Games Workshop events during 2016. I picked this one up at Warhammer Fest in May and have been working on him ever since with a view to entering him into the painting competition at the Forge World open day this coming weekend. I'll let you know how that goes in a future post. In the meantime, let's talk about the model.

Side view, showing the power hammer

I've only made one notable change to the model. I've swapped the head for one from the Ultramarines upgrade sprue. I really like the head that came with the model, but the sneer expression didn't fit well with the noble sons of Ultramar. I think the new head works pretty well, and required very little modification to fit. The only other slight modification was to add a winged skull from the Ultramarines brass etch sprue to one of the shoulder pads.

The obligatory rear view

The base is made of a couple of thin layers of cork, which I've torn up at the edges to represent jagged rock. This has been decorated with some very small chunks of slate and some sand. I've painted the rock with lots of veins, which I hope has some vague resemblance to marble. The foliage is from The Army Painter's Battlefields: Summer Undergrowth range. I've never used it before, but really love the effect.

Ready for war

I spent a long time wondering what colours to paint this model. I knew it needed to be one of the eighteen legions active during the Horus Heresy, but wasn't sure which one. I didn't want to paint him as an Imperial Fist as I've already got lots of those, including several praetors, plus I wanted something different. In the end, I narrowed it down to just a few legions with Emperor's Children as the favourite. The decision to paint him as an Ultramarine was quite last minute. I'm glad I did though. I've worked hard to make him look good and I'm really pleased with how he's turned out. I could easily imagine him leading an army into battle. Too bad he doesn't have one to lead. Ah, well! Perhaps that's something I can look at in future.

I hope you like him. I'll let you know how I get on at the open day.