writes:
As some of you know, I've been prepping for some 40K gaming. And when I say 40K, I'm not even sure which edition or even which rules I'll use, I just want to do some gaming in that universe. I'm feeling very free-form. 
I'm a slow painter in this genre – I finished my second squad recently – so I thought I'd speed things up by sending some allied Space Marines off to a painting service. Loyal sacrificial troops!
I'm picky about my figures, so I cleaned and assembled the troops before I sent them. And I know that the big painting services don't always have the right primer for plastic figures, so I primed them too.
I've never had any Space Marines before (I was an Ork player, back in the day), but I've always got a concept or two floating around in the back of my mind for a chapter of my own. If I was current on the game, and read all the novels, I'd probably want to do one of the official chapters. But I'm not, so I've had this idea for a legion called the Mysterions.
As for their 'look', I've had all kinds of ideas, but the only thing I know for certain is that their legion logo is a Question Mark. So my instructions for the painting service were:
Black with orange. Logo is ? (question mark). Have fun. Paint bases dark gray. Make banner for standardbearer.
"Black and orange?" you say. Well, I think I was deeply influenced by the then-upcoming Halloween season!
Note that I let the painters have their creative freedom on this one. If you know the painting service, then you have an idea of whether they can handle something like this, or if they do better with specific instructions.
So then I sent the figures off to our friends in Ukraine, Old Guard Painters.
And when the figures came back painted, I didn't have to do much. One needed repair (see below). I added steel disks on the bottom for storage purposes. I flocked the bases (not sure why, my Grey Knights don't have flock, maybe I think Space Marines fight on green grassy battlefields!). I added squad markings. And the painting service forgot about the banners, so I did those too.
My first Space Marines.
However, as I sometimes say, you've got to keep a sense of humor in your gaming. For instance, here is the basic trooper:
I love the look, but… look at the shoulder logo… where's the '?' I asked for? I guess I didn't explain myself properly.
So I went with Plan B. I'll still do the Mysterions someday, but this legion will be… the Deplorables.
Turn the figure around, and you can see the squad markings I added. Well, maybe not so clearly. Let's try that again…
The concept is that first squad has one claw mark, second squad has two claw marks. The technique is simple: draw a line with a silver marker, then shape the line with a black marker.
Notice anything odd about the sergeants?
Remember what I said about a sense of humor? When I unpacked these figures, one of the sergeants was beautifully wrapped and intact. But for some strange reason, the other sergeant wasn't properly wrapped, and the banner pole had snapped off. So I drilled a hole and reinstalled that pole, now just a bit shorter.
And for some reason, they didn't come up with banners like I asked them to do. So I found some free banners online that sort of matched – they're actually for the digital game, but I downloaded them, resized them, printed them out, and they work fine. So the Mantis Legion is now the Deplorables.
The first banner I went 'authentic' and attached it with painters tape, colored black with a marker. (The black seems to have run when I spray-sealed the figures!) The other banner was curled around a paintbrush handle and glued in place with white glue. I also touched up the banner edges with a marker, so they wouldn't be white.
As I said earlier, I superglued steel disks to the bottom of the figures. It gives plastic figures a nice heft, and they'll stick to magnet-lined storage boxes. You used to be able to buy these in the electrical department at the hardware store, but I guess someone figured out they're identical in size to U.S. quarters, and they disappeared.
So that's my first Space Marines. Don't ask me which edition figures I used, I just grabbed them from one of the boxed sets on my shelves.