The Grey Ghosts: White Scars Recon Squad

The White Scars were the original recon force for the Great Crusade, ranging far ahead of the main forces, so it is only fitting that my army incudes a recon squad. 

Of course, both of the antennae on the vox guy broke. I replaced the skinny one with a wire and replaced the segment that joins the fat one to the pack with a piece of brass rod. The only other change I made was to use White Scars MKIV shoulder pads from Forge World. This was a bit tricky because the vox guy already has a left shoulder pad built into the model, with the cloak covering half of it, so I could not replace that one. Instead I cut a decal in half and tried to line it up with the edge of the cloak. It is the same icon as the rest of the squad, but not 3D, of course. Other than that, I built them straight out of the box with no other modificaitons.

I tried some new painting techniques on this squad to speed things up, including using mostly Contrast paints and washes other than the grey armor and the metal. On the grey armor, I used a shade but no highlights, figuring the battle damage would act as a bit of a natural delineation of edges. Some aspects turned out better than others and some of the battle damage is not my best work, but overall I am happy with them for the amount of effort I put into them. Despite their armor being mostly light grey, they are immediately recognizable as White Scars with the white heads and shoulder icons. I like the way the blue/grey cloaks turned out with dusty fringes. I also like the simple technique of Contrast over metallic for the lenses. 

They came out well enough that I am inspired to try more units with Contrast to try to speed along the painting. I definitely learned a few things about how to make Contrast look better (I have struggled with the splotchy surface finish on most models in the past.) If nothing else, trying different techniques keeps the painting interesting and breaks up the monotony of painting a whole army with the same slow method. Units like this recon squad are the perfect opportunity to try new things since they do not need to look exactly like the other marines, as long as they tie in to the overall army.