Chaplain and Assault Squad

I'll start with a positive. The Vanguard Assault Squad is a great kit. Tons of options and really nice models. I would have liked to have enough options in the box to have outfitted the whole squad with lightning claws rather than having to scrounge around my bitz - and I still came up one right arm short. I was pretty dubious about the models before I started. They have a lot of decorative detail on them that I don't really fancy. I found that when I painted them up though I could keep the decoration fairly subtle for the most part and it doesn't detract too much from the feel of the models. Gold decoration on the yellow doesn't clash, I guess because of the metallic element (?) and keeps it all quite muted. I'm really happy with how these guys turned out, not just individually, but as a squad. They have a dynamism that really brings them to life. Except every time I look at them I find another tiny flaw that required touching up. One day...

The negative. The Chaplain with jump pack is Finecast. There's flowing parchment and incense censers that were never going to make it out of the box intact. The whole chain for the censer was missing and the parchment needed to be remoulded, and there were a couple of other minor patches. It was a pretty rough finish all round, which normally I wouldn't mind so much, but given that he is black, it was problematic as every little bump and blemish seems to be naturally highlighted. Nevertheless, after repainting his armour after my first miserable attempt at black (I ended up using VMA German Grey washed with GW Nuln Oil), I'm pretty happy with the result.

I really enjoyed making this squad. I was fun to give them all beakies and I think they look really natural with the jump packs. I'm hoping in games terms that the combination of Lightning Claws and Chaplain will mean that this squad will tear through pretty much everything. I also really love the look of the marine with the single claw and power fist. Despite being a new(er) kit, he has a real sense of the Rogue Trader era to me.