Dark Vengeance - Chaos Space Marine Chosen

Ok, bit of change with those ! As always I'm getting to my first and true love : Chaos...

I hadn't really planned to paint those until a few weeks ago when a challenge was issued on a FB modelling page. The aim of this challenge was to make a point between white primers and black primers. 

Given that the person who initiated the challenge is a firm believer in black undercoats, he made the challenge about painting black marines (raven guard, deathwatch, black templars and so on...). As you can imagine, this choice wasn't influenced by any kind of bad will or any bias...

Well given that I am the proud owner of a black renegade force, I thought I could join and get some models painted !

 Thing is, I'm actually a grey undercoat fan but I usually resort to black undercoats when the models are 95% black so I think it was OK for me to enter this in the black undercoaters' side (you had to pick a side).

I have to say those Dark Vengeance Chaos space marines are incredible models. The only thing is they are totally not what I fancy painting. I'll explain a bit later but just bear in mind those were painted with SPEED in mind and nothing else so the standard displayed is obviously lower that what I'd want to display here.

The captain is a very cool model, well designed and broken in a number of pieces that make it very interesting and characterful. I love the backpack and its tentacles reloading the bolter on their own.

The chosen with power axe is another cool model with ribcage bones and a weird tongue, the balance between armour and organic texture is excellent and ver reminiscent of the Rogue Trader models. I tried to have a little fun with the power axe to have at least a couple of fancy parts in the squad ! ^^

Same thing once again, striking pose and very cool design, it's the only kind of horn I actually fancy on my chaos marines. The chainmail and clothing don't really make any sense but hey, it's chaos.

Now we're talking ! This helmet is totally how I like chaos marines, intricate armour and all. The legs one against the other kind of look like he wants to pee but it's a pretty cool model nonetheless.

Unfortunately, the only sculpt I don't reall fancy in thisgroup is th eone that comes in pair (or maybe I don't fancy it because there are 2 of it). As you can see I've avoided plenty of details once again. The basic idea is teh same as for all my renegades : to keep as many black thingsas I can to have a striking visual effect and make it look a bit Gigeresque.

So this is it, I really think those models are wonderful and well designed and they certainly look like chaos should look instead of vanilla marines with horns and spikes. 

One thing though made me feel annoyed when painting those. The level of detail is far beyond what's required for tabletop gaming in my opinion, that shouldn't be a problem but it means it requires more time to look good which can be counter productive. 

On the other side, if those were to be considered for painting and displaying only, they still suffer from huge drawbacks inherent to plastic models. Some edges are a bit soft and above all : the undercuts. I just cannot stand them, they really ruin a big part of the fun and they surely are the biggest reason why I rushed on those. Here's just a selection of some but the problem is on every model.

From what I've seen from more recent kits, GW seems to have addressed the issue as I haven't spotted as much of those on the admech stuff I have nor on the Hybrids from Deathwatck Overkill. there will still be some of course but not to that extent.

Everybody find his own place in this hobby and the one I'm enjoying is to paint models meant to be played but with a bit of effort so they can look alright when inspected from closer. These models as nice as they are aren't really the best material to achieve that and resin models even less.

Just because I found it fun i've got a few big old lead guys out to photograph with our new champion :