8 April 2022

Dark Krakens Primaris Intercessors

So many layers of violet, but still they look blue.

Primaris Marines. I'm going to be honest: I've never been a huge fan of them. As well as being Beakie for life, I have a deep affection for the original Marines (or "Firstborns" as GW has christened them, and whoever came up with that deserves a good kick in the nuts). So you're probably wondering why I own two new and improved Marines. I don't. I own 30.

Come with me, children, as we travel back to August 2018. Me and Alicia are in the UK visiting my mum, and while in the local Tesco I notice a magazine by Games Workshop that isn't White Dwarf. I can't remember the title, but it's one of those "start collecting" type mags. Attached to the cover are three pots of paint — Abbadon Black, Retribution Armour, and Macragge Blue, because God forbid we paint them as anything other than Ultramarines — a paintbrush, and a sprue with enough bits for three Primaris Intercessors. All that for the introductory price of £1.99! So I shelled out twenty quid, around $35, on 10 copies just for the sprues. Ten Intercessors these days cost $50. For Christ's sake, one pot of Citadel base paint is $4.50, so I think I came out on top.

I kept all the sprues and brushes and some of the paints, and since then those 30 stalwart defenders of the Imperium have whiled away the years in a box. I decided to paint some last week, and after stumbling across the Dark Krakens on t'internet I liked the colours and thought I'd give it a shot.

The Dark Krakens are a Primaris-only successor Chapter of the Salamanders, which was another reason I decided to go with them. I've always felt a bit sorry for the Sallies, not because of the whole Dropsite Massacre thing, but how Games Workshop treated them back in the day. Despite the Salamanders being in the Space Marine premiership — along with the Ultramarines, Blood Angels and Space Wolves — and appearing on the cover of the original painting guide, they were suddenly dropped in favour of the Dark Angels, who also stole their colour scheme. Games Workshop developed an attitude of "well we know about them but don't like to talk about them" towards the Sallies like they did with some other Chapters (hello, Silver Skulls and Lamenters!) and even retconned their pre-Heresy colours to the current lime/apple/snot green shade. 

Mild rant over, on with the painting...

The Dark Krakens hail from the oceanic world of Naktis, which is permanently in darkness, so their deep purple and black scheme is very appropriate, not to mention dead easy. I spent all of two minutes spraying them with black primer, leaving them 90% done. See? Easy.

To give them a purplish tinge I made a mix of roughly 80% Black and 20% Violet, thinned it down and brushed it all over each model. After that dried, I gave them a light drybrushing with Mechanicus Standard Grey and a second lighter one with Ghost Grey, and looking at them now I should have done more in terms of highlighting them. Black armour looks great, but without decent highlighting it's just impossible to see details.

The shoulder pads, arms and bolter covers(?) were layered with thinned Violet, and I did some edge highlighting on some areas with Blue Violet. I went over their aquilas with some Ghost Grey to bring them out a bit, and then painted their pouches and purity seals. Although it's not part of the official scheme, I decided to do the plating on their backpack exhausts Violet just to add a touch more colour. The last detail was their eye lenses, which I painted Sunset Red.

To keep the trend of lazy basing going, I just splurged on some Vallejo Black Lava and drybrushed it with Silver Grey. The biggest problem I had with them was getting the tactical squad decal to fold around the curved shoulder pad; no amount of decal softener seemed to help.

The photos came out really well using the lightbox, but why the Violet has gone so blue is beyond me. But I do like the colour scheme and I'll be using it again, only with a couple of slight changes.

17 comments:

  1. Super nice work, Matt. I don't see much blue in the marines' colours tbh. They look violet to me. And as you say, what a bargain the ten magazines worked out as.

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    1. Cheers, Simon! Seriously, they were a total bargain, and I'm happy to have finally remembered them and got some painted.

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  2. Great work Matt, not a fan of Primaris marines, but like the colour scheme you've gone for. The colour looks violet on my screen, so no worries on the colour. As for the poor Salamanders, when they got their new snot colour, they almost ended up being photographed with pale skin tones instead of their proper dark skin, and bleached hair, a the painting crew at the time forgot ! LOL

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    1. LOL! That's a classic story, Dave! Yeah, I've been looking at the photos again and comparing them to the minis and the violet is pretty much spot-on. I must be going nuts or blind or something.

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  3. I like Primaris personally. Proper sized super mutants as they're meant to be. Love me my beakies for sure, but to me, it's nice that Space Marines are finally the size on the tabletop that they are described as being in the novels.

    The black and violet is a cool combo. Getting all those marines though - same poses as these three?

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    1. (And this reminds me, I need to finish off my "kill team" of Space Sharks/Carcharodons.)

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    2. Well, though not being myself a fan of Primaris, I have to confess I got some too! :P I'm using them to have some realscale Space Sharks and complete my army (Dai, I didn't know you had some of those too!) :)

      Whatever the case, I find these ones interesting. I admit I know nothing of the new fluff, so first time I hear of the Dark Krakens. The scheme works and you made quite an effective work here! Go for the other 27 now!

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    3. Yeah, Dai, I have 30 Primaris in 10 poses. It's annoying and there's not much that can be done in terms of swapping arms around. Oh well, they're still great value for money and I have a few other Chapter colour schemes I want to try. Of all the Primaris, I like the Infiltrators the most.

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    4. Thanks, Suber! I'd never heard of the Dark Krakens until a week ago, and I like their colours and backstory. I'm now tempted to do some Carcharadons now :-)

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  4. I have to admit that seeing some space marines (let alone modern GW sculpts!) in your painting queue is a nice surprise! I don't know many of the chapters of Space Marines but this one has a cool color scheme. I don't think these look overly blue either. I wonder if the lightbox has bluish light in the bulbs that is giving you that feeling? Either way, I think these came out nicely and as always, I enjoy seeing what you paint as you always seem to surprise us :)

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    1. Cheers, Jeff, but I do like painting Space Marines and I have a lot more to come! As far as modern GW sculpts go, I'm not too keen on most of them as they seem to have so many fiddly details these days they're a pain to paint, and don't even get me started on the endless bloody skulls and purity seals LOL!

      I think you're right, it could be the lights bringing out the blue in the violet paint. Oh well.

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  5. These are pretty good sculpts for a giveaway and quite cheap (relatively) fro GW imo.
    I prefrred the old Marines with the pinty helmets (I painted some for my son more than 20 years ago).
    They don;t look blue to me and definetly have a pruple hue to them which with the varios detailed bit,makin gthem 'pop'.
    Jobe well done I'd say.

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    1. Thanks, Joe! For almost being freebies they're impressive sculpts, GW didn't make a special crappy mold for these guys (like the Space Hulk terminators). I too am a huge fan of the original armour and Womble helmets but these minis are growing on me.

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  6. Nice work on these mate, I like the colours, very unusual (well to my eyes anyway). How often do you get over to see your family in the old country?

    Cheers Roger.

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    1. Thanks, Roger! It's an oddish scheme but I do like it. I haven't been back to the UK since my mum's funeral in early 2019, and then Covid hit. Not sure when I'll be going back yet.

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