How to paint Warhammer 40000 Space Marines 

What is Warhammer 40K and Who are the Space Marines?

Warhammer 40,000 is a tabletop war-game in which players command armies of miniatures clashing against each other. Release by Games Workshop almost 40 years ago, this very evocative tabletop game is designed to test players strategic skills and abilities and it just received an updated set of rules as part of the release of the new set “Leviathan”.

In Warhammer 40K's universe, Mankind has spread through the stars colonizing thousands of worlds. Unfortunately, the galaxy humans discovered is constantly in turmoil and humankind has to continuously face not only the power of alien races and their technologies but also the armies lead by the powerful gods of Chaos. A very famous quote from the rulebook states that “In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war”.

In order to face all the enemies that threat the Empire of Men, the God-emperor of humankind used a long lost technology to create the Space Marines. Taller and stronger than any men, genetically enhanced to survive harsh environments and harmed with power armours and storm bolters, Space Marines are humanity heroes and their first line of defence. As the Emperor once said, “They shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best them in battle. They are my bulwark against the Terror. They are the Defenders of Humanity. They are my Space Marines...and they shall know no fear." if interested, more information on the Space Marine story can be found at this on the Wiki forum.

Why choosing to play Space Marines in Warhammer 40K

Overall, building a Space Marine army in Warhammer 40000 is great way to get into the hobby and a practising how to paint Space Marines will improve your painting skills.

From a game perspective, the main reason Space Marines is a good army (and an awesome first army) is its very high efficiency. Every marine in the game has very good stats for all characteristics and they can use weapons more efficiently than an average human.

To give some perspective, the average marine model hits with a roll of 3+ in ranged or close combat and it is likely to wound an enemy on a roll of 3 or 4 depending on the target. A squad of 10 marines should then be able to deal an average of 3 casualties per turn to most of the opponents without considering the armour saves. More specialized units and vehicles will have even better stats to easily deal with every type of threat.

Space Marine units are also very trained and they will not easily flee from the battlefield. This is quite important as the in-game value of each unit is fairly high meaning that a Space Marine army will likely have less members per unit and less overall units than other armies. Although this means this army will be smaller to collect and paint, it also means you will need to plan your attacks carefully to prevent your Space Marine units to suffer from sustained damage and to be overwhelmed by larger enemy units.  

How to get your Space Marines ready for the battlefield

The main aspect to remind about Warhammer 40K, is that the game is played using beautifully sculpted miniatures. Assembling, painting and basing these models is a big portion of playing the game and one of the reasons playing Warhammer 40K is such a great hobby.

Although more gifted players can truly bring out some amazing work of art from their miniatures, everyone can easily learn the base skills and techniques needed to have their own miniatures ready for the battlefield. While it is incredibly satisfactory bringing colour in the to life of your plastic grey miniatures, sometime the biggest challenge is deciding where to start and which steps are the most efficient ones. The purpose of this article is to go through a few key concepts and steps in order to allow everyone to easily get into the amazing hobby of painting and playing with your miniatures in a simple and coordinated way.

1. Where to start?

Among all the available options, I would strongly recommend to start your army by buying a Space Marine combat patrol. Available for each army and race, GW combat patrol products are designed to provide a balanced 500 points army that can be used right away for small games. For example, the generic Space Marine combat Patrol includes 1 Primaris Lieutenant in Phobos Armour, 10 Primaris Infiltrators, 3 Suppressors, 3 Eliminators and 1x Primaris Impulsor. Very good playing value for their cost!

One characteristic to consider before buying your models is which Space Marines Chapters you will be looking to play. A Chapter is a group of Marines created and lead by a Primarch, a powerful Marine that was originally created by the same genetic material of the Emperor of Humankind. Each Primarch has some peculiarities reflected in the way the Marines belonging to their chapter fight on the battlefield. Each Chapter is also painted in a very specific colour combinations and you can find more information and details on this at the Warhammer community and on this page.

Once you have decided if you would like to play an army of Ultramarines, Black Templars, Space Wolves or, my favourites, Dark Angels, you just need to go online and find the Combat Patrol of that chapter. If you decided to build your own Chapter, you can buy any Combat Patrol and just customize the paint scheme.

2. What tools do you need?

Preparing your painting area and getting the right tools for the job is essential to achieve good results.

As a minimum you will need a set of paints and a set of brushes together with a retractable craft knife, a hobby side cutter, a mug of water and a paper tissue (or kitchen roll paper). Your brushes should include at least one for fine details and a few brushes of increasing size. As a guide, you should consider that any brush bigger than a size “3” would likely be used only a few times thus should not be your priorities getting them.

3. Paints!!!

Although it goes down to preference, Games Workshop paints are among your best options as they offer very good quality and a wide palette. Games Workshop also supplies some special paints to quickly obtain lighting and shadow effects that can be very helpful while you are learning.

In general, you can either buy just the colours for your Chapter of Space Marines or you can buy one of the starter painting set and then add any additional colour as you go along. Both approaches work and you can also find a nice starter set designed specifically for your Space Marines units or chapter like the one at this link.

4. Getting your Space Marine model battle ready

Once the box opened, you will first need to assembly your miniature. Best approach is to first remove all the pieces from the sprue using the cutter. All traces of the sprue supports and the mould lines will then need to be removed using the retractable knife or similar tools. The aim is to have a smooth surface while avoiding to remove the fine details of your model thus you should take all the time you need to avoid issues. If you make a mistake, don't worry as you can try to sell it as “battle damage” while painting or you can get creative. Worst case scenario, you can use part of the model as a casualty on a thematic base...

Once the parts prepared, you should assembly your models using plastic cement as shown here. Not all parts need to be assembled right away. In fact, the best choice may be to gluing some parts after you painted them as this would give easier access to some details. For example the Bolter rifles can be very close to the armour of the Marine making difficult to paint them. A few people also choose to not glue the model to the base but these are all very personal choices.

Once you have decided your approach, the assembled models and the single parts will need to be coated with a base paint (undercoat). The best practice is to use the Chaos Black undercoat spay making sure that all parts of the models are fully covered as shown in this video.

5. How to paint your first Space Marine

Once your undercoat is fully dry, you can finally start painting the base colour of your Space Marine depending on the chosen chapter. It is important to remind all paints will need to be thinned a bit before being applied. This prevents the fine details to be covered but it also means you would likely need to apply two or more layers of colour to create the perfect finish.

Weapons, hostlers, faces and the joints of the Power Armour are usually not painted in this phase and they should be painted using any colour combination to provide some contrast. Other areas of the models like the Imperial Eagle and the insignia on the armour pads may on the contrary be painted in a different colour after you added the base coat as this can add some depth.

The next step in painting your Space Marine, is to add some shadows to make the details stand out. This step is quite easy as you can exploit wash paints (or oils), a type of very diluted paint designed to accumulate the pigments into the recess areas of your model. The main challenge of using wash paints is to avoid them to accumulate on flat surfaces but you can find some very good tips and visual examples on how to avoid it at this link.  

Your Space marine would already look stunning just after the base coat and the addition of shadows. To make your model even better, you should try to bring out the fine details further by using a technique called “edge Highlighting”. This process aims to use the side of your brush to add a lighter tone to areas you want to highlight creating the effect of the light brightening the details. Although the technique may require some time to be mastered, it can really make your models more realistic.

6. How to paint Space Marine faces

The head will always be a focal point of your models, in particular, if your Space Marine does not wear an helmet. In this case, the best approach is to first apply a base paint of your chosen colour and to paint the eyes in white making sure to correct any error. You can then apply a heavy layer of a suitable wash paint. This step will not only bring out the details but also create some natural tone variations on the flat surfaces giving more characters to the face.

Once all the wash dried, you can then add some highlighting for example to the tip of the nose and the ears. The eyes will require a firm hand as you will need first to paint a small area white before adding a small dot for the eyes. The trick is to paint in white only a small line leaving the wash to contour the eye.

7. Base your models

The simplest way to paint your model's bases if to use Stirland Battlemire, a technical paint that includes some fine sand to add texture to the models. Depending on your preferences, you can then add some details to the base by dry brushing the surface or by gluing some small plants.

8. An Army made of models

Last but not least, it is important to remind that your aim is not only to learn how to paint a Space Marine but also how to paint a Space marine army. To achieve your ultimate goal, you should always perform the same step sequentially on multiple miniatures. This technique will not only make you quicker but also ensure your previous layer will be dry by the time you come back to the first one to perform the next step.

Contact us here at Magic Madhouse for all your Space Marines needs.