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Centurion Devastator Squad Zahhak || Marines Malevolent, 2nd Company || Third War for Armageddon
I've been painting Space Marines since about 2009, so I've experienced my fair share of power armoured units, drawing from multiple editions of 40k. One era that I missed out on though was 6th and 7th edition (my hobby dark age). So while I've experienced the classics of Tactical Squads and Boxnaughts, the modern Primaris flavors of Astartes, as well as Heresy-era Space Marines, one unit has always struck me as strange and elusive - the Space Marine Centurion.
When I started this firstborn project, I found myself quickly picking up a box of Centurions on a whim. I'll admit, it's partially because my friend group were planning to play a 9th edition event, and they had told me about some particularly egregious cheese I could accomplish by combining Centurions with some chapter tactics and an Apothecary. Sometimes some cheesy strats are fun, especially with friends. But I got them because they looked interesting too!
I find I don't see many people posting about the actual build of Centurions, nor the back view of them. So I was pretty excited to find that you can actually see the little guy inside piloting the exo-suit! His little legs are quite adorable. This inspired the only modification I made to the kit, which was swapping out the weird and bulky Centurion helmets for some standard MKVII ones. I think having normal sized heads really emphasizes that these are in fact regular marines piloting a big exo-suit, rather than just even bigger Space Marines.
When painting these guys, I had a lot of trouble deciding how to adapt the Marines Malevolent colour scheme to the armour. The standard template indicates that the entire torso, including the groin, should be black, and the legs should be yellow. Centurion armour is a little weird though, and features 2 hip plates that overlap the groin plate. My first attempt was to paint the hip plates yellow and the groin plate black, but it looked a little oddly segmented. If you consider hip armour to be part of the torso, they could be all black, but after digitally mocking it up I found the black to be a little too prominent. After consulting with several friends (who all had completely different opinions on the matter, unhelpfully -_-) I ended up making both the groin and the hip plates yellow, effectively breaking the 'rule' of the Malevolents colour scheme.
You might have also noticed that the chapter badges on the right shoulders of the finished Centurions are pointing 'backwards' when really they should be pointing to the center. Centurions have really annoyingly shaped shoulder pads, and they were clearly not designed to have decals on them BECAUSE NOTHING FITS!!!! Even if you look at the Centurions in the official box art, several of their shoulder markings are slightly tilted at different angles. This caused me many more hours of torment than it should have. Grrrr…
I know I'm only painting little plastic toys based on made up lore, but I do enjoy being particular about this kind of stuff. It's not the kind of thing I'd ever nitpick in other peoples models. But I hope others can appreciate being a little particular too (even if it is a bit silly :p).
To finish these guys off, I tried to recreate the style of the Space Marine Heroes bases for their 50mm bases. I used a mix of bits from the 40k Void War basing set as well as my usual chunks of smashed up plaster of paris. It gave them a nice bit of elevation too!
I did enjoy painting these three quite a bit. They're really cool models once you get to know them, and have a lot of nice edges for weathering and feature some fun layers of detail. If you've never painted Centurions before, I recommend it!
Next up will be the Centurion's moirail - the Apothecary!
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