Showcase: Ultramarines Marneus Calgar in Power Armour

Here he is, my updated Marneus Calgar in his classic suit of Power Armour. Check out the brand new banner I made! More pictures after the jump – including some pictures of Marneus before I reworked his paint job.

The most obvious addition to this classic 90s Jes Goodwin sculpt is the banner. The original model comes with an empty pole to put a massive paper banner on, which you would photocopy from the 2nd Edition Ultramarines codex.

The freehand on his banner is based on the classic design, I just removed the lower part with the scroll that reads “Macragge”. The 2nd Edition codex comes with a handy page of black and white line art for various banners, Marneus’ banner amongst them, which I scanned and printed on transfer paper in the correct size. After applying the transfer to the banner, it was just like painting by numbers. A technique I will definitely come back to when I rework my Standardbearer (called Company Ancient in the recent Space Marine codex).

I tried several regular infantry sized Space Marine back banners, but I knew that to come as close to the original model, he needed something bigger. In the end, I settled on the Ironclad Dreadnought banner. I shortened it a little bit, removed the pointed ends and added a new top, which comes from the Ultramarines chapter upgrade sprue. It has the perfect size and coincidentally, the design is the same as the Ultramarines icon on Marneus’ shoulder guard – an inverted omega with an outline and a skull.

I refined the highlights of the original paint job, especially on the blue armour. I also changed a couple of details. For example, in the original paint job his right shoulder guard was just golden, now I picked out the laurels and skull to make the design more eye-catching.

Here you can see all the new additions. His new 32 mm base has a piece of broken flooring from the Sector Imperialis Large Base Detailing kit and a little skull piece from Assault on Black Reach. As 90s Space Marine sculpts are smaller than those from the 90s, the sculpted base adds some extra height that makes him fit better in my collection of modern Marine models.

Here is a comparison between new and old. Can you find all the changes? By the way, the pictures of the original paint job are very old. Back then I had a different camera and light setup, so the colours appear different, but in fact, I used only the original paints for the rework.

What do you think? Do you like the changes I made? Tell me in the comments!