Showcase: Space Marine Terminator Chaplain (inc. painting guide)

The Space Marine Chaplain in Terminator armour seems to be stirring up a lot of discourse on the internet. Some people are saying it’s not very detailed, some are saying it’s a perfect blank canvas and then there are the people who thinks he has teddy bear ears… Well. in this post I’m going to share my thoughts on this sculpt and include all my paint recipes in a handy painting guide.

This model was supplied to me by Games workshop. My thoughts and opinions are my own.

The first thing I did with my Chaplain was tweak the pose. I raised the Crozius up and I moved the other arm behind the Chaplain, with the walking pose, of the legs I think the arms like this makes him look like he is striding. For the Storm Bolter hand I glued it slightly turned outwards and I think that helped with the pose.

The biggest thing to help make the Chaplain look his best, was to photograph it in its best angle. This is called the ‘golden angel’ by Games Workshop’s photographers. I got down low to eye level to the model and now he looks mean and angry with his eyes looking directly at the camera. Getting lower also made the model look bigger and more menacing. I’m really happy with how it came out.

I really enjoyed painting the new Chaplain, I actually prefer that he doesn’t have a cape or loads of decoration. I wanted to keep mine clean and simple. I wanted the armour to really stand out though so I did spend quite some time layering up the highlights and trying to be as neat as possible with the edge highlights. The skull helm is an interesting one. The Eavy Metal team only painted the face plate as a skull and left the back, top and “tusks” black. I thought it looked distracting like that, so I simplified it and painted the whole helm bone and I for me personally, I think it looks much better.

Has my take on the new Chaplain helped sway your opinion on it? Do you like it, or do you prefer the previous Terminator Chaplains. Let me know in the comments.