Project Introduction: Ultramarines 3rd Company

This might come as a surprise since in my last post I talked about how much I love the Blood Angels.

Backstory

Way back in the days of 4th Edition 40k there was a box set called "Battle for Macragge". This was the first 40k product I got as a kid. My brother and I built, painted, and played the campaign. My Dad even made us a table out of wood so we could play on a full battlefield. I can't remember which side I took and who ended up winning, but it did exactly what it was designed to do; get myself and my brother into the hobby.

From there we started new armies. My brother picked Guard (which went on to become the start of my guard collection). I picked Tau for their futuristic look and advanced technology. Eventually he returned to Space Marines after loosing most of our games. With Space Marines, he was able to get a lot more wins (I wasn't a good Tau player). Not long after that we stopped playing for the foreseeable future.

One of my original Fire Warriors

Fast forward to 2020

With my growing interest in fielding a Blood Angels army the obvious choice was to re-base and repaint my old Marines. It would be a cheap way to get enough Tactical Marines to fill a battalion. My wallet had other ideas and suddenly I had 2000pts of unpainted Blood Angels. Including 20 intercessors and 10 Blood Angels Tacticals. 

The bulk of my Blood Angels backlog

While I love Tacticals, it feels more fitting to leave them as Ultramarines. Unfortunately a few years ago I thought it was a great idea to respray and paint them as Blood Angels without stripping them. It's not good....

A (re)painted Space Marine

The project

While this is a sentimentally motivated project it's also a good opportunity to practice painting. It would be simple to just paint them up like the Ultramarines on most Space Marine boxes, but I wanted them to have a bit more personality. Since they used to face Tyranids and Tau, third company was the obvious.

Who are the Ultramarines 3rd Company?

The Ultramarines 3rd company are known as the "Scourge of Xenos". As the name suggests they're primarily suited to fighting the various Xenos threats. They've participated in notable campaigns such as The Damocles Crusade (Verse Tau) and the Tyrannic Wars (including the Battle of Maccrage!)

As stated by the Codex Astartes 3rd company have red trim on their shoulder pauldron. This is quite convenient since I have a lot of red.

The Models

When going through my models it was a surprise to find a bunch of model I don't remember having. The model list is:

• 1 Imperial Pilot (From battle of Macragge boxset)
• 1 Captain with Bolt Pistol and Powerfist
• 26 Tactical Marines (5 Sargents, tacticals with boltguns and various special weapons)
• 5 Scouts (1 Sargent, 1 Heavy Bolter)
• 5 Assault Marines (Various combinations of pistols and melee weapons)
• 1 Rhino
• 1 Predator (All Lascannons)

The soon to be Ultramarines

The biggest surprise was the scouts. I don't ever remember having them. We probably ran them as regular tacticals.

There are a few repairs that need to be made. The Lascannon sponsons on the Predator need to be reattached. One of the tactical Sargents needs it's chainsword fixed. Ultimately however, they all need to be stripped before anything can be done with them.


This should be an interesting project to undertake. I'll still be painting and building my Guard and Blood Angels minis in between so keep an eye out for those posts as well (Including a Valkyrie and Baneblade!)