This was one of my first ever purchases in the hobby. I decided to finally paint them up properly, and later took them to Armies on Parade 2023.
Overview
Although titled Battle for Macragge, that just refers to the name of the box, everything has been painted in different schemes and so this battle isn’t taking place on Macragge.
Interestingly, when I was painting this, the Leviathan box was announced which is the modern equivalent of this older set.
Aquila Lander
The centrepiece of this set is the crashed Aquila Lander, which serves as terrain and a narrative detail for the missions. The lander and the Lt. Varrus model have been painted as a different chapter to the 10 tactical marines, I felt it would be more interesting if one Space Marine chapter was assisting another.
The lander is named Viator and belongs to the Scarlet Crows chapter, although I have not settled on this as the final name for the chapter. They are most likely a Blood Angels successor, this was mainly so I could paint a nice vibrant red to contrast with the yellow desert sand.
The cockpit section normally isn’t filled in as it is here, for simplicity it’s just a single piece with a lot of gaps, but I wasn’t a fan of this and added a lot of plasticard bits to create a destroyed interior and make a more complete terrain piece.
Space Marines
The Lt. Varrus model is painted as a Scarlet Crow, but the remainder of the Space Marines are from the Twilight Raptors chapter. They are a Raven Guard successor and in this scenario are putting their extraction skills to good use.
There are also four pylons which mark gameplay areas in some missions, as well as a beacon and power cell which act as objective markers.
Tyranids
The tyranids have been painted in this mostly blue and white scheme, I’ve named these Hive Fleet Basilisk. They were quite frustrating to paint, especially with 6 limbs, but in the end I was happy with the simple colour palette. I did a bit of greenstuff work for the spawning pool, this is a marker which spawns and heals tyranids in some missions. Like the lander’s cockpit, it doesn’t come with a solid base, so I added some plasticard to the bottom and filled it with tentacles and a gross coloured liquid to make it look more organic.
Old Photos
Here are some photos of the minis from just before I started on this project, you can see their old paint scheme from when I just starting the hobby, I only had the starter set paints and was mostly following the instructions in the booklet.
There are a few photos showing some very early progress too.
