Marauders fall into roughly two categories; the more common M8 ‘Ape’ variant, with its thick armour and varied weapon loadout and the M9 ‘Chickenhawk’ fire support variant.

With the amount of firepower Marauders take to the fight they are understandably expensive points wise and Marauder platoons are generally only deployed in major conflicts, or where the mission success is of paramount importance and requires a highly aggressive response from the MI.

The Marauder shown here is the first one I put together as a tester for the overall force, so it will likely be a little different from the ones I do later, however the general approach is the same. Similar to the Cap Troopers I wanted to avoid the standard dark green and black palette for now and again keep the desert scheme. After assembling each of the key components separately; namely arms, legs, main torso and waist joint, I undercoated the model black before giving it a light spray of ogre flesh and bubonic brown to speed things along. A 50/50 mix of desert yellow and bleached bone was then dry brushed over the entire model before a final light dry brush of bleached bone to pick out the edges. At this stage any metal workings of detailing such as the leg and hip pistons and gearing and power claws were repainted black and then a basecoat of watered down gunmetal. This was highlighted with chainmail silver before being given an ink wash of mixed chestnut and black ink. Once dry the highlights were then re-picked out in chainmail silver.

For the weathering effects I simply daubed a few marks around various corners and edges of panels in black before picking them out in gunmetal. These were then weathered using a combination of stippling and dry brushing with black paint and dark earth.

For the base I used a coarse sand and gravel mix which was applied over watered down PVA white glue. Once set a watery wash of black paint was applied as a basecoat before three dry brushes of flat earth, desert yellow and beige.

Overall I was reasonably satisfied with the initial Marauder, although I do feel the colour is still too flat and needs to be given some depth. This is something I will attempt to correct with the M9 ‘Chickenhawk’ and see if I can improve on the spray and weather technique used above.

The lighter armoured but more heavily armed M9 ‘Chickenhawk’ Marauder was pretty much assembled and painted in exactly the same way as the M8 ‘Ape’ shown above. However, I mentioned when painting the Ape that I felt the bulk of the colours came out too flat in my opinion and wanted to improve on that for the Chickenhawk. I did this by following the same steps as wit the Ape right up to distressing the paintwork with some gun metal highlights. I then mixed a lighter shade of the armour; basically desert yellow and bleached bone, which I then worked in small areas of the basecoat leaving a gap to show the underlying darker shade and the metal weathering. This has the effect of adding some more depth to the model and helps define the seam lines more as well as make the paintwork look even more weathered. Once I had finished adding lighter patches to the bodywork I used a dark weathering powder to distress the paint further and add a few areas of soot and scorching before spraying the model with a matt varnish to seal it all in place.

The finished model was then stuck in place on its base (I left this until the end so I could position the legs a bit more before final assembly) and given a slight rolling gait by lifting the left leg up and back a little pushing the model sideways slightly. All that remained then was to add the base texture and paint to match the M8 ‘Ape’. With two Marauders ready for action now, it seems a good time to revisit the M8 class again and add a few more ‘suits’ to the MI’s arsenal, but that is for another time.

Next: More Marauders. Want to know more?