As I mentioned in my last post when I finished my Librarius squad, I plan to mix in ‘required’ painting with the fun projects. As the librarians were my fun conversion, I am working on finishing my Mentors Scout Squad as my required choice.

I had these guys nearly base coated a long while back and decided they would be a great unit to finally finish. While scout squads are not everybody’s cup of tea, I like the diverse look they bring to the Space Marine armies, especially since I tend to always put helmets on my Mentors (they are smart guys after all).

Unlike my other scout squad which was armed as snipers, this squad was built for close up action with half armed with close combat weapons and the other half with bolters. The idea was that I could combat-squad them into a ‘hold position and shot’ squad, and a ‘take out the soft targets’ squad.

As with the sniper squad, I am keeping the colors a bit more muted than my traditional Mentors, with Zandari Dust as the ‘white’ and doing less extreme highlights on the green and reds. This in part is to help differentiate them even more than their power armored brothers, but also figured that they would concern themselves a bit more with hiding as well.

With new codex, the scout auxiliary formation requires at least 3 squads of scouts or scout bikers. So in the short term I can break this group into two 5-man squads which gives me the minimum requirement. In the future I need to decide if I’m going to keep the smaller squad and give them a speeder, or add a third squad in the form of bikers. Has anyone had experience with either?

So that’s my progress so far, still up is highlighting the metals, painting lenses and base, and additional weathering. I haven’t decided if I’m going to add the Mentor’s eagle head yet as the transfers don’t have a small version for scouts so I might just add some sort of squad markings.

Let me know what you think in the comments below and keep on painting,

JoeB