Kill Team enters a dramatic new season in the early days of next January, with the release of Kill Team: Salvation – a new expansion box containing 10 incredible new Space Marine Scouts and 10 Aeldari Striking Scorpions arriving in plastic for the very first time.
Once the dust had settled from the fight over who’d get to paint them, the surviving members of the Warhammer Community team enacted their reanimation protocols and grabbed the green paint. These were the results.
Joel
Striking Scorpions were one of the first Aspects I bought when I started my first Aeldari army about 20 years ago. Since then, I’ve had about five armies in various colours, and have now settled on a slow-grow Ynnari project which has been going on for about four years. My Scorpions use Moot Green as a base, in homage to the classic metal models from the third edition of Warhammer 40,000.
I like to keep my Ynnari Aspect Warriors in their shrine colours, but the ribbons and markings on the chainswords are in Mephiston Red, so they fit into the crimson palette of my main force.
The kit is exactly what I wanted as a die-hard Aeldari fan. I love the Exarch head options, which – as with the other Aspects that have been sculpted recently – faithfully reflect Jes’ sketches. I also love the opportunity to recreate some of the warpaint designs from those sketches and to come up with my own.
Luke
I have a Biel-Tan Aeldari force, born from an abiding love dating back to the third edition ’Eavy Metal army, and as such there’s a lot of green in my army already. Tying the Aspects into a Craftworld colour scheme is always a fun challenge, and so for my Striking Scorpions I wanted to avoid bright green as an armour colour. In nature, scorpions tend to run dark with glossy black exoskeletons, so I used the alternative Ynnari scheme as a basis for a darker take.
I started by basing with Lupercal Green, then shading the undersuit and cavities with Incubi Darkness – mixed with a little Abaddon Black in places. The harder panels and raised edges were then highlighted with Kabalite Green, followed by Sybarite Green.
This was a time-consuming process, so I tried to keep the rest simple. I used Averland Sunset for the yellow bracing, which contrasts enough that it doesn’t really need highlighting – though I made the Exarch stand out with an extra coat of Flash Gitz Yellow. For the metals, Runelord Brass was shaded with Gore-Grunta Fur Contrast paint thinned with some water. The red of the Exarch’s claw is a nod to the crimson-coloured stings and claws of some Scorpions in the real world, and also because it looks really cool.
Tom
I decided to go as close to fully using Contrast paints for these Mentors Scouts as I could – which makes me look like a much better painter than I actually am. This meant Dark Angels Green on the armour – applying a sparing second coat wherever it ended up a little too blotchy – Skeleton Horde for the trousers, Snakebite Leather for lighter leather items and Wyldwood for darker. Two coats of Black Templar took care of the black parts, and then Flesh Tearers Red and Guilliman Flesh for the red details and faces respectively.
The grey is Administratum Grey shaded with Nuln Oil and drybrushed with Dawnstone, while the white panels used Corax White, Soulblight Grey, and a drybrush of White Scar. The silver is Leadbelcher, Nuln Oil, and Runefang Steel, while the gold is Retributor Armour under Agrax Earthshade. Simple, I promise.
Rob
I used to field several squads of 10 Scouts in lieu of Tactical Marines back in the fourth edition of Warhammer 40,000 – the days when the only real difference was their Save characteristic – so I was quite jazzed to get my hands on some modern updates. I felt the sniper rifle didn’t really fit the Salamanders vibe, but the cloak was too cool to pass up, so my Sergeant got to throw it on instead.*
I painted them broadly the same way as my Infernus Squad and Sternguard Veterans, with a heavy Warpstone Glow drybrush over an undercoat darkened with Dark Angels Green to save time on their armour. The original plan was to give them white fatigues rather than black, so it would make sense as camouflage against their snowy bases, but then I realised I’d just be painting Tom’s Mentors. We’ll assume they’re sneaking through a plastic Christmas tree factory or something.
Emma
I really enjoyed the little details on these scouts – rather than having mostly armour, there was a nice amount of cloth and texture. Trying to keep them in a shadowy shade, I chose
as the main colour for all the cloth, shading with Nuln Oil and highlighting with Dawnstone. Then when it came to the black armour, I used my recipe for my entire Raven Guard army – a
basecoat, then a chunky
highlight and an Administratum Grey edge highlight, just to catch all those sharper edges and lines.
Iron Warriors and Runelord Brass are great for all my metallics, as I love these darker and burnished tones for my shadowy marines. Then for those white details, the aptly named Corax White and White Scar are all I need. I think the most enjoyable part of these models was the faces. These models felt unique, especially seeing these are marines in the making. Looking at their features and styles, I wanted to give each one a different skin tone that I felt matched the face, but kept the Raven Guard aesthetic of dark eyes and pale complexions. So for each one, when I got the base colour for the skin, I added the smallest amount of greys to each one, blending in white tones to get the paleness I wanted – even when it came to the darkest of skin tones, I still wanted a pale and washed-out style.
Eddie
I based my Striking Scorpions colour scheme on the vivid green and yellow heraldry of some of the very early depictions of the Aspect Shrine. The rest of my Craftworld Army is Saim-Hann, so I painted the cloth and ribbons of the warriors in dark red, to match the Wild Rider host.
I also added a back banner to the Exarch, using one I had spare from building Aeldari Corsairs, again as a nod to their original incarnations (stealth practicalities be damned).
Gav
Painting Striking Scorpions? Easy, I’ll just paint them Striking Scorpions Green! What do you mean most of the other people in the article are painting their miniatures green? Back to the drawing board. After a quick search online, I found some real-life scorpions that are incredibly close in colour to Pylar Glacier.
Sticking with the blue theme, I went with Talassar Blue for the weapons. After that, I did a quick drybrush with Hoeth Blue and Blue Horror. For the tactical rocks, I base-coated them with Basilicanum Grey and drybrushed with Dawnstone. I also used Basilicanum Grey on the faceplates as Briar Queen Chill turned out to be not quite dark enough. Of course, I had to include a little bit of green, just to fit in with the cool kids, and so used Creed Camo as a spot colour.
Charlie**
I’m a big fan of the new scatter terrain that comes with Kill Team: Salvation. There’s a nice range of sizes and shapes for gameplay, they’re also all split into clear sections that make it easy to vary and break up the colour choices, and they’ll slot in perfectly with my Bheta-Decima, Gallowdark, and Sector Mechanicus terrain.
I laid down a trusty Leadbelcher basecoat and Nuln Oil wash, then decided on a heavily corroded look – perfect for abandoned machinery left out on an ocean rig. For copper areas, that meant healthy applications of Nihilakh Oxide over Screaming Bell. I nudged the Technical paint to pool in the joints and seams, before returning a little shine to the raised areas with thinned Hashut Copper.
I wanted a really heavy, crusty rust effect on the steely sections. To achieve that, I applied Astrogranite Debris directly onto the models – creating patches on large exposed surfaces, and brushing thicker clumps into the corners and recesses. Once the texture paint had fully dried, I washed it with Gryph-hound Orange, then drybrushed, stippled, and generally smudged over the textured areas with Ryza Rust.
A few sharp flecks of exposed Stormhost Silver, and the Salvation scenery looked just like my bicycle chain after a rainy night outside!
* The rifle was too nice to waste though, so I pinched it for a Kill Team project.
** Charlie preferred to paint only the terrain, the mad lad.
