Crimson Fists Tactical Squad painted

Well I wasn't really expecting to be painting any Crimson Fists any time soon but after I finished the Hellhound for my Catachans, I was looking for something else to paint.  I have a few metal Catachans waiting for some attention but then I remembered these tactical marines...

Last year when I was building lots of different models from very different game systems, I'd dug out some of my old unpainted space marines that I'd built to add to my Crimson Fists army.  They'd been in a box in the garage for around ten years so I thought I'd get a squad of them done and maybe using them in Kill Team.  I got as far as basecoating the models dark blue, did the base coats for the metallics and given them a black wash.  Then I dropped out of painting for a bit and they've been sat on my painting station since then.

So, yesterday when I was looking for something to paint, I spotted these and remembered how sick I was of seeing them unpainted - so it was time to pull my finger out.  The way I painted my old Crimson Fists army that these would be joining was to edge highlight the models using an ultramarine blue colour.  After that it was just painting the red gauntlets, painting the guns black and highlighting them all.  One thing I did try was painting the plasma weapons parts white, then I just covered that with Guilliman Blue glaze which made them really easy!  I'd forgotten about how much of a pain doing decals could be though but it didn't take me long to get them done.  I painted the pads with gloss varnish, applied the decals and soaked them in MicroSol to get them to adhere to the curve of the shoulder pads.  Once that was dry, I painted over the top of the shoulder pads with Lahmian Medium to matt it down and to help ensure they stuck in place.  After I'd based the minis to match the rest of my Crimson Fists army, I stuck on some dead grass tufts and gave them all a spray with Testors Dullcote.

IIRC, the sergeant in this squad was an old metal space marine veteran from a five man box set.  That was before GW came up with the idea of Sternguard or Vanguards!  I just stuck a Crimson Fists backpack on him.  Everything else in the squad is pretty standard space marine bits although there is one marine with arms from an old metal Iron Hands box set.