Space Marine 2 Diorama: Assault vs Lictor

Space Marine 2 came out some weeks ago and we jumped the boat like some grimdark deprived ghouls! Managed to finish the campaign and did a fair amount of Operations before the renovations started and had to take a step back from my pc 🙁

That said I really wanted to keep this memory alive and make some dioramas for my friends and give those as a gift for 2023 Xmas.

I started with both dioramas I had in mind for the Assault class and the Bulwark class.

After some research, asking the recipients for opinions on enemies I got down into designing and building the first of those: Assault vs Lictor!

Design and Scene ideation

The idea was for a small scale diorama, that can fit in any shelve and won’t take much space. In parallel it should be something interesting to the eye and should have a big of depth and height.

I had a big batch of terrain for 40k that were lying there for the past 4 years, begging to be used in a 40k game which I stopped playing mid-pandemic so it was pretty easy to assemble all together.

All I had to do is wait for the miniatures which, spoiler ahead, took a lot of time!

The idea was to switch the roles of how the Liktor worked in game and have the Assault class, well….assaulting the Liktor from above.

With that in mind I build a corner terrain piece adding vents and extra parts from the kit (Archon Studios Rampart Series: here).

I got some thin shits of cork to make the floor a bit more interesting and to be honest, to avoid sanding the wooden part of my base as I was a guest to a house that was spotless all the time!

At some point I added a bigger hill to make this a bit more eye catching and interesting to the eye.

The actual base is a small 1 centimeter thick plywood, which I found in a toy shop while trying to find anything ready to use for the diorama. Fun part is that the bottom of the base is not plain as it’s a children toy and it has a cute small jigsaw puzzle for kids with a bear. Of course I kept it and glued it in place to keep the structure integrity intact.

Miniature

I started this time around with the miniature and immediately saw that the loadout of course was not proper for an assault-class-thunder-hammer-carrying badass that my friends character was. Also for some weird reason he wanted to be a black templar and had found a good deal on e-bay to get some upgrade shoulderpads.

So I made the order and waited for the thunderhammer and shoulderpads to arrive.

And with the magic of the shipping and delivery industry about 10 days later I had a thunder hammer and some shoulder pads that painted and glued to make this glorious stance:

If you ask me pretty close with the screenshots of the game (minus some fancy wings that made 0 sense)

Base

I went back to the base and started basing it with a ready stucco/filler mix that worked absolutely amazing. The only drawback was the drying time (that took 2-3 days on the thicker parts) but it gave structure, shaped the earthy parts and covered any gaps (well it’s called a filler for a reason).

I love that filler paste! Made this whole thing really easy!

After that I started the base painting of the base, added mainly brown shades of colors and washes, trying to make it more earthy and dark in each layer. As usual I didn’t have a masterplan thought off ahead of time, so I did a layer and stared at the piece till I understand if I like it or fathom how crappy of a painter I am 😛

I think i went overboard with the oxidation of the metal parts but I like it!

I ended up adding more bushes and shrubs, painted a weird extra bright liquid coming out of the right side of the round thingy and started gluing the miniatures on the base!