Building Space Marines / Dark Angels Beginner's Guide pt. 1

When I first opened the box of Dark Angels, I was immediately daunted by all the little plastic bits in half a dozen sprue frames. I had no idea where to start.

It is important to have a plan before you being assembling and painting, particularly since Warhammer 40K's rules state that if an item isn't visible on the figure, it doesn't exist and can't be used, period.

For instance, some of the Space Marine figures' legs have purity seals attached to one or both boots, which confer a blessing on the figure; the initial phase of the assembly process involved deciding which figures got seals and which did not, and making sure the correct set of legs were matched up with the correct helmet, and that everyone got the appropriate set of insignia.

This may take some research, and note-making is a good idea.

Legs get glued onto bases. This is pretty simple.

The figure should be standing in about the center of the base unless you have some good aesthetic reason for doing something else, but in the case of the Dark Angels and other Space Marines, the feet are spread widely enough apart that there won't actually be room for both feet on the base if they're not at least roughly centered.

It is a good idea to take a look at the bottoms of the feet; very few of Citadel's figures are ever just standing flat-footed, and it's helpful to know which surface of the foot will actually be in contact with the base. You want to put a small dot of glue on that surface instead of the one that will be raised, so that you avoid having lumps of dried glue on what should be the relatively smooth bottom of someone's boot or filling in an empty space between someone's raised heel and the ground (unless you want your figures to look like they just stepped in something sticky).

Space Marine torsos come in two pieces, a chest piece and a back piece. These fit together fairly easily; they are not quite snap-fast, as they won't actually hold together without glue, but they do have small guide nubs and corresponding indentions to help with alignment. Trace a very thin line of glue around the edge of one piece, and then fit the other to it and apply slight pressure for a moment.

The assembled torsos get mounted onto the legs once the glue is sufficiently set (it does not have to be fully dried for this, just set enough to hold the torso together so the pieces don't slide out of alignment). This part is a little tricky, because the bottom of the torsos form a round socket that corresponds with a ball at the tops of the legs; this allows for some choices in the angle of the waist and thus gives you some nice options for your figure's posture, but it also means that things will roll and slip around, especially once you apply wet glue, and holding them into place long enough for the glue to dry can be a bit of a challenge.

Attaching the heads is fairly easy, and this is the point at which the figures begin to actually look like what they are supposed to be.

Necks fit fairly neatly into the space on the top surface of the torso, framed by the raised collar of the armor.

It might be worthwhile to plan ahead and consider arm and weapon positions before you attach the heads, so that you can be sure your figures are all looking in a direction that makes sense with the rest of their poses. Most of the time, they should be looking either straight ahead or in the direction in which their weapons are pointed. There are, of course, exceptions, which is what makes this a creative project.

Space Marine backpacks lay flush against the figure's back. This makes them easier to glue on than Sisters of Battle backpacks, which have an indention in the pack that is supposed to align with a knob on the figure's back but usually doesn't quite fit; you end up having to either fill in the gaps with green stuff or epoxy, or else whittle off the knob so the backpack will lay flat. Space Marines don't have this problem, but the lack of an alignment guide does mean that you have to be careful to get the backpack on straight (unless you have some aesthetic reason for gluing it on crooked; stereotypically, there's that one guy in every unit who just can't get his pack on straight).

In some poses, the figure's arms and/or weapon will cross over the chest, making it very difficult to reach for priming and painting. To make sure that these ares get painted properly, it's a good idea at this point to pause the assembly long enough to prime the figures and do some initial painting.

Since it will be difficult to prime the arms and weapons once they're glued onto painted figures, it's a good idea to remove the arms and the weapons from the sprue and include them in the batch of things to be primed.