In our How to Paint Everything series we look at how to paint, well, everything, with a look at different approaches and techniques. In this article we’re looking at how to paint the Brazen Beasts, a renegade chapter of Chaos Space Marines.
The Brazen Beasts were introduced in the 7th edition book, Codex: Khorne Daemonkin, and were once a loyal chapter of space marines named the Golden Blades. While defending a fortress on Ghahalla from an army of daemons, they were overcome with a strange madness, causing them to deface their vehicles and perform blood rites to trap their daemon foes inside them. From there it was a pretty quick slide into Chaos Worship.
The Brazen Beasts are known for deploying lots of daemon engines in battle. That’s how they got their start in all this mess, so it’s only fitting that they take lots of Maulerfiends, Defilers, Forgefiends, and Soul Grinders into battle. This puts them in an odd spot – as a warband, they’re entirely and fanatically devoted to Khorne, but in terms of structure they employ lots of Warpsmiths to keep their foul daemon engines running.
The big prize here is the legion’s Lord of Skulls, which they worship under the name The Caged God. They follow this engine into battle and it rewards them with visions which drive them into a frothing rage.
The Brazen Beasts saw an update with rules of their own in the 8th edition codex supplement, Imperium Nihilius: Vigilus Ablaze, where they’d receive rules for running them as a subfaction, complete with some rules that buff daemon engines.
Covered in this Article:
- How to paint the Brazen Beasts Chaos Space Marines, with a look distinct from World Eaters.
- Notes on the heraldry of the Brazen Beasts.
Heraldry - Click to Expand The Brazen Beasts don armor of red and gold, and in truth, it’s very easy to just paint them up like World Eaters. If you want to go that route, that’s a viable option, and you can find a guide to painting World Eaters here. The Brazen Beasts notably use a different legion icon, however – a skull with the mark of khorne – and tend to have darker armor than the World Eaters. The exception here is the helmet and pauldrons, which tend to be a brighter red. One notable thing the Brazen Beasts often do is mark their armor with major kills, usually in the form of tallies. These are pretty easy to freehand, and are usually shown with white markings. Older books referencing the Brazen Beasts show them with more metallic armor, giving you some more options for mixing it up. As we’ve already covered multiple shades of red armor with gold trim in our articles on the World Eaters and the Crimson Slaughter, we’ll instead look at the metallic scheme here.
As mentioned above, I chose to go with a more metallic scheme for my Brazen Beasts, both to distinguish them visually from World Eaters and also to give them a visual aspect that really matched their name. The idea here is to go darker reds on the helmet and pauldrons with some custom metallic on the body.
I started by priming this model black.
Step 1. Basecoat the Armor
The process starts with an armor basecoat. For the helmet and shoulder pads, that’s Khorne Red, which I’ll blend up to Mephiston Red at higher spots. For the rest of the armor, I did a mix of Balthasar Gold with a drop of Blood Angels Red Contrast paint, in something resembling a 4:1 mix. The goal is to get a reddish tint on the gold. It should be noticeably red when you lay it down.
Step 2. Washes
Next comes washing it. I’ll do some slight washes of Carroburg Crimson on the red parts, mostly around the bottom spots on the armor where it contacts the trim. The rest of the armor I’ll wash with a 50/50 mix of Carroburg Crimson and Agrax Earthshade. This should give the darker parts a redder tint.
Step 3. Highlights
Time to highlight a bunch of that, and I’ll do that primarily with Balthasar Gold, hitting some of the higher spots on the armor. You don’t ant to go too heavy on this, or you’ll undo the work you did with adding red, but you want to do enough to create a nice transition of Balthasar Gold to a darker, redder tone.
Step 4. Gold Trim
Time to lay down the trim. This is just a layer of Retributor Armour gold paint.
Step 5. More Details
Time to hit the rest of the model. The black gun casing is just Corvus Black, while the metal/steel parts are Leadbelcher. Both get washed with Nuln Oil and I’ll highlight the black parts with Mechanicus Standard Grey. The loincloth is Khorne Red washed with Carroburg Crimson. The holster and leather straps are Gothor Brown.Â
Step 6. Final Details
From here finishing off the model is pretty easy. The gold trim gets washed with Agrax Earthshade, while the steel parts are washed in Nuln Oil. The gold trim gets an edge highlight of Runefang Steel, and I use that to paint the rivets on the armor as well. The eyes get a quick touch of Moot Green. Finally there’s the markings on the helmet – that’s just a few quick lines of Reaper Pure White.
And that’s it! I’m very happy with how this guy turned out, and I like how different he is from a standard World Eater. It’s a fun scheme and I could see it being really cool on some larger vehicles like Daemon Engines.
Final Thoughts
With a little bit of work, you can distinguish the Brazen Beasts from other Khorne warbands in a way that can look pretty sharp. At the very least, I’m happy with how the more metallic approach turned out but it’s worth experimenting with other techniques as you figure out your scheme. Overall the Brazen Beasts offer a fun way to do a Khorne-devoted Chaos Marines army without going full World Eaters, or they can just be an alternative scheme for World Eaters. You’ve got options if you paint them up, is the point.
As always, if you have any questions or feedback drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.
