How to Paint Everything – Red Corsairs Chaos Space Marines

The Red Corsairs are distinct from the original nine traitor legions in that they defected well after the Heresy. This means that while they’ve still abandoned the squad and company markings of the Codex Astartes, they’re far more likely to be wielding more modern equipment and power armor than marines in the original traitor legions.

This means that if you’re building Red Corsairs, they can provide a lot of unique conversion and modeling opportunities. In particular, I like to use loyalist space marine backpacks when building my Red Corsairs, as well as Chaos Marine backpacks which keep the exhaust ports closer to the main backpack. I also like to use heads which more closely resemble Mk. VII marine helmets and the Mk. III Heresy shoulder pads, which feature thick trim but less of the standard markings of Chaos.

One other thing to note is that the Red Corsairs are similar to the Emperor’s Children in that they have a less defined color scheme – they can use any mix of red, black, and gold in their armor or trim, in any combination. While I’m of the mind that you should generally focus on red armor with black trim mixed with a few black armor elements with gold trim, you can do this however you want, such as with the marines I painted below.

Here the primary focus is red armor with black trim but you can see some places where I used gold trim on red armor, and there are models I’ve done with red trim on black armor. You can play around with it to figure out what you like best, and save gold trim on red armor for characters and champions like Huron Blackheart.

One final, fun note: It’s worth looking at the Red Corsairs image presented in the second release of Codex: Chaos Space Marines 3rd edition, which featured Red Corsairs who marked their armor with big red “Xs” and featured red pauldrons and other elements. I don’t think this works well for building a cohesive army but if you want to go this route, there’s precedent for it.

The Red Corsairs are a cool faction in the 40k lore and I’d wanted to do them for a long time, but they never really fit in with my plan to do the nine traitor legions. That changed back in 2019 when it turns out that every competitive CSM list in 8th edition needed a Red Corsairs Battalion detachment to proc an extra 3 CP. Truly wild times.

So I set out to paint a few squads of Red Corsairs for my army. This was right after the now-current plastic Chaos Space Marines had released, and I had a pretty fun time converting them and picking bits for them. For more on that process, check out the Heraldry section above.

I started by priming this model black.

Step 1. Armor Basecoats

This starts by laying down the red basecoat. For this guy I went pretty simple, with red armor on the greaves, pauldrons, arms, and chest plate using Mephiston Red. This is pretty much what I’d do as a “default” on my Red Corsairs. The general idea is to use black trim on red and gold trim on black. The other combos look OK but aren’t really fitting the aesthetic I ‘m goin for.

Step 2. Shading Reds

Next I shaded the red armor using a few thin coats of Carroburg Crimson. The idea is to shade it by doing progressive layers moving downward on the armor to create a smoother transition from lighter red to darker red.

Step 3. Metal Bits

Next comes the metal bits – these are just painted Leadbelcher. You can swap steps 2 and 3 if you want, but this step has to come before you highlight the black parts, as you want to get things like underarmor and the mouth grill painted before the black armor.

Step 4. Black Highlights

Now it’s time to highlight the black parts. This is done with Corvus Black, and I’ll do this on not just the gauntlets and helmet but also the black trim on the red armor. In darker light you can’t really see the transition from this to Abaddon Black, but it’s worth smoothing the transitions, which I do with mixes of Corvus Black and Black Legion and some shades of Nuln Oil. I also shade the metal bits with Nuln Oil.

Step 5. Trim and Edge Highlights

Next up is to do all the edge highlights. On the red armor, this is done with Evil Sunz Scarlet, doing interior panel lines around the trim. For the black armor, gun casing, and black armor trim, I’ll do edge highlights with Mechanicus Standard Grey. If you’re going hard enough on these to do a second edge highlight, then I’d recommend Wild Rider Red for an additional corner highlight on the red parts and Celestra Grey for additional corner highlights on the black parts.

Step 6. Gold, Leather, and Bone

Next up is basically filling in the basecoats on all the other details. I paint the bone parts with Rakarth Flesh, the leather with Gorthor Brown, and the gold parts with Retributor Armour. These all share a common element in that I’m going to wash them with the same color. I also paint the loincloth at this point, giving it a coat of Grey Seer that I’ll wash with Apothecary White and highlight with Grey Seer and Reaper Pure White.

Step 7. Washes and Final Details

Time for the finishing touches. Those gold, bone, and leather elements all get a wash of Agrax Earthshade, then they’re highlighted with their base colors. For the bone parts, they’ll get a second highlight pass of Reaper Polished Bone. Depending on how hard I’m going, I’ll also do rivets here. For gold trim and red armor, I’ll do silver rivets with Runefang Steel. For black armor and trim, I’ll paint the rivets with Retributor Armour, which just looks way better.

And that’s it – I’m happy with the final model and I think the bit selection really goes a long way to communicating that this was a loyalist marine more recently. Now they just need a leader…

You might have noticed my Huron isn’t the official model. I built this Huron as a conversion back in 2019 for my NOVA army, and decided to just convert him after looking at the official model, which I felt was too short and stunty compared to the newer Chaos Space Marine kits being released.

Converting Huron

A lot of the inspiration for my Huron conversion came from the Eternal Hunt blog, which continues to be a great hobby blog for Chaos-related conversions. I decided to use the same base for my Huron – the Dark Vengeance Chosen with Power Fist. Although shortner than modern Chosen, at the time these guys were among the bulkiest options for Chaos Space Marines and visually they still fit pretty well with the modern chaos marine sculpts. That said, it was also a pain in the ass to cut them up – I’d definitely recommend starting with one of the newer Chosen or the Blackstone Fortress Chaos Lord these days.

I started by cutting the head off the model and replacing it with a Space Marine head with a bionic eye. The eye is important, though this was ultimately the best head I could get ahold of at the time. I think there was a better option in the Devastator kit, but no one had it. Leaving the cables from the former head in place worked well here as it gave me some cables I could connect into Huron’s mouth.

The next step was Huron’s wargear — I used the Dark Vengeance Chosen power axe arm to do his axe, and cut up and glued a Raptor flamer to his Power Fist to make the custom weapon for the Tyrant’s Claw. A Chaos Warrior icon over his backpack completed the principle look that I was going for, and I used green stuff to fill some remaining gaps. In retrospect, I should have turned the halo around – it looks like it’s backwards now.

Not too bad, though I wasn’t happy with how he looked yet. His head wasn’t suitably messed-up, and there wasn’t anything connecting the fist and the flamer. Looking to do a bit more, I dug up some guitar string I had in my bitz box and cut that up to make some piping that would connect the flamer tank on his backpack to the heavy flamer, and also added some to his head to make him look more fucked up and machine-like. I still need to file down a bit of the green stuff, but between the wires and some final bits I added, I really like how he turned out.

The completed Huron Conversion

Rear view

For his familiar, just ended up using the familiar that comes with the Chaos Terminator Lord model, cause I had a few of those and have never used them for anything anyways.

Painting Huron

Painting Huron wasn’t particularly different from the rest of the Red Corsairs. I followed the studio scheme for him to make it a bit more obvious what his deal was, giving him gold trim across the model. This gives him a bit more of a red-and-gold scheme than I’d normally prefer but it works out OK, and the armor on his arms, legs, and feet is black. I went with paler skin for his face – Rakarth Flesh as the base – looking to emphasize his pale, wretched state.