Jump!

As part of the trade with Dan, FG got two boxes of Assault Space Marines, one of which he passed to me.

These are pretty good sculpts, and the legs are made such that only part of one foot is touching the ground, to give them a dynamic look. Add to that separate torso, arms and heads, you have a lot of scope for posing.

FG and I discussed various ways of basing them so they look like they are 'flying'. We toyed with the idea of basing them off the base with some sort of stem, but thought that would make them look like they are levitating instead of jumping.

Eventually I decided to work with something I already had and was familiar with: resin bases.

The sloping surfaces on the 'slate' type base I have chosen for my Space Marines meant I could pose them in a more 'leaning' attitude than I could on a flat base, giving the impression that they are propelling themselves off or cushioning a landing. The soft nature of the resin base and the plastic figures made it easy to drill and pin - had the figure been metal instead of plastic, it would be rather unbalanced and liable to tip over during gaming.

There are four more of these to go, plus a chaplain figure which I am planning to build with a magnetic backpack stud so he can be fielded with the normal backpack or a jetpack (the jetpack plus plasma pistol combo seems to be a favourite amongst 40K SM players, so I thought I might as well do that in case I ever play 40K).