Tempestus Aquilons the Beginning

Part 1: The Plan

Every project starts somewhere. This one starts with good intentions last Christmas when I bought the, then new, Kill Team Hivestorm box with the best of intentions. The idea was to get two Warhammer 40K forces, terrain and rules all in one go, with the added bonus of the solo play rules included in Hivestorm.

I relatively quickly got some paint on the Vespid Stingwings following the Warhipster painting guide. But with life taking over, I was soon left with tabletop ready painted Vespid, primed terrain and not much else. Fast forward to Christmas this year and submitting my Brush Wielders Union pledge photos for 2025 and pulling together my 2026 goals to send off to Simon. I sat staring at the pile of grey plastic looking for inspiration of what to include in an achievable goal. The Tempestus Aquilons were among them on my desk, waiting, with the air of quiet accusation that unpainted miniatures tend to have! Not being able to handle the judgement of the little men and thinking that I would be one step closer to playing a game, they made it onto the goal list, you can see the rest in my BWU 2026 goals post.

This is the first post in what will be an ongoing series documenting the project from here to completion, the decisions made, the techniques attempted, and the inevitable moments where something goes wrong and has to be quietly fixed before the next photograph. If you’re painting your own Kill Team or just enjoy watching someone else navigate the process, welcome along.

The Miniatures

The Tempestus Aquilons are are equiped with grav chutes and make up an elite aerial assault troops for the Asta Milltarum. They are heavily armoured, aggressive, rapid deployment and close-quarters combat, and can also be equipped with hot-shot lasguns. The kit went together cleanly and the sculpts are excellent. Building them straight from the box following the instructions was relatively straightforward. There are a couple of gotchas with the pistols where you have an either, or situation which leads to compromise build.

Without too much fuss they are assembled, cleaned up, and primed. The hard part is apparently about to begin.

The Scheme

I have decided not to following the studio or the one used by the Warhipster in the painting guiden. Instead I’ve settled on something of my own: light blue armour, off-white fatigues, and bronze trim it is based on some test models I painted for OnePageRules Human Defence Forces. It’s a combination that is far from Grim Dark and should give the unit a clean, almost formal military look while still being visually interesting on the table and not disappear into the background.

I have decided to go for bronze trim rather than gold, my Space Marine chapter has quite a lot of gold on them so wanted to break away from that. Depending on how the first model comes out, I might pivot to silver, but want to give the bronze a chance.

The light blue will help to keep things bright. Too dark and it’ll lose the crispness I’m after, but if I go too light it risks looking washed out. I’m planning to use contrast type paints for the base and then work up from there through highlighting rather than relying on a wash.

White fatigues are, of course, completely straightforward and will present absolutely no challenges whatsoever. This is a lie. White is horrible to paint and everyone knows it.

What’s Next

The next post will cover getting the base colours down, the test of whether the scheme works. I am planning to post up some progress photos, I’ve not worked out how I am going to photograph them so may be a little rough and ready, no doubt matching the paint job! Hopefullt a case of where it looks terrible before it starts looking better.