Neophytes and Decals

A shot of the latest round of finished Neophytes.  Obviously I don't use scout models for these.  I want my Black Templars to have a medieval crusading army look, and while I don't mind Scouts on their own now that BT can take them, I don't want my Crusader squads with all their heraldry and cloth sci-fi'd up by sticking a bunch of scouts in with them.

My solution was to take Dark Angels models, carefully avoiding DA heraldry, and simply don't add the shoulder pads or back packs.  The result feels to me like a 'kiddy marine in training', which is exactly what Neophytes are. :)  For the back I cover the backpack connection point with scrolls meant to 1. hide this area, and 2. represent oaths of moment taken by the Neophytes in order to advance in their training.  Mostly these oaths are 'stand in front of the real marines and get shot'.  For shoulder pads I use the very small crosses from the Forgeworld transfer sheet.

Speaking of decals, I can't speak highly enough of the FW decal sheet.  I love the look of decals on space marine shoulders, but the default ones are simply too large to nicely fold over the shoulder.  I've tried multiple brands of Decal setter/melter, and different techniques, right down to shaving and cutting the decal, or painting over the result.  The solution appears to be: use a smaller decal.  Here is an example of one of the smaller FW decals, next to one of the regular ones.  I think it still looks great, and it goes on very easily, conforms perfectly to the shoulder pad with almost no work.  Keep in mind that the regular one pictured here is one of the nicer ones I've done.  A lot have slight signs of mangling due to the difficult process of attaching these things. :)