The Praetorians - Tactical Squad #4 [Space Marines]

I've been unable to paint for quite a while due to trips all over the country, my increased workload and other meaningless excuses resulting in a nearly finished librarian model, a razorback in pieces (although some sections are completely painted it is nonetheless in pieces) and only 7 men of the first tac' squad finished.

Last night I decided I would dedicate a single hour to painting (this drastically became less time due to other chores) and I decided I would give this time to cleaning up those 7 men I had already completed before I continued with the rest. Something about them bothers me; I don't feel that the colour design works and I couldn't quite work out why.

After a certain amount of deliberation I came to the conclusion that the two 'bone' shoulder pads were not working as the model didn't look like it was a single design but two models amalgamated into one. I am therefore trialling phase two, which now looks like:

 

This translates quite nicely onto the model and after a quick repaint the squad looks like this:

Bare in mind that these were done rather swiftly last night in bad light and still need to be cleaned up and inked but overall I think the effect works quite nicely.

I'm not sure what I want to do with this chap. Yes, I know he is a mismatch of different armour types and has the wrong shoulder pad on his left shoulder (see below) but quite frankly I don't know enough of the fluff to really care - I personally really like him as a model and it seems a bit of a shame to repaint both of his shoulder pads.