UCM Legionnaires - painted and based!

Hey all!

When I first looked at the legionnaire figures I can't say I was impressed, there are no facial features and overall they seemed more two dimensional than the Scourge warriors.

But!

After painting and basing them I take it all back, they look brilliant on the table and any extra detail is unnecessary.

I tried to keep the paint scheme for these as simple as possible (partly due to my general low-interest in these legionnaires... and partly because I can't wait to try a different paint scheme on the rest of the Scourge models!) so I stuck to bright, bold colours followed by an Agrax Earthshade wash.

Primer - Army Painter: Army green
Boots - GW: Abaddon black
Rifle/RPG - AP: Shining silver
Face - GW: Bestigor flesh
Sidearm - GW: Skrag brown

The bases received a lot more care and attention, as I've painted the legionnaires and warriors I've found that the basing has a much greater effect than the figures themselves.

So the bases were given coarse sand and a few 'large boulders' (read: tiny gravel), based in GW: Zamesi desert, washed with Agrax Earthshade and drybrushed with Terminatus stone, then a few patches of Army Painter's static tufts were applied.

Dropzone Commander - Scourge Warrior Horde painted!

Here's some photos of the Scourge Warrior Horde, I'm really chuffed about the bases.

I like to think the UCM Sabre's follow signposted speed limits during battle

Dropzone Commander - UCM (New Project)

Hey long time no type!

I've been busily collecting, constructing, painting, battling and crying at my inevitable defeat in the last year or so! Just no blogging - Oops!

I've recently acquired a starter set of Dropzone Commander - a 10mm scale game produced by Hawk Wargames. This set has a force of the neuroparasitic Scourge and the stalwart United Colonies of Mankind (UCM).

If you want to see more about the game mechanics take a peek at the Hawk Wargames youtube channel.

It is so fast to paint at the 10mm scale! I painted the entire Scourge starter force in two weeks! (I am not a fast painter)

So this week I've been working on the UCM starter force which I'm painting in the standard army green colours from the rulebook.

So far I've painted all of the ground vehicles and magnetised the bear APC's and their condor dropship.

Here is a gif I put together of one of the sabre main battle tanks being painted:

Hopefully I'll be updating this blog more frequently in future! :-)

Ice World Basing Experiment #2

XV25 Stealth Suit

This is a bit of a mixture of two painting projects;

1. Painting my Tau XV25 Stealth Suits so that they look 'mid-stealth on' as I like to think of it (think of the illegitimate offspring of the human torch and invisible woman), with part of their suits the same colouring as the background and part still looking like the suits of the rest of my Tau cadre.
2. Experimenting with snow/ice world basing.

This time I used a PVA to lay down a sand base, followed by painting Rhinox Hide  and drybrushing with Skrag Brown. 

I then cut two small pieces of sprue with a scalpel into crystalline shapes and polystyrene cemented them into place (I'd left two gaps for the crystals).
Ceramite White basecoat on the crystals, and Scar White on parts of the ground.
Then Lothern Blue layer on the crystals followed by 50/50 Lothern Blue/Scar White, drybrushed onto the crystals, then adding a tiny amount of Scar White to the mix each time, I then added another 5 layers of drybrushing on the crystals until I was essentially drybrushing pure Scar White only onto the very tips of the crystals.

Finally I dabbed PVA onto the white parts of the ground and small amounts of PVA were added to parts of the Shas'ui's hooves (roughly equivalent to where I find snow kicked up onto my trousers in the winter and sticking), and some PVA onto the top of the XV25 suit, onto the static parts where I imagine snow could pitch and is less likely to be knocked off (unlike the arms and Burst Cannon).

So, what do you think? Does the stealth suit look mid-stealth? (I'm hoping that as part of a unit and army painted with Ice terrain the white will look more like the background.. well fingers crossed!).

How does the base look?

Ice World Basing Experiment #1

Hi there, I have recently begun collecting a Tau army as well as Clan Skitr, now my Tau are from Sept Dal'yth (purple markings) and I've decided on a colour scheme of blue-greys and ice blues as Tau are known to apply camouflage to their armour and I'm envisioning this army on a desolate ice world with solid ice underfoot, drifts of snow and patches of partly-melted slush and slurry.

This blue-white shiny glistening ice is perfect

I love the blue tones to this ice

I've got some Citadel Snow 'flock' and Mourn Mountain terrain paint.

So my first attempt was the paint a bare base with Mourn Mountain, followed by a drakenhof nightshade wash.

Unfortunately the effect was not as blue as I'd hoped.

I then added PVA to all top surfaces and used the snow flock.

I can almost hear the crunch of fresh snow.

I had left a small area behind each hoof  bare of snow to represent hoofprints of crushed/melted snow, I then added a layer of 'ardcoat to give it a wet look.

Unfortunately I also added a Lothern Blue/Lahmian Medium 10/90 to the hoofprints... which failed miserably as it seeped almost instantly into the surrounding snow.

Hmm... more experimentation is called for!

I've seen some snow bases that show more of the earthy ground beneath, that is what I'll work on next.

Painting demo

I've painted a set of five space marines sequentially,  so that each step of th3 painting process can be seen (ish).

Hopefully this will help the kids improve their technique; at the warhammer club I run at school.

Space marines:
1. Primed with Imperial Primer.
2. Basecoated, armour is macragge blue, gunmetal and insignia are Leadbelcher,  gunbody is abaddon black, eye-lenses and wax seal are mephiston red, finally shoulder trim and script are ceramite white. Backpack skull with Balthasar Gold.
3. Washed, armour with blue ink (watered down 50/50), gunmetal and insignia with nuln oil, wax and eye-lenses with carroburg crimson, script with agrax earthshade. Backpack skull washed with nuln oil.
4. Mid lighted, armour Kantor Blue/Calgar Blue (50/50). Highlight gunmetal and insignia with ironbreaker. Backpack skull with gehennas gold.
5. Edge highlighted armour with Teclis blue. 2nd layer of ceramite white on shoulder trim. Base sanded, painted rhinox hide, drybrushed doombull brown with patches of scorched earth static grass. Eye-lenses highlight troll slayer orange, a dot of ceramite  then 'ardcoat for shine.

Warpstone

So, after finishing my clanrats I'm working on the rat Ogres and Master Moulder.  Before attempting the gigantic chunk of warpstone sticking from the shoulder of one of the Rat Ogres I decided to paint the smaller pieces of warpstone on the Master Moulder's prodstick.

Step 1:

Prime the whole model in chaos black.

Step 2:

Basecoat the warpstone in Abaddon Black followed by 33/66 Caliban Green/Abaddon Black. (Not entirely sure the first coat of AB was necessary)

Step 3:

Drybrush with Kabalite Green. A bit heavily. 

Step 4:

Drybrush with Warpstone Glow, more gently.

Step 5:

Edge highlight using a Fine Detail brush and Moot Green.

Glow

Step 6:

After surrounding metal has been layered and highlighted.

Wash closest metal to the warpstone with Biel-Tan Green.

Step 7:

Layer Kabalite Green.

Step 8:

Highlight Warpstone Glow, onto the Kabalite Green but only on the areas closer to the warpstone chunk.

Step 9:

Final highlight Moot Green on spot closest to the warpstone.

I found that after all that the glow looked too stark against the model, so I applied an extra was of Biel-Tan in the (hopefully not so) vain attempt to blend the transitions between greens in a little.

What do you think?