House Guards - A new purpose for the Corinium Fifth

Big WH40K or WFB armies just seem out of the question for me these days.  To be honest GWs (understandable from a business point of view) push toward larger and larger armies has put me off a bit - the thought of painting hundreds of figures for a WFB army makes me shudder.  There may be a time when I can get down to painting large armies, but for the foreseeable future I'm concentrating on warband sized armies for skirmish games, special characters, and a bit of whatever takes my fancy.

This has meant my grand(ish) plan for the Corinium Imperial Guard Army has fallen by the way side for now, but the miniatures are not wasted!  Having played our first Rogue Trader session a couple of weeks back, we noted that it was difficult to keep track of what was going on in a positional sense (the words "spatial awareness" were used), so we were using dice on a coffee table to represent where the characters, NPCs, etc were.  I know we're meant to use our imagination, but already having painted a model to represent the Seneschal, I was sat there thinking how much better this would be with some nicely painted up miniatures (I mentioned this at the end of the last post).  So with a major burst of enthusiasm (don't you just love that surge of energy when you get a new idea?), I grabbed a couple of Vostroyan Guardsmen and created a couple of "House Guards" to try and keep our glorious leader from getting himself and the rest of us killed look sharp and intimidating when we're planet-side.

Please forgive me the conceit, but I reckon I hit the spot with these chaps - I tried to combine a lighter colour scheme with some grimdark, and not outshine the paint jobs on the main characters.  Our Rogue Trader, "Roy Siegfried" (I'm not kidding - I'm going to use the Kabuki Scif Fi Napoleon miniature to represent him), is a somewhat extravagant character, so I figured his guards, the "White Tigers", would be ornately armed and armoured.  Their uniform is loosely based on Napoleonic Austrians, which felt appropriate too.

The metalwork was a little different to usual:

• Base:  Vallejo German Grey
• Shade:  Badab Black
• H1:  Dry-brush of Boltgun Metal
• H2:  Dry-brush of Chainmail

It looks a lot lighter than this in the pictures, but that will be explained later.  The Shakos were based and shaded at the same time with the same colours, but were then highlighted with Adeptus Battlegrey, Codex Grey and white.

I wanted the jackets to be an off white, rather than a pristine uniform colour.  I think it looks a bit more "believable" as a uniform colour than a blu-ish white:

• Base:  Khemri Brown
• H1: Karak Stone
• H2: Karak Stone and white
• H3: Pure white

I'll admit now I can't for the life of me remember how I did the green.  Devlan Mud was involved (inevitably) and Catachan Green was one of the highlights I'm sure.  Other than that, not a clue - see how important it is to write things down?

The red was my normal scheme, with a slight twist as I try to incorporate more of the new GW range into my painting:

• Base:  Mechrite Red
• Shade:  Devlan Mud
• H1:  Mechrite Red
• H2:  Blood Red
• H3:  Blood Red and Squig Orange
• H4:  Top edge highlight of Squig Orange

GW totally revamping their paint range was initially disappointing for me, as plenty of colours I used (particularly Charadon Granite, like many other people) do not have a decent alternative.  However, this has caused me to start thinking more about the colours and techniques I use, and I'm moving away from the same old schemes that I always used to fall back on - not getting stale is a good thing in my opinion.  Here I've used Squig Orange rather than the old Solar Macharius Orange - the difference isn't huge, but the red is slightly less fiery due to Squig Orange being slightly more peach in colour.

The skin was another area where I tried a new paint, while using my normal Tallarn Flesh and Ogryn Flesh combination, for highlighting I replaced P3 Ryn Flesh with GW's new Kislev Flesh, which is more yellow in colour.

Next up is the browns, and the use of yet another new colour from GW.  I'd used Dryad Bark on the Brutal miniature from the last post, and here I used it as a base coat for both the wood on the gun and the leather pieces, plus the gold bits dotted around the miniatures.  The wood:

• Base:  Dryad Bark
• Shade:  Devlan Mud
• H1:  Dryad Bark
• H2:  Dryad Bark and Graveyard Earth
• H3:  Graveyard Earth

Nothing special, but does the trick.

The leather is next - it's nearly the same process as for the wood on the gun, but substituting Snakebite Leather for the Graveyard Earth, and adding in some Dheneb Stone to the mix for an extra final highlight.  At this point I was pretty much done, but I did want to grimdark them up a bit, so using a little Blanchitsu, I washed the whole model in a 1:1:5 mix of Devlan Mud, Gryphonne Sepia and water, and once this was dry, a very, very light drybrush of white to pick out the top highlights.

The last thing to do on the guy with the facemask, was a little OSL from the lenses.  I know this isn't realistic as there's no good reason for light to be coming out of the lenses, but it looks good and quite frankly that's reason enough to do it in my book.

I painted the obvious (protruding) bits in Solar Macharius Orange, then gave the general area a couple of washes of Baal Red, and then a wash of a 1:2 mix of Devlan Mud and water, just to tone everything down to the level of the rest of the miniature.  The raised bits were then picked out again in the Orange, and a final highlight of Iyanden Darksun was added to the edges where appropriate.

...and they were done!  At our last gaming night they were presented to our Rogue Trader for inspection, and he gave them the thumbs up, so we're good to go.  I'll need to get a few more done (he needs a lot of protection - see the upcoming report from Jez in the Ancible next month), and Jez has provided me with a Tech Priest model and some Servitors too.  The models for my Arch Militant and our Missionary have also been ordered, so be prepared for plenty of Rogue Trader themed stuff in the next few months...

As always, comments and criticism welcome!