Calling in support...

Another of the "to be finished" list has been completed and this time it's one of the Regimental Advisors blister:

A bit of a quick and dirty paint job, he's designed to fit in as part of the small Rogue Trader set of miniatures I've been painting over the last year or so.  Therefore he's got the white and red uniform of the good ship "Siegfried and Roy".  The white was simply a base of Karak Stone, highlighted with Rakarth Flesh, Pallid Wych Flesh and Ceramite White.  These were simple layers, so no blending - I didn't want to mess about with this mini, just get him done and off the workbench

The metalwork was simple - AP Gun Metal, Nuln Oil Wash and Gun Metal plus Chainmail highlight, for the steel, and then my usual Dryad Bark and Auric Armour Gold for the gold.

For some reason the red came out a little shiny, and I'm still toying with the idea of re-varnishing the model, to knock the shine off.  Dryad Bark is the base again, washed with Agrax Earthshade and highlighted with the old Scab Red and Blood Red.  The Leather is Dryad Bark highlighted with Steel Legion Drab.

Quick, and fairly easy, he didn't take too long to finish off (he'd been sat there with only the gold and steel done for months), and he fits in quite nicely with the other members of the crew so far:

His jacket's a little lighter than the rest, but it doesn't look too bad.

Not sure what's coming next, I'm quite unamused by this, so I may be taking a break from Games Workshop stuff for a bit, so the next few posts will be a bit random in content.

Situation normal then?

As always comments and criticism welcome!

Your humble Space Marine, Andy.

Warning shot in the head sir?

It's been a while since my last post, so to get back in the swing of things I'll introduce to you a certain Balthazar Weiss, the Arch-Militant of the good (bad) ship "Siegfried and Roy", last seen stood atop a transport vehicle, blasting away at another Rogue Trader's foot soldiers with his hellgun, while the rest of his merry band were busy falling over each other trying to pick up a "relic".

Balthazar likes to fade into the background, follows orders, prefers others to do the talking, and quietly and efficiently cleans up when others make a mess.  Due to a rather good characteristic roll at character generation time, plus weapon specialisation and some helpful equipment, Mr Weiss has an insanely high Ballistic Skill, which makes him very effective in a firefight.  Our glorious leader is a decadent, spontaneous nut job, who jumps in first and thinks afterwards, so this skill is going to come in very handy...

Miniature wise, he's not the best paint job in the world, but I wanted him done quickly and went for neat and tidy.  Unfortunately the model is quite a bad cast with plenty of rough areas that needed cleaning up, and in some cases, make the best of a bad job.  There's very little in the way of conversion, save for removing the Imperial eagles from his armour and equipment.  While he's a loyal citizen of the Imperium, he'll frequently have to go where Imperial Law is not welcome, so the eagles had to go.  The base is from Model Display Products, and he's positioned on it to look like he's going up a step

 

The dark grey of the armour was Vallejo German Grey, Highlighted with Adeptus Battlegrey and Codex Grey, washed with very watered down black paint, and then re-highlighted in places with the Battlegrey.  I think this works OK, although it does look a little flat, but it fits in with the stay-in-the-shadows, no-nonsense character that he is.  The green cables are a base of P3 Cryx Base, washed with Agrax Earthshade, then highlighted with Catachan Green and Deathworld Forest.

The leather is a base of Dryad Bark, washed again with the Earthshade and highlighted with the the base colour and increasing amounts of Graveyard Earth.  The metal is equally simple, Leabelcher, shaded with Nuln Oil, and then highlighted with Chainmail.

In this picture you can see one of the casting issues that I couldn't fix, on the top of the hellgun - I didn't want to damage the rest of the model trying to fix that, so it had to stay as it is.  To be fair it's more noticeable in this picture than it is when seeing the model with the naked eye.

The off-white of the trousers and shirt is painted using the House-guards method.  I started with a base of Khemri Brown, highlighted with increasing amounts of Karak Stone and then white - it's a bit patchy in places on the trousers, and suffers from me breaking my own rule about laying down a solid base coat, but the sleeves turned out nicely.  The base is done in the same way as I did for the Seneschal, with the addition of a glaze of Gryphonne Sepia to tone everything down, as I thought the Seneschal's base was a bit too in-your-face and drew attention away from the miniature.

So the Siegfried and Roy has its second character painted, and another of my half finished collection on my painting desk is completed.  Like I said at the start, it's not the best paint job in the world, but it's effective and it was quick to do, and he does look the part.  Just in case you were wondering about the post title, it's kind of become Balthazar's catchphrase...

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

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! 

Rogue Trader Character 1

Back to a little 40K this post, but a slightly different slant.  The gaming group I belong to (consisting entirely of Ancible team members) have been rolling up characters for the Rogue Trader RPG from Fantasy Flight games.  Now I know RPGs don't tend to need miniatures, but I thought it would be fun to paint up some miniatures to represent each of us.  First up (as it was the one miniature I had which could be painted up straight away), is the Seneschal, the Rogue Trader's Diplomat/Merchant/Agent type character.

According to the rulebook, he's supposed to swan about in robes, but the person playing this role is a bit more, shall we say, "militaristic" in nature, so I went for a model in a uniform - you may recognise him as the fleet officer from the Imperial Guard Regimental Advisors blister.  I went for a grey undercoat again - I have a feeling this will be taking over from black for the majority of my miniatures from now on.  You will probably have guessed that it's my usual way of doing yellow, so I won't go into that here, but if I'd done it again, I may have highlighted up further, and used the new GW Lamenter's Yellow glaze to finish it off.

The boots and other black bits were done slightly differently than normal - and it's a method I've seen across many blogs recently, so apologies if I don't give credit where it's due, as I can't remember where I learned it from.  A base coat of Vallejo German Grey is highlighted with Adeptus Battlegrey, Codex Grey and then Astronomicon Grey.  The whole lot is then washed with Badab Black, which tones everything down.  At the other extreme, the white elements are a base of Khemri Brown, shaded with Gryphonne Sepia, highlighted with Dheneb Stone and then pure white.

The red (which I'm particularly pleased with) is a base coat of Mechrite Red, shaded with Devlan Mud.  In some places this still came out a little too maroon for my tastes, so a glaze/wash of Gryphonne Sepia, brough it back to the warmer red I was looking for.  This was then highlighted by mixing Blood Red into the base coat through to pure Blood Red, and then some Solar Macharius Orange mixed in for the final highlights.    The red really stands out on the miniature, and I think it works really well with the more muted yellow.  

The hair was done in a similar way to the black leather, just with the highlights of Adeptus Battlegrey and Codex Grey added back in after the black wash, to give him that "slightly older" look (I'm going to get such a kicking on Saturday for that...).  The gold is a base coat of Scorched Brown, highlighted with Burnished  Gold and a 1:1 mix of the gold and Mithril Silver.  The skin was Tallarn Flesh washed with Ogryn Flesh then highlighted with Tallarn Flesh and P3 Ryn Flesh, trying to keep a ruddy complexion.  

The base is another of my favourite parts of the model - I wanted it to look like the paved garden of a rich trading house.  It's nothing complicated, just squares of plastic sheet cut into 5mm squares glued to the base.  The squares were painted Dheneb Stone and Scaly Green (a paint defunct even before the current new paint range) and washed with Devlan Mud.  The light stones were highlighted with Dheneb Stone and then a Stone and white mix, and the green stones were highlighted with Scaly Green and then a Green and Rotting Flesh mix.  The model was then sprayed with Humbrol matt varnish and some seriously old school GW flock (I'm talking 20 year old stuff) was glued on to look like weeds growing between the paving slabs.  This was finished off with another spray of varnish and he was finished!

I love this miniature, he was an absolute blast to paint, and it was nice to do something brightly coloured.    The base probably clashes with the miniature a little, but I can live with that.  The rest of the characters in our motley band are the Rogue Trader himself (opium smoking hedonist apparently), a Missionary (ecclesiastical nut job), an Explorator (a tech priest) and my character, the Arch Militant (a hellgun armed combat specialist).  I'm also going to do the Astropath model to represent the GM (or he'll feel left out).  Most of these will be small conversions of existing GW models, so hopefully they should get done over the next couple of months.

At the moment, our ship will be named the "Siegfried and Roy" - I'm hoping this will change...

Of course this Saturday is Salute 2012, where I'm going to do some shopping, some gawking and hopefully meet a few people (including some fellow bloggers).  If you see a fairly tall, dark haired, bespectacled, bedraggled, young(ish) man with a grey "Bag of Holding" over his shoulder, talking like a west country farmer, please feel free to say hello and offer him food if he looks hungry (he's usually hungry...).

As always, comments and criticism welcome!