Getting back into that Infinity Groove!

Instead of blogging I've been busy with a number of different games related projects. Some of them are too early to talk about but one that I have been focusing on is just lots of fun to share - I've painted a bunch of Infinity minis and played through the Red Veil intro campaign with my buddy Claes! Woop!

I think I've mentioned earlier that we split the Red Veil starter last year and were planning to use it as a way to get (back) into the game. It would be a completely new introduction for Claes and for me it would work as a kind of recalibration as my brain shifts from N2 to N3. Our initial goal was to paint the minis before starting playing, but as things weren't moving much I thought we'd flip it around instead and play first to get our inspiration for painting!

We actually played the first two missions back late last year so it took us almost six months to get to mission three. And even though I said we'd just go on and play with unpainted minis inspiration struck as I started re-reading the Red Veil booklet and I sat down to paint my two Yaokong remotes and my two Yaozao that have been in a semi-painted state for years! After that I went ahead and painted the complete Red Veil starter and I even built and painted terrain for my own Infinity table. A frenzy of Infinity related activity in May and June as it were.

I've told myself that I'll go back and take proper photos with a camera, but who knows when I'll actually get around to that! So phone pics are better than no pics. Let's start with the Remotes.

I wanted to continue the kind of police-looking colour scheme that i started with my Guija and I thikn it worked out nicely! I even updated my painting method to make it easier and quicker to paint. These are of course magnetized so I can switch loadouts at will - even so I think I might get two more. They're just so cool! Some of the best old school Infinity models for sure.

The Yaozao were super quick to paint, using almost only whites to make them stand out. Just wish I had posed them a little differently!

Just had to take a family picture with my mech-engineer and her robotic buddies. Considering all of these minis are from the early years of Infinity it's amazing how well they still hold up! Of course, I won't be able to resist that new Guija sculpt forever... and then this guy can work as a O-Yoroi proxy until that gets a resculpt. Hehe!

Next up we have the Red Veil minis, which I finished in batches.

I started with the light and medium infantry. The new Zhanshi are a great step up from the old ones and they've certainly taken their growth hormons as the scale has creeped up a bit. Really like that there are two female and one male sculpt in this box, as it's usually the other way around. Part of me would like to get the SWC box, but another part whispers at me to just use Keisotsu instead.

The Tiger Soldier has also got a great face lift, although this particular sculpt can sometimes be hard to "read". It's a cool, very dynamic sculpt, but also a bit all over the place.

Love painting the new heavy infantry! As you can see I've changed the colours I use for the HI compared to my old stuff. I liked the white recipe I used for the remotes so much that I wanted to use it for the HI, leaving the blue-grey armour for light troops and making HI white to stand out. The Hsien got a grey collar thoug, mostly for the back spikes to have something to contrast against.

The Zuyong is one of my favourite Yu Jing sculpts as it looks like he's peaking around the corner while communicating to the troops behind him. At first I wasn't sure about the relaxed pose of the Hsien, but after painting and playing with him I've actually come to like the cocky style of it. I also gave him a red faceplace, which I've wanted to do since I saw it on Tim's (of The Tau of War) Shang-Ji back in 2011! I think it really helps bring focus to the model.

Last out was the ninja who was quite quick to get done. She's very monochrome since it's all just different shades of grey, but since it's a ninja I think it works pretty well. I have another couple waiting in the painting queue.

And here's a group shot!

And another one with some additional friends!

As you might have noticed I've mixed Micro Art Studios' Urban War bases with Antenociti's Hex bases and they look similar enough for it to work fine. The Antenociti bases has the advantage of being thinner but doesn't look quite as nice as the MAS ones, and doesn't have as much texture. I thikn I'll continue to mix bases, and maybe add the tri-hex bases as well, as greater variety is a good thing.

Now, let's have a look at the terrain. I mentioned Test of Honour in my last post and that it has inspired me to build some proper feodal Japanese terrain. However, I also wanted to do this as it would cross over well and work for my planned Infinity table as well. I ordered some model bamboo and trees and other stuff but when I actually got it I felt it would just be silly to start with a completely new project before I had a playable table for Infinity.

So instead I set about using part of the material for building up my Neon Lotus based table for Infinity. What's missing in the pictures here are many more Warsenal planters (as they're awaiting flowers), the actual Neon Lotus paper terrain (as it's awaiting foamcore reinforcements) and a bunch of scatter terrain I just got from Zen Terrain. But you can see the kind of vibe I'm going for. Of course, the aim is to gradually phase out the Neon Lotus terrain in favour of stuff from Zen and other manufacturers.

Sakura trees are awesome for setting the mood! Oh, and I got a MAS ITS objective set as well that I'm slowly working my way through. I have enough built and painted now to be able to play Infinity Recon, which I think will be a good next step after Red Veil.

It's great fun getting things painted and built, but the best thing about this whole project has been that Claes has gotten more inspired and is now actively working with this minis. I hope to see the first brush strokes on his Haqq fairly soon...

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Painted Grizzly for Heavy Gear

Last month Heavy Gear enthusiast and general nice guy Brandon Keith Fero organized a Heavy Gear painting competition over at the Terra Nova DMZ FB group (head on over if you are even remotely interested in Heavy Gear - it's a great group of people!). At first I felt too busy with Imperial Assault and Infinity to join up, but the more I thought about it the more I wanted to do it! For me the main reason was the motivation to actually get a mecha painted (I've found proper, hard dead lines are what works best for me) and also come up with a new way of painting as my old system, from six years ago, was a bit slow.

The choice of model was easy - the Grizzly is one of my favourite gears and as I had a couple of metal ones lying around I prepped one and got to work. I wanted a fairly relaxed look that nevertheless emphasized the size and weight of both the mech itself and the heavy autocannon it carries. Normally you have to put the cannon much higher, across the chest/cockpit, to get the two handed hold, but that didn't give me the "relaxed" look I wanted so I modified the waist a bit. Well, modified is a strong word - I pinned the torso to the waist in a way that propped it up and allowed me to fit the gun (just barely!) under the chest. The only problem is you can see the gap from some angles.

I like this picture the best as it reminds me of Ghislain Barbe's art. You can see the gap thouh! Doh!

Painting wise I wanted something fairly quick - a wash probably. After some consideration i went with VGC Khaki followed by a quick, lighter drybrush just to get the first highlights on there and then a strong tone wash. After that it was simply a matter of using Khaki/Bonewhite/Off-White to build up the hightlights. The weathering was done by dabbing German Grey around exposed areas followed by pure Off-White highlights here and there.

The black/grey areas are VMC Basalt Grey with a Nuln Oil wash followed by hightlights with Basalt Grey and Sky Grey. At first the guns also used this colour but that became too bland so I decided to do the guns with VGC Bastalt Grey/Steel Grey/Sky Grey instead for a metallic effect. Of course the guns would be perfectly maintained while the gear itself was somewhat neglected. Hehe! The missile hatches are simply Off-White and Khorne Red with some tiny highlights. For the dust effects I used Vallejo pigments Burnt Umber and Dark Yellow Ochre. And that was it! Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

Here's a good view of the Pack Gun and Grenade Launcher.

In the end I spent a little more time on it than I wanted, but I could easily cut back a bit on the weathering and the process would be much quicker. Then again, the weathering is what makes it pop I think. And it fits very well with the gritty Heavy Gear universe!

The scheme itself is fairly close to my old one although I would say it has been refined or rebooted. The old and new models could probably share a table without it looking weird.

Sorry for the slightly out of focus pictures. I'm still learning how to use my wife's new camera. :)

I really enjoyed putting this guy together and now that the Heavy Gear kickstarter box has arrived as well I have quite a bit of work ahead of me. I don't think I'll get right back into it just yet though as there are a number of games with higher priority waiting for attention. But now I have a colour scheme that looks good and paints quickly when it's time. Then again... I suppose I should really paint some opposition to my North forces so I can actually play the game!

Oh, and I was lucky enough to win that painting competition so now I have to decide on the grand prize - a tank or a gear strider. Hmm...

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Star Wars: Imperial Assault Campaign

Helloooo! Long time, no see and all that! Well... let's get into it, shall we?

About a month ago I got the urge to try the Star Wars: Imperial Assault skirmish game. I've had the core box of SWIA for more than a year but had only got to play it with my nieces which was fun, but didn't really provide the full experience. I don't exactly remember why the inclination to try the skirmish popped into my head (had I watched Episode VII again perhaps?) but there it was so I took the big box and trotted over to Anders.

In this game we learned that Vader is just as much of a badass as you think he should be!

We played twice. First the scenario from the core box with the recommended forces and then with the scenario from the IG-88 expansion (cause IG-88 is awesome!). In the first scenario I played as the rebels, four heroes and Luke, against Vader and some of his cronies. In the next I took IG-88 and some bounty hunter scum versus Luke and a more balanced rebel list, including some troopers and saboteurs.

What IG-88 brought with him to deal with those pesky rebels.

I had been a bit sceptical about the skirmish game, wondering if the old Descent mechanics would really translate well to a full on competetive game like this, but I'm happy to report that we had a blast! Not only do the mechanics flow naturally after a turn or two, it actually feel really Star Warsy (well, as long as you field reasonably thematic forces I suppose). I would actually say that the Descent mechanics work better when you have mostly ranged combat like this - which is of course entirely natural as they were originally designed for the original Doom boardgame.

So, lots of fun! Both of us were all fired up to play more - both skirmish and campaign. I was excited enough to immediately go home and start painting and Anders was excited enough to run out and buy some Rebel Troopers and last week even investing in the Bespin expansion where he will be the Imperial player in the mini campaign. Awesome!

Jyn, Gideon, Diala and Fenn.

We rounded up another couple of players and started the campaign a few days later. For the first session (covering the intro scenario and one side mission) they played with one hero each but for the second onward we decided to add Gideon to the heroes to make it a full party of four as that extra activation can have some weird effects on game balance. Anders chose Fenn the soldier while Claes took Jyn the smuggler and Anna Diala the former jedi padawan.

If you are worried about Imperial Assault spoilers you might want to skip down a bit as I'll be talking a little about the first four missions we played. Not in detail, but still.

Even though I put up stiff resistance and swarmed the terminals with Stormtroopers they still managed to win Aftermath. It was a close fight though and I managed to wound two of them and they only destroyed the last terminal on the final turn. A good sign!

Yeah, that's right! I painted the real heroes before the rebel scum!

For the next mission they chose Brace for Impact as their side mission as that would allow them to field Trooper allies in future missions. Quite a fun scenario where a number of rebel troopers are being beseiged by Imperial forces and the heroes have to a) protect them and b) interact with a terminal. I had a jolly good time mowing down those troopers with my elite stormtroopers and it looked like the Empire would win. But in the last round Claes made a clever move with Jyn and Diala (who was far away from the exit) could use the double activation to move the 20 spaces needed. Again, a great, very Star Warsy experience that came down to the wire!

That was our first session and for the second I kept painting and we were able to play with all painted miniatures but for two exceptions: General Weiss and Vader.

Fenn ran off while the others kicked probe droid ass!

The next mission was A New Threat, the first proper Story mission, and a fairly big one at that. The heroes needed to split up and interact with three different terminals, all the while being hounded by Imperial forces and having nasty surprises sprung at them when doors opened. Fenn quickly took care of his terminal while Diala and Jyn (with Gideon) stayed around to kill some probe droids before moving on. In the end it came down to a dice roll by Jyn to see if she could slice the terminal she was at, but failed just barely giving the Empire its first victory. Oh, and general Weiss turned up at the last minute with his tricked out walker but he didn't really do anything except shouting for a bit.

A Nexu ended up biting Jynn's face off, while General Weiss tried to stomp on Gideon.

Next up was Diala's attempt at getting her lightsaber! The mission was called Temptation and it has some cool mechanics for handling the dark and light side of the force. Diala can use the force to either get extra attacks (but loose willpower/time) or heal her friends and allow the enemy to attack (but gain willpower/time). The heroes are fighting of force ghosts in the form of past enemies and it culminates with a ghostly version of Vader, very much like in The Empire Strikes Back. While not at full strenght Vader is still a formidable enemy with great defence and strong attacks. The heroes managed to bring him down to one health but at that time he force choked Diala and defeated her, ending the mission with another Imperial victory.

Even with ther Trooper allies the heroes couldn't prevail agains the Empire.

With two victories for each side we're all looking forward to the next session. Fly Solo is up as the coming Story mission and after that there will be two side missions back to back. Perhaps they can recruit Han Solo as an ally, or get a reward or two to help them out in coming missions.

End spoilers!

As I mentioned I've been a very (unusually!) disciplined while painting, usually putting in a couple of hours every evening at least. Right now there are only three minis left in the first wave to finish - Weiss, Chewbacca and the Royal Guard Champion. Then I have the new Heavy Stormtroopers and Tuskens from Twin Shadows to paint as well as a couple of Hired Guns that will fit right into the current campaign. I also have Boba Fett, R2 and 3PO and Leia, but as they won't be appearing in this campaign they're further down the line.

I wanted to weather it a fair bit, but still not too much. It's more or less clean above the chin.

I used some extra weathering powders for the back machine panel. Just felt right to have it gunky.

I just finished the regular AT-ST the other day and it was great fun to paint. One of the reasons I've been able to paint every day like this is because I've, roughly, been following the excellent painting videos made by Sorastro. While they don't really cover anything new for me, it's really nice to have everything figured out for you. For me most of the hard work of painting is composition and all the tiny decisions about what colour to use and how can be tiring. Now I could just follow his step by step, modifying as I went when I had a better/quicker approach, and it was all very nice and meditative. Also, Sorastro uses washes much more than I do, so I've actually learnt a bit there, as well as how to paint fur more effectively. Good stuff all around, highly recommended!

Anyway, here are the rest of the miniatures painted so far. Oh, and about the bases - right now they're all a beige grey and I haven't quite decided what to do with them. At first I wanted to try acrylic bases, but that might get tricky when you want to tell different units apart. I'm now leaning to regular scenic bases with sand and grass.

You can see that I don't really bother with mold lines or filling in gaps. This is a board game after all.

Vader was easy and fun to paint. And just adding those small dabs of red here and there really sell the light saber!

Hoping for a proper rematch for these two!

That's it for now! I'll put up another report after our next session.

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Painted Scourge army for Dropzone Commander!

Having spent some time magnetizing my little alien invader jellies I sat down with paint and brush to make them tabletop ready. You might have seen some teasers over on the Facebook page, but here is the complete army, as it stands right now, in all its glory! This is roughly 1100 points or so, but I have one more starter set to build and am planning on getting some Reaver gunships and Slayer heavy gravtanks to boost it. Probably some Vampires and maybe a Screamer to. Hmm...

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier I pretty much copied the studio scheme as it simply fits the Scourge so well. It is not actually the best looking colour scheme (for example these and these are actually better looking, I think) but with the strong and detailed setting information in the rulebook I wanted to paint them the way I kind of envisaged they would look if they were real and the purplish metal simply seemed more... right. At first I thought they'd end up looking boring but by the end I was very happy with how sinister they're looking.

Besides looking neat painting them like this is very, very quick which is always a plus in my book!

Of course all the relevant bits are magnetized so they can mount up, like so:

Being able to do this is an important bit of DZC for me. It just looks awesome! 

Destroyers! Big buggers...

The Destroyers were fun to paint as they are large enough to give them decent detail. Great sculpt and very characterfull. Might have to get some Eviscerators soon.

Warriors in Invaders.

Compared to the excellent metal Destroyers the plastic Warriors was quite a letdown. In fact I'd say the plastic infantry is the only lowpoint of the two player starter. They're perfectly adequate when you're some distance away but the are not very good sculpts close up. Still, some added scenery to the bases (made from cut up bits of sprue!) they certainly look the part when on the battlefield.

Prowlers, baby!

My favourite Scourge unit - the Prowlers! These were the first I assembled and the first I started painting. Love these guys! Eight is a decent number, but I think 16 sounds more Scourge like so expect to see more in the future.

A Marauder and the Harbinger that is transporting the Oppressor. Both nice looking models (although my
Harby did have some bumps in the resin that I couldn't be bothered to fix). Two Intruder Alphas can be seen in the foreground.

Dropships, the lifeline of the entire army. I'll probably get another Harbinger soon as I'd really like to try some Stalkers in the future.

Hunters and Reapers.

The main gravtanks of the Scourge. On the Reapers I deviated slightly to paint the inner parts of the Arc Caster, giving it a blue/white hue to signify the electric discharge of the AA weapon. Also, I forgot to drill out the barrels on the Hunters! Need to correct this soon.

Oppressor and one of its many, many children...

Finally we have the giant doomcrab itself - the Oppressor! Although I really like the look of the Desolator (hello Reapers!) I knew I had to get the Oppressor as my first commander when I saw it released. Love how big and stompy and... weird it is! Looking forward to letting it loose on the front lines.

By the way, all the terrain in the pics here are from the two player starter set and I love that you can get an awesome looking table setup in a matter of minutes (or an hour or so if you want to glue the buildings like me). While proper modell terrain that is well painted does look better this paper stuff still looks very very good, as far as I'm concerned. I don't get why not more games do this - at the moment the ones that spring to mind is this and Infinity: Operation Icestorm. Also, I'm still waiting for my plastic modular DzC board that I kickstarted almost two years ago now. They're saying it should be here in September. Yeah.

Anyway, let's round off with some mood shots featuring that great scenery!

Some Reapers and Prowlers deploy to secure the street for the Invaders.

An Intruder Alpha pulls away just as it has deposited a squad of angry Destroyers into a building.

Scourge warriors look down at the majestic view of their commander advancing towards the enemy.

A Harbinger dropship approaching to pick up an Oppressor.

Next up I'll probably tackle the UCM in the starter so I can actually start doing some demo games.

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Magnetizing my Scourge for Dropzone Commander

Finally getting to grips with putting together and painting an army (or two) for Dropzone Commander by Hawk Wargames. First out is the Scourge which will be my main army and where I'll put most of my resources. However, I will also paint the UCM from the core box and probably add a few extra units to make it into a solid demo army.

Anyway, I haven't actually got the core box quite yet but I really wanted to get stuck in so decided to start off with some Intruder Alphas and Betas together with a bunch of Prowlers and Destroyers. Since the prowlers are probably my favourite unit in the entire game (who wouldn't love a Mini Cooper sized crab mech with five eyes and a plasma proboscis?!) I started with those.

When DzC was first released in 2012 I really didn't like the look of the Scourge as models and wasn't particularly impressed by the metallic studio paintjob either. Luckily I've grown older and wiser and the little jellies have really grown on me! The Marauder and Despoiler dropships still look a little odd to me, but I love the rest of the range! After thinking of different paint schemes and looking at what other people's armies I've come around on the purple metallics to. The thought of making them more organic looking seems common when looking at other armies, but I actually think that's the wrong way of going about it. To me they look like metal constructs that have grown in an organic way, not the other way around and for some reason painting them to look more "fleshy" actually make them seem less alien, as far as I'm concerned. That they look organic but are actually metal just feels... stranger. So yeah, that was a long-winded way of telling you that I'll be sticking pretty close to the studio scheme when painting these babies!

What's that about magnets you say? Oh, I almost forgot. Being able to easily and effectively magnetize (or simply slot in) the entire army in their respective dropships was also an attractive reason for choosing Scourge - it simply looks cool to have everything hanging underneath, like it should! So for these little guys I simply dug out my trusty old 1.5mm x 0.75mm magnets that I've been using for Heavy Gear and Infinity as well. One in each pad on the Intruder and one at the top of head of the Prowlers and off we go!

I would have made some correct sci-fi sounds but the proto-gamer was asleep in the other room. Just imagine some pew-pews, lots of scuttling sounds and the screaming howl of the Intruder as it dives in. ;)

So yeah... just wanted to let you guys know that I'm actually doing stuff even if it seems a bit quiet around these parts. Talk to you again soon!

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Painted Undead for MYTH

I don't know if I mentioned this, but with the recent MYTH Journeyman kickstarter that I backed I felt that i needed to get a good solid base for the game and hunted down a Captain level pledge from the original kickstarter. So now I've got a bunch of models waiting to be painted! Isn't that a change of pace... hehe!

Shamblers and lair.

I decided to start with the undead as they are the easiest minions to deal with for the heroes and since I really like the look of the miniboss Yardu - the undead giant. The minions were given a very basic paintjob of white undercoat followed by a black wash. Some brown wash for details here and there as well as picking out some features in grey/white but, besides weapons, that was pretty much it - very quick! I was going to clean them up more after the first wash but came to like the dirty look so went with it. Lair got pretty much the same treatment. Love the sculpts for these guys as they're very characterful (which goes for most of the MYTH stuff though).

Nasty Soulless with their nasty magic attacks!

The Soulless took the longest since they have several different things going on with a number of different colours and techniques needed. I was thinking about going heavier with the OSL from the staff, but in the end decided against it since it would simply add too much time. Happy with the way they look now.

Yeah, I know... full frontal and then from a sliiiiight angle. Hehe!

Yardu was fun to paint and I decided to go with some simple non-metallic metal and actually make it look a bit shiny rather than the usual rusty armour you see on undead usually. It's clear from the quests that Yardu is not simply a necromancer's puppet but an entity with his own agency. The idea is to reflect this in his (relatively) well kept weapons and armour; I imagine him sitting in some cave somewhere, polishing his sword and oiling his armour, making plans for the coming day...

These guys were great fun to paint! I think it has a lot to do with the art style as everything has a cartoony yet gritty feel to it. The sculpts are solid and while the details ar there they're sparse enough to make painting quick and easy. I could probably bang out a dozen of these faster than a single Infinity miniature (sure, at a lower standard, but still).

Nex up will be one of each hero and the traps since those will see a lot of play. Then I'll get started with the arachnids as I'm looking forward to getting the Terror with 1000 Legs on the table! I also have the orcs undercoated and when they're done it's time for the Tailless.

Of course, I'll be mixing it up with some Infinity and soon, hopefully, Dropzone Commander.

The whole gang!

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Original Space Hulk Terminator Squad Done!

++Terminator squad Raphael, ready to move out++

So... here's something you don't see in these parts every day; a squad of newly painted GW minis (I think the last one was four years ago)! Of course, newly painted doesn't mean new as these guys have been waiting patiently for their turn for 25 years. With it being an anniversary and everything, I thought I'd paint a squad of 1989 Space Hulk plastic terminators! Actually, that's an after construction... I don't know why I decided to start this little project. It might because my 10 year old niece is turning into a little gamer and I thought Space Hulk would be a fun next step for her. Then again, I have a bunch of the original metal terminators that I painted to a, shall we say, acceptable standard back in the day. I don't know! Maybe it's the Oldhammer thing finally getting to me or me needing to take a little break from all the beautifully detailed, but delicate, Infinity minis. Whatever the reason I got five minis taken off my mountain of lead.

Does this look familiar to anyone? Oh, and the colours are all weird in these shots. Bad lighting..

Although I played Dark Angels way back when (actually before Deathwing, so all my DA terminators were dark green) I wanted to go with the original Space Hulk look so painted these as Blood Angels. The aim was to stay true to the original box art, which is pretty much the only place you'll find these particular type of terminator models depicted, but as I painted I made several adjustments here and there to make the model look less of something Barbapapa would turn into and more like a terminator. The largest deviation is probably the white/yellow boarders on the shoulder pads, but it felt needed to give the models a bit of definition. I kept the hazard stripes on the power glove as that's probably the best bit!

The terminators in the 1989 Space Hulk all came with these large whip antennae, which hasn't been seen before or since, but is kind of cool in a way. I really couldn't see you trying to make your way through tight tunnels with a damn banner on your back, but a whip antenna? Yeah, maybe. It does look fairly goofy with all of them having one though, so I snipped them off at differnt lengths, leaving it intact for the sergeant and two nubs for the flamer and corporal to kind of signify some enhanced communications gear or something. It helps them look less uniform anyway.

3D Roleplay Hobby Game? Back in the day when companies didn't really know how to label stuff like this. Still the best Space Hulk cover to date though. 2nd edition was especially crappy!

During my painting sessions I kept thinking about how these minis were created. I mean... they look quite
different from the metal ones! At first I thought maybe these were some early prototype that was later refined when done in metal, but seeing as GW used metal minis on the back of the box and in the rulebook, as well as all the art that looks nothing like the plastic termies this was clearly not the case. So they were made by a third party contracted by GW as they didn't have the capacity to make plastic minis of their own back then. This of course make sense and explains some of the discrepancies. Some of them probably come from the demands of the moulding; like the drooping shoulder pads for example. But I still don't understand where the antennae came from or why the stormbolter looks like a shoebox with two toilet paper rolls glued to it! Especially since the box front art clearly shows them with the proper looking gun. One thing they did nail though, was the helmet! It's pretty much spot on and really makes all the other little oddities about them not look so bad. Thanks to the helmet it's unmistakably a terminator. I quite like the power glove as well as it's huge and kind of clockwork-looking. The gun hand though... jeez.

Was it a rush job? I'm suspecting this as, again, the terminator minis seen on the back of the box are all metal. Perhaps the plastic company didn't get the stormbolter art in time and had to go with their shoebox placeholder! Pure speculation, but I kind of like this explanation. And for some reason I kind of like the boxbolter as well. It's cool in a very minimalistic and... boxy way. Another thing I don't quite get is why didn't they make some kind of sergeant clip-on sword, like the did the flamer?! There are two terminators per sprue and each of them get a flamer as well. Seems like a wasted opportunity not to make one of those into a sword. Perhaps there wasn't time...

Five little termies, jumping on the bed. One fell off and hit his termie head. So sergeant called the medic and the medic said, no more termies jumping on the bed!

Backside... a bit less detail. Just a bit!

These were intended to be a quick little project so I looked around for some speed paint Blood Angels tutorials and mixed with my own ideas I used the following: Army Painter Dragon Red spray, Averland Sunset for the yellow parts and follow with a Strong Tone wash. Highlight with Blood Red then Blood Red with some flesh colour mixed in. Be liberal with the highlights and don't be afraid of making them too light as we follow it with a Red Tone wash to bring them down. Yay! Then it's just Vallejo MC Black+Basalt Grey+Pale Greyblue for the black bits and Natural Metal followed by Badab Black wash followed by Silver highlights and done! Oh, and the yellow parts were highlighted back up with Averland Sunset followed by Averland Sunset+Pale Greyblue mix. For the bases I simply cut out some car wire mesh into little roundles that I sprayed black, glued on and drybrushed metal. Certainly helps making these rather simple minis pop a bit more. So that's that, quick and easy but with a reasonably good result!

Now, painting these did give me this idea to paint the rest of my Space Hulk stuff. I'm not sure I'll paint any more of the plastic termies (except a librarian or two) but I did put all my old metal ones in the bath to strip the of paint. Although I'm not really into Oldhammer I am intrigued by it and I often find the juxtaposition of old, often fairly rough (but characterful!), minis coupled with modern painting techniques really interesting! The idea I have right now is to paint my metal termies (about 10~15 or so) as Blood Angels as well and then maybe, maaaaybe get the Deathwing minis from Dark Vengeance to give a bit of a modern flair to the game as well. Then there are the genestealers and hybrids of course. The painted ones you can see in the pictures I probably did 15~20 years ago so could perhaps do with a touch up or two - especially the bases. I know I have a Magus and one or two metal hybrids scurried away somewhere as well, which should be a nice upgrade to the plastic ones.

Oh, and if some kind reader out there has a Blood Angel transfer sheet or so that is not needed I'd be happy to takt it off your hands! Sure, their emblem isn't too hard to pull off free hand, but these are supposed to be quick minis!

"Guys! Guuuuys!?"

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