Bow Ties Are Cool

Ok, maybe not... but Dr Who is cool, in a nerdy kind of way. I first discovered Dr Who as a child in 1974 and managed to start watching with the first episode of Robot - the first of the Tom Baker run as the fourth doctor. This was in the dark days before DVRs or even VHS so if you if you missed a show you MISSED the show. Luckily it came on right after I got home from school so I rarely missed an episode. By now I've seen some shows from most incarnations of the Doctor and Tom Baker has always remained my favorite. That said, Matt Smith's portrayal has won me back as a regular viewer - I didn't much care for the incarnations in between...

The Doctor is a metal 28mm Nerdlord II from Heresy Miniatures and the TARDIS is a resin police call box from Fenris Games. The only thing that bugs me is the layout of the front door panels since the traditional Dr Who version has six panels below the windows - I actual ordered another TWO kits and intend to cut them up to make a proper configuration, but I like the way the colors turned out so I consider this model a great practice piece. The decals for the TARDIS are from Company B. I've got the version from Crooked Dice along with Amy, Rory, and River and will probably paint them in the near future. I have the Tom Baker model from Blacktree as well and I think I have a Sarah and Harry set around here somewhere.

No idea what I'm using these for yet, but it was fun to paint! Maybe I'll get some cybermen or daleks and set up some sort of game - Crooked Dice have a free rule set with some interesting looking mechanics for simulating the Doctor's ability to use his intellect rather than his martial abilities to help defeat these alien menaces...

Le Roi Soleil

Le Roi Soleil Miniatures is the new stockist in North America for Warfare Miniatures. Besides carrying the full line of Warfare Miniatures, Le Roi Soleil also stocks Beneath the Lily Banner, Republic to Empire, all of the counter sets for these games, and the Quindia Studios flag range - as new products are released, Le Roi Soleil will add new products. Although primarily a mail order company at this time, over the coming months they will begin to represent Warfare Miniatures at shows and will be providing stock to local game stores. Now is your chance to start those Glorious Revolution armies and avoid the high shipping fees from across the pond!

Apologies for the lack of posts recently - I have multiple projects in the works and hope to return to regular posts soon...

For the Greater Good

With the release of the new Warhammer 40k Tau Codex I felt inspired to try my hand at painting a few of the xenos and bought a box set of Fire Warriors. One thing I wanted to avoid was the need to painstakingly pick out every armored plate and edge highlight. I decided to give the Army Painter Quickshade another try. Most Tau armies seem to be painted in a pristine parade ground condition, but I wanted mine to battered from campaigning, so I felt like the Quickshade would be a... well, quick way of achieving this.

One of the problems I've had with Quickshade in the past is that though the results look pretty good, they don't look like mine. The contrast is simply not as pronounced as on my layered models. One way I decided to overcome this was to ensure I picked a color scheme with a high contrast. I like the various city camo schemes for Tau I've seen online, but I'm tired of painting grey (Red Scorpions and Death Korps of Krieg). I started by spraying the models with Army Painter's Skeleton Bone. The other colors were picked out with Games Workshop paints: the cloth with Rhinox Hide, the gun butts and various other bits and bobs with Mechanicus Standard Grey, the visor lights with Evil Sunz Scarlet, and the doohicky on the end of the pulse rifle with Gehenna's Gold. I picked out the leader's helmet and part of his shoulder pad in White Scar. Any mistakes were cleaned up with Ushabti Bone, which is a perfect match for the Skeleton Bone spray paint (almost as if Army Painter planned it). This took about an hour for the whole team.

Next I doused all of the models liberally in Army Painter Quickshade Soft Tone. I use a brush rather than dipping them in the tin. After all of the models were covered, I went back through them to make sure there were no puddles of standing varnish. This took all of fifteen minutes, but I left it to dry for 48 hours (the time was not wasted because I assembled and undercoated a second squad of identical composition over this period).

You will notice I repainted the team leader's helmet and shoulder pad with Evil Sunz Scarlet - the white didn't provide enough contrast to the rest of the armor after applying the Quickshade. The pic below shows the models after being coated in Army Painter Anti-Shine varnish. There have been mixed reviews on the net about this brand of matt varnish (a Google search will reveal these), but I've never had any trouble with it. It is absolutely vital to matt varnish the models after using Quickshade because the results are super shiny! I let this dry for most of the afternoon.

Finally I spent an hour or so adding Sept Markings with Evil Sunz Scarlet and battle damage in the same manner I described in my Ultramarines article a few weeks back. While underlighting the battle damage with Ushabti Bone, I also did minimal edge highlighting on the helmets and shoulder pads. Mud was added by drybrushing and stippling Mournfang Brown on the lower legs and lightly on random upper areas as well.

I'm wondering if I couldn't have achieved similar results with the Game Workshop washes and avoided the two-plus days of drying time. While it only took about two and a half hours to achieve these results, I could probably have done the same thing with the washes and finished the unit in a single day. Of course the Quickshade tin holds enough product to paint hundreds of models while the GW washes might manage twenty or thirty! This may call for another round of experimentation. I'm also wondering if I wouldn't rather have a a color scheme closer to the official GW studio version...

I don't know where this project is going. Certainly I want to paint up an HQ to give me a legal, if tiny, army. Two squads like the one above come in around 180 points. I should be able to easily fit in an HQ and another supporting unit of some sort for a five hundred point force.

Russian Foot Flags for the GNW

Just added more codes to the range of flags for Warfare Miniatures with the first GNW offering - Russian Foot. Rather than name each unit, these are meant to be generic as there are only a dozen or so units that we can pair up with the color of flag they carried...

Flags for the Russian Foot Guard will be up next with Swedish Foot to follow soon...

Red Scorpions Devastator Squad

More reinforcements for my Red Scorpions Space Marine army, this time in the form of some much needed Heavy Support...

I'm going to add another four marines next week and I'll have the option of fielding a full ten man squad, a five or six man squad if I want to place them in a Razorback (a hint for something else coming in the near future), or I can leave the heavies at home and field an extra six man tactical squad.

Ultramarines

The most vanilla marine yet... from the photo I see this guy needs another coat of matte varnish on his shoulder pad. I sealed all of the decals with Games Workshop's Lahmian Medium which does a great job in dulling down shiny details, but this joker needs a little more attention...

Someone asked about the paints I used for the Ultramarines. I presume they were primarily interested in the blue. All of my models start with a black undercoat. All of the paints were from the new Games Workshop range. I painted the armor with Macragge Blue, leaving the black showing in the recesses between plates. Then the model was given a wash of Drakenhof Nightshade. The next step was the most time consuming, though not nearly as much so on the modern marine models. I painted all of the armor plates again with Altdorf Guard Blue and left the darker colors showing in shadow areas - the underside of the legs and arms, around obvious joins int he armor, etc. In large flat areas, this meant blending the color out, but in small areas I simply left a fine line of the darker color showing. The final highlights were fast and consisted of Calgar Blue painted on the sharp edges of the armor (seen best on the helmet above).

Other colors were far simplier and applied in only two layers - Leadbelcher and tiny highlights of Runefang Steel for the metallics, Mephiston Red and Evil Sunz Scarlet for the visor (with tiny dots of White Scar and a coat of 'Ardcoat Vanrnish to make 'em shiny), and Celestra Grey and Ulthuan Grey for the white details such as the stripe on the helmet and studs on the shoulder pad. I don't remember what the browns for the pouches were, but any earthy color will do.

The battle damage was done by adding small chips and cracks with Abaddon Black and highlighting the underside of each with Lothern Blue. The mud and dust was built up by stippling and drybrushing in two coats, first with Mournfang Brown and then very lightly with Karak Stone, but you should use the same colors you would normally use on the base of your models. These colors are focused primarily on the feet and lower legs, but the errant splash here and there (such as the shoulder guard above) is not out of place.

Hope that helps! More Ultramrines and Red Scorpions on the way and don't think I've forgotten about the Grand Alliance period...

Medic!

One of the special rules in the Forge World Red Scorpions army list called PURITY ABOVE ALL. The fluff is that the chapter closely monitors it's geneseed, screening for mutation and corruption, to the point of fanatiscism! The game rule allows you to upgrade any Sergeants in Tactical Squads to Apothecaries for 25pts which will give the entire squad FEEL NO PAIN (Ignore unsaved Wounds on a 5+).

This use to seem overpowered to me before the Blood Angels Codex came out. Forge World rules are not allowed in most of the national tournaments, but I don't play in those kind of events - my local group is fine with the rule. In any case, I still have the original Sergeants I painted.

In light of the post from yesterday, I should also mention the other special rule for the Red Scorpions - HAVE PRIDE IN YOUR COLOURS. The Red Scorpions shun the use of camouflage and it's attendant tactics such as covert operations, stealth, and infiltration. This means no model in the army may use the INFILTRATION or SCOUT special rule so my Scout units will set up in the same manner as the rest of my troops... still worth it for the Sniper Rifles!

Red Scorpions Snipers

In the Kill Team event last week, my Plague Marines were nearly annihilated in two turns by a combination of Space Marine scouts armed with sniper rifles and a missile launcher - this after weathering a storm of heavy bolter fire and Tau pulse weapons without flinching. My brother has been after me to use this combo for a decade, so this week I finally painted up a small squad to add to my Red Scorpions army.

The camo cloaks sport the chapter approved scheme used during the Angstrom Incident during the Badab War. These are the first of many new models I plan to add to my Red Scorpions this year...