Vanguard - Three Heroes

More Sedition Wars minis.  Back to the blue-grey Vanguard forces, this time with the heroes. These guys are not quite so uniform in their colour scheme, but there is plenty to tie them back to the force.

Here we have Kara Black, force commander, Akosha, sniper, and Morgan Vade, the medic.  I might come back and work on the OSL, but I wanted to get these ready for a game tonight.  I had some trouble cleaning the mold lines, but I think the overall result is pretty good.  A little more contrast here and there would be good, such as the skin, but I like them.

Akosha's cloak came out pretty well and I was pleased with Vade's latex gloves, snap!  Akosha's hair was fun and I am looking forwards to some colourful anime minis that are in the mail (Relic Knights).

In this final shot, you can see how the heroes fit in with the troops.

More to come soon, I have some Strain ready for photos.

The Strain: The Cthonian!

I'm getting near the end of new models for Sedition Wars.  This is the top of the food chain for the Strain, the Cthonian.  I think he's the only Strain unique character at the moment.  This was the first Sedition wars mini that I painted "out of order" - the only other Strain figure to come is the Phase 4 Grendlr which is a Phase 5 figure.  The Grendlr is in progress, but it's a complicated figure.

Many people have gone with a fairly monochrome colour scheme, because the mini looks pretty uniform; wires, cables and shielding all over.  Most monochrome colour schemes look great; some how mine looks plain and flat.  I'll have to come back and tart him up a bit.  I might shade the shielding on the top surface of the weapons (shoulder pads?) and ink the pine cone weapon.

I think this is the best OSL I've managed, but it is still a bit off.  I think the green need to be brighter, but whiter looks odd and it's already 90% yellow and 10% green.  I'll need to read a bit more.

I am a little disappointed with the figure.  There is a lot of shading in the metallics (4 shades, from a dark gun metal to bright silver) and 0-3 layers of smoke ink.  The blue is Tamiya weathering powder "Burnt Blue".  There's a "Burnt Red", I might try this on the shoulders.  To tie back to the other Strain, I have painted the weapon tentacle the zombie flesh colour.  Not bad, but overall not what I hoped.

The Strain: Phase 3

Progress continues to be a bit slow, but I cleaned up and primed the last of my Strain: the Brimstones from Phase 3, the Phase 4 Grendlr and the Phase 5 Cthonian.  While I painted the Brimstones, I started on the other models, so they are on their way, at least.

Like the Scythe Witch, the Brimstones have more armour than the smaller Strain.  I went with metallics on the armour and shaded some of it blue.  That make have been a little over done, but it's not too late to correct. I painted them  before assembly, and as a result, they do not sit flat on their base.  I'll need to work on that, maybe holding them flat on the base while gluing them up.

Here's the front view:

And back:

I used the hot water trick to change the pose a little.  One is raising his paw, the other is wagging, I mean, swishing his tail.  It's hard though, because the plastic is pretty chunky.

Say cheese:

The Strain: Phase Three

Here is the second Phase 2 model, the overly large Quasimodo and my first Phase 3 figure, the sleek Scythe-Witch.  I need to paint more often.  I think I am improving, but I if did a little more, I think I would improve faster.  I'm still not quite getting the results I want, although these are plenty good enough for table top play.

The Quasimodos are huge.  I had to weight the base to stop them tipping over.  Steve McVey, the game's creator, says there was a scale miss-communication between him and the sculptor.  I like the size, but a 35mm base would help.

I hoped they would be a little more green - the inside joke with the purple pants would have been more obvious.  Not much I could do with the poses here, the minis are too solid to heat and bend.

The Scythe-Witches are quite the opposite.  The spur/whip thing is pretty sturdy really, but I still managed to break all three.  There is a lot of detail on the these minis and it was too much for my eyes.  I think I'll ink them after the undercoat, just to get the details to pop.  The metal on these guys is bit smoother and shinier and I've given it a bluish cast.  All will be revealed soon.

By heating them in boiling water, I manage to pose them a little.  Out of the box, they are all exactly the same.

I'm looking forward to the final model.  Almost done now.

Hurley (and Hurley Conversion!)

Well, it's been a while since I posted, but I am pleased with these minis.  One is a Hurley drone, painted in the blue-grey colour scheme of my Vanguard figures and the other is a Hurley conversion, battle damaged from a hit with Strain nano tubes sprouting from every orifice.

I painted the regular Hurley second and I am much happier with the result.  I did not make any deliberate changes, but the shading is less obvious.  As always, the minis look better in real life, the shading does not look as abrupt as it does here.

Here are the pics:

The smoke damage around the blast hole is Tamiya's Smoke weathering compound.  I like it.

The Strain: Phase 2

I'm still working on our Sedition Wars forces.  Time for some Strain to even up the head count.  Phase 2 Strain are slightly strong than the Phase 1 grunts that I painted first.  There are two different types, the heavy weapon ranged Quasimodo (coming soon) and the sneaky melee Stalkers.

Out of the box, the Stalkers only have one pose, but the plastic responds very well to heating and bending.  A quick dip in hot water and one is pointing and one has his hook hand raised, ready to attack.  Just a little variation, but enough to stop them looking absolutely identical.  No fancy effects, except for a little OSL on the orange Stalkers ankle.  I like the muscle shading on the torn open bellies, but other than that, they look a little rough in these close ups.

So here one of each Strain figure I've painted so far.  There's a little variation in colour as the nano infection progresses, left to right.  The Stalkers were painted with very different paints ... I expected something a little more different.  I'll exaggerate it next time.

Completed Vanguard Squad

Some more good guys from Sedition Wars.

I've added another three Vanguard troopers to my blue-grey squad and I would say it's complete.  The game is not played in squads, but I have one of each heavy weapons and total of 10 minis.  Time to move on to something different, like the heroes or a Hurley.

Here are a few group shots.  The three new figures are on the bases with the black and yellow caution stripes, front and center in this shot:

And here's the squad with the heavy weapons in the center:

I'm pleased with the way they came out.  There is some variation within the group, probably because there was some lag between painting the minis as well as some deliberate experimentation.  Some I can correct - the metallic guns will be painted over, when I have time.  I think I can even up the OSL from energy source in the guns.  Still, good enough to play with.

On to bigger and better projects:  Strain and the heroes.

The Strain

Well, I’ve got a little Strain army for Sedition Wars.

I know, it looks like Thriller!

This was the first batch I painted.  Very detailed, but covered in mold lines that were very hard to remove.  I did a very quick clean up job and it shows.  These Phase 1 Necroforms have a low point value in the game, so you need loads of them.  I was really focused on pumping them through rather than doing a bang up job.  I was also testing colours for use later.  The result is somewhere between a test run and table top quality.

For the colours, I wanted a progression through all the strain from dead human -> zombie -> cyborg.  This is the first level of five, so there is no much variation.  Pinky is the freshest; his metal parts are still dark and pitted.

Split Pants and Big Arm have a slightly darker, more leathery skin tone and lighter metal.

Yup, we've all had this problem with our pants.



 

 I was pleased with muscle fibers here.

This is darkest flesh tone and brightest metal.

Overall, I’m pleased with this bunch.  I’ll get the point count up a bit, then go back and touch up a few of the errors.  The bases came out well, I think, I used a new transparent red paint, darkened up with a blue ink.  There's no OSL, but I can do that later.

Vanguard - Take Two

Real life took over for a bit there, but I am back on track.  I finished the third test figure soon after the last post and gang painted four Vanguard recently.  Pretty soon, we can play Sedition Wars with painted forces.  Err, painted Vanguard forces.

 

For this new batch, I made a wash from the paint I was using, with a little black and dark blue ink, medium and water.  Perhaps it was not as dark as I would have liked, but it was better.  Instead of using a drybrushing-like technique to add the highlight, where the shape of figure governed which parts were painted, I actually painted the highlight colours on deliberately.  No blending though, and that showed up in the pictures.  I also tried metallic guns.  I intended them to be darker; there are 3 shades of metallic paint and I was heavier with the lighter shades than expected.  I don’t like them and might paint over them.  Thanks to Althai for some advice.

There is a little OSL from the floor lights and the energy source for the guns.  I’m not sure I have that right yet.  Ditto the rust and blood on the bases.  Anyway, progress has been made and instead of a few test figures, I have the beginnings of a force.

Yes, eyes!  First eyes in a long, long time.  Next up, some Strain! 

Sedition Wars - First Brush

I excited to start painting these Sedition Wars figures, the first humanoid figure I've done in a while.  This was just a quick test run, to check a Vanguard colour scheme, but it rapidly changed into actually painting the minis.  I wish I had set out to do that at the start.

I started with some bases.  It's been a while since I did a base.  The Dystopian Wars ships are not based and neither are most of the Epic vehicles.  Anyway, these figures come with many different sculpted bases, so I don't have to do much other than paint:

Now some real results.  I wanted to use a scheme that I had not seen and went with a duck egg blue-grey.  The result was not quite what I wanted, but not bad.

 

 

 

 

Definately, there are things I would do differently.  I should have painted the undersuit first, but I wanted to see how the colours worked.  The Object Light Sourcing, where the light from the blue pot lamp on the grounds illuminates the figure is a little heavily done.  I don't like the wash I used to mark the shadows.  H-Archive has some well-painted minis with black boots that look great.  I was thinking of metallic guns and I think I'll do that in the future, very dark metal.  The guns need a power bar to make them more interesting and that needs to be pained first.

 

But still I'm pleased with the result!  More to come.  Comments welcome.



 

 

Sedition Wars - Unboxing

So, Sedition Wars has been in the house for a few weeks now, our first Kickstarter game to arrive.  It's a sci-fi survival horror game; if you think of the Aliens movie, you won't be far wrong.  So far, the game has been fun to play, although my wife is winning all the games.

For a table-top board-game has many components.  Big boards for the space ship, stats cards for each miniature, counters for tracking effects in the game, and of course miniatures.  A huge number of miniatures.

The Kickstarter campaign had the option to get a double load of miniatures.  This seemed like a bargain, but now I am overwhelmed with little men (and women) and monsters - over 150 miniatures, most of which are multi-part.  There are more to come in a second shipment, including 70 pieces of scenery - doors, computer consoles, etc.  They are very detailed and cleaning them up is much harder work than I expected - they are made from a very hard plastic.  On the plus side, the plastic holds the detail very well and the figures are very well made.

Here's a few pictures of some of the miniatures, straight out of the box.  Some of good guys (the Vanguard):

Some of the bad guys (the Strain):

And a panoramic shot of my dining table: