Mordian 7th Regiment - Veterans painted, advisors rebased

It's been crazy busy at work of late, but I did manage to find a little time to polish off the Veteran squads.

2nd Platoon, 1st Squad - The heavy infantry killers, armed with a trio of plasma guns, a plasma pistol and poweraxe-toting sergeant, and the 2nd platoon standard. It has no in-game effect, just a decorative addition.

2nd Platoon, 2nd Squad - The Anti-tank squad, armed with three melta gunss, a sergeant with a power fist and the squad demolitions upgrade.

While I was about it, I started rebasing the older models that are being folded into the new army. In this case the advisers - I decided the regimental command staff seconded to D company would wear red armor to help them stand out a bit. There's a fair number of models from the older version of the army that will be getting rebased. Luckily it's a simple matter of repainting them from grey to earth tones and adding a bit of static grass. Easy peasy!

Mordian 7th Regiment - Veterans painting in progress

After the better part of two months hammering away at my Thousand Sons, I decided I needed a change of pace color-wise to keep me sane. So much crimson and gold! That said I risked a foray into the Closet of Doom and pulled out some of the glorious 7th that have been languishing in a primered state since earlier this summer, and got cracking.

I didn't want to jump in on the huge mass of vanilla troopers, but did want to get a chunk of infantry on the painting desk, so I figured the two Veteran squads would fit the bill. The first squad is the heavy infantry killer squad, armed with a trio of plasma guns, and a plasma pistol/power axe wielding sergeant. As both squads are intended to be carried into battle via Valkyrie/Vendettas, they all got Grav Chutes from Forge World. In addition I tried to add a bit more personality to the units, using a mix of Catachan bare arms, FW respirator helmets, and plenty of extra pouches and gear (hard to see in the partially-painted state though). Essentially I was going for a more rough-and-tumble look for the veterans to contrast with the more uniform look of the regular troopers. Still a lot of work to do on these of course, for the most part each color only has two or three of four stages complete. Lots of highlighting and details yet to add!

The second Veterans squad are the Demolitions/Tank Hunters squad, with a trio of Melta guns, demolition charges, krak grenades and so on. The Sergeants in the two units pictured (as well as the rest of the officers in the army) have breastplates taken from the Fantasy Empire Greatswords kit, to hearken back to the old RT-era officers look. Plenty left to do of course, adding the red piping on the tunics and trousers, as well as  the yellow for the weapons casings should hopefully help the models pop. At the moment they're rather monochromatic.

Hoping I can find some time to finish these off over the upcoming weekend!

Playing catch-up on TOEMP Challenge #1, part 2

I was able to finish up the six Hardened Veterans last night, bringing me up to speed for the Tale of Even More Painters competition. Two meltagunners, three basic lasgun-armed troopers and the proxy Sergeant Harker, who in my army's fluff will be called Sergeant Janos. It seems to me that Harker is an analog of "Blain" from Predator, so I figured using Jesse Ventura's true last name would be an appropriate homage.

I have to say, being able to just focus on a handful of miniatures definitely made the whole process go much faster and kept my enthusiasm up. The trouble with painting horde armies is the sheer number of infantry, which I usually attack in large blocks of 30+ models at a time. While it certainly helps to get large swaths of troops done at once, it's awful boring painting the same thing over and over and over and over...

Here's a shot of the newly-armed veterans squad as an entire unit - I have another five painted veterans armed with various heavy and special weapons that I'll be using for the seeds of the next two veteran squads. One will be armed with plasma guns, and the other with grenade launchers and a missile launcher.

Lastly, I was asked to provide a comparison shot of the 'basic' infantry to show the regular paint scheme vs. the reversed scheme on the Vets. This is the 1st platoon/1st squad in the standard red fatigues and grey armor.

Overall, the vets are one of my favorite units - even though they die like dogs in every game they take part in!

Playing catch-up on TOEMP Challenge #1, part 1

As I was out of state over the week that the first Tale of Even More Painters event took place, I was unable to participate. However, after I finished up the Deathstrike launcher I dove in to try and catch up. The first challenge was to paint up 75 points worth of troops and as such I intended to finish off the second half of my Hardened Veterans squad, since I'd re-built the squad following the release of the new codex. Five veterans (including two melta-gunners) and a proxy Gunnery Sergeant Harker were assembled and primered:

Since I had my camera right by my painting table, I figured I'd document the painting process from the primered to finished states. I start off all my infantry with Vermin Brown on any exposed skin as the basis for the flesh tones.

After the Vermin Brown is on, I paint any exposed eyes white with a thin line of black for the pupils - In this case, only the proxy Harker fig has exposed eyes, the rest of the unit has FW helmets with respirators, so I decided to wait on the lenses until later in the process. Once the eyes are done I use bronzed flesh followed by elf flesh to pick out any extreme highlights. After that I got started on the main colors - My veteran squads have a reversed paint scheme from my standard infantry, with grey fatigues and red armor. I started off with a Shadow Grey undercoat on the fatigues, and Dark Flesh for the armor.

Once the base colors were on, I used a light drybrush of Fortress Grey on the raised areas of the fatigues, and a heavy drybrush of Blood Red on the armor. I find painting bright red over a black undercoat ends up looking very muted and streaky, so I usually start with a reddish brown undercoat. The reds tend to 'pop' much better that way.

At that point, the majority of the colors were done and it was time to delve into the detail work. I used Enchanted Blue for the weapon housings as well as the lenses on the helmets, then I went in with Boltgun Metal on the barrels and whatnot for the weapons, as well as the respirator masks. I picked out the meltagun barrels and the Aquilas on the breastplates and helmets with Shining Gold, but at that point I ran out of painting time and had to call it a night.

Not too much remains - I still need to do the backpacks, gloves, and webbing in leather, pick out any grenades and such in their appropriate colors and paint up the bases. No painting time for me tonight, but I'm hoping I'll be able to knock them out tomorrow evening, just in time for the 2nd challenge deadline!