Praise Be To The Burny Fellows

I finally, finally finished them. They took days longer than I expected, and they're done. Hurrah! 

A bad photo sadly but they look great all finished up

Slightly better photo showing how lovely the fire motif looks on both red and yellow

The whole lot is a gang in and of itself, but can also be mixed into my Unworthy Servants Cawdor gang as well if I fancied it. I am particularly pleased with the way the robes ended up and how the burning hats ended up through a mix of contrast, washes, and paint.

I also took the time today to finish making the free minis I got from Wargames Illustrated and Miniature Wargames:

German late-war paratroopers in winter gear that have been turned into Trench Crusade Heretic Naval Infantry Legionnaires and Troopers

I think that the paint scheme on these minis will really make them fit into the Trench Crusade aesthetic more - as it stands they are, after all, just Fallschirmjager!

Then, on the front of Miniature Wargames, there was a sprue of Wargames Atlantic's Sneakfeet - these are Ratling Snipers with the serial numbers filed off, who are in turn of course Hobbits (in space) with the serial numbers filed off...

Haven't decided how to base them yet

I deliberately picked the smaller guns on the sprue because I think they'll probably end up being Generic Sci-Fi sorts for something like Five Parsecs From Home or Space Station Zero.

Having knocked out the Redemptionists, I'm a bit unsure as to what to work on next - I might actually have a break from painting for a bit! Who knows. 

Painting Points:
Today: 7
This Week: 7
2024: 198 (349)

Oops, A Distraction

I don't know if you've noticed but Tuomas Pirinen, him of Mordheim and Warhammer Fantasy 6th Edition fame, along with some other creative types has made a ridiculously successful Kickstarter for a new skirmish wargame called TRENCH CRUSADE. Trench Crusade is an alternate universe / alt-history 1914 where the First Crusade accidentally released Hell onto Earth, and so the next thousand years or so have been a long war against Satan's Legions and their various human auxiliaries and soldiers. There's a lot more information out there, I recommend this Goonhammer article for starters.

Anyway, I did some painting on my Redemptionists - blocked out the skin, did the flames apart from the gloss varnish, and started the hair - and then, after picking up a copy of Wargames Illustrated with a sprue of Warlord Games' winter-uniformed Fallschirmjager stuck to the front, decided to rummage in my bits box and make some Heretic Naval Raiders...

They're so close to done. So close. It's painful now

You can see some bits and pieces in the bottom left corner of that photo from the Warlord Games' frame. I opened up the playtest Trench Crusade rules (available on the Facebook group, here) and had a look at what a Heretic Trooper actually has available. As I'm doing Naval Raiders, they get access to sub-machine guns, which is quite nice, so I'm going to do three with SMGs, one with an automatic shotgun, and then two Legionaries with a machine gun and a semi-auto rifle (later to be upgraded to an automatic rifle).

They might look like Germans from the late war, but if you look at their belts you can see some hearts dangling from straps... uh oh! These guys are Heretic Legionaries, with better accuracy than the regular Troopers, and funky padded trousers to help differentiate them. I think that the paint scheme is going to do a lot of work making it clear what they are - strange, deathly pale skin, esoteric runes on their helmets, dark blue naval infantry type uniforms...

Not entirely sure what sort of conversions I could do to make things like an Artillery Witch, or a Heretic Priest, but we'll see. Part of the problem I'm having is that the scale of the Warlord Games' minis is not really compatible with the bulk of my bits box, which is almost entirely Games Workshop's heroic scale stuff. Anyway, that's for another day. Who knows, maybe tomorrow I'll finally have finished those Redemptionists.

Only In Basing Does Duty End

And I haven't quite got to that stage yet but I am now tantalisingly close to it. I actually sat down for a couple of hours this evening and did the belts, pouches, grenades, books, highlighted the gold trim and masks, washed the nooses so that they look done, and did the first step on the flame-hats (which actually look really good as is, if very different to the way I usually do flames). They're definitely looking a lot closer to how I imagined them when I first picked them up to do:

I just wish it hadn't taken me seven days (!) to get this far! Oh well. Nearly there, and all that.

What Happens When The Mojo Slips

I'm not sure quite what it is, but I'd hoped to do a lot more painting this weekend than I actually have. I didn't do any yesterday - hence no update on the ol' blog - and today I only did a little bit. I painted almost all the books a dark green, went over the pipes, gloves and boots with black, and painted the belts and pouches in a dark brown (which, incidentally, I also drybrushed over the ends of all the flame weapons). It's just blocking things out for highlights, and in theory it shouldn't take too long to finish the details and move onto the bigger things like the flame-hats and the like, but I just... haven't felt like it. A bit disappointing but there you go.

The flame patterns on the robes look great though!

I have however named them - this little lot comes to 1,000 creds pretty much exactly and can be found with the extremely uninspiring name of "Red Redemption" over at YakTribe. So I know what to paint on their bases when they get to that point. Whenever that is.

Detail Time Starts Now

Having finished the process of highlighting the robes and armour, I have now begun to work on the details. By which I mean I've painted the nooses they wear on their belts in Ushabti Bone, which, if I'd been thinking, I'd've done before I painted the robes with Agrax Earthshade. Ah well. Live and learn.

I think the colour scheme of red, black, and yellow is both really striking and really sinister, as well as giving a good link to the obsession they have with fire. I'm not sure how long they'll take to finish, hopefully I'll be able to get them done this weekend.

Starting The Highlighting

Not a great deal of progress today, although it did feel like it. Slapped some Cryptek Armourshade onto the gold and bronze sections, applied the first highlight of Khorne Red to the robes, and that was it - took longer than expected for some odd reason. 

Next up - Mephiston Red highlights on the robes and the armour, then some work on the yellow and maybe some Wild Rider Red on the armour to pick some bits out. After that it's detail work really.

The Miracles Of Saint Agrax

I remember, many years ago now - and I do mean that, it must be coming up to two decades ago or so - when the hot new thing in painterly circles was floor polish dip. You paint your minis in block colours, then dip them into a tin of floor stain et voila magic skill, your miniature was shaded, highlighted, and varnished all in one. 

Nowadays we just use Agrax Earthshade, Nuln Oil, and contrasts, I suppose.

You can see why, really - these minis have just had block colours and washes applied (well, and the base metals on the trims of their hoods and their masks) and they look rather Blanchitsu, don't they? I'm in half a mind to lean into it, but I don't think I will. 

The next step is to highlight the robes and shoulder armour, then do the various belts, nooses, books, and other random little bits on their belts before I start working up the weapons. The gloves'll end up black, I think, to keep the palette simple. 

So far, they've been quite good fun to work on, which is a nice surprise. I think it's the colour scheme and the relatively open poses allowing me to get my brush into the detail quite easily.

"If It Doesn't Hurt... It Doesn't Count!"

Thus spoke Klovis the Redeemer, a great man of action and faith, etc etc.

The Red Redemption are a funny old lot, a bunch of ultra-zealots even by the standards of the Imperium's unhinged religious fanaticism, the Ecclesiarchy's equivalent of the sort of fundamentalists that we see in groups like Islamic State, the Taliban, the Westboro Baptist Church or Scientologists' Sea Org slave-personnel. But, of course, this is 40K, and the Red Redemption are seen through a skewed mirror, with skulls and fire and cackling incompetence as well as unthinking devotion to their faith and its tenets of burning everything and everyone that doesn't meet their exacting standards of belief (essentially, everyone who isn't in the Redemption or, at the very least, House Cawdor. Those priests of the Ecclesiarchy are on thin ice, honestly). 

Damn fun to paint, though:

Averland Sunset is a brilliant base for yellow

I've blocked out the base colours mostly and am now in the phase of doing the base details - yellow flames on red, black flames on yellow - before hitting everything with Agrax Earthshade, Nuln Oil or Carroburg Crimson and then working back up from there. I think there's going to be some "fun" moments trying to paint the face of the Deacon with the flamethrower, but other than that these goons should be a good laugh to paint up.