I had some spare time today so I decided to tackle one of my “built and ready for paint” units that has been sitting on the shelf of shame for a while now: the Star Wars Legion Imperial Special Forces Unit. These are the first hard plastic Legion models I’ve built and painted and they are much nicer than the soft plastic part of the range. They go together really well and provide nice crisp details for painting.
These were painted much like my Darth Vader, i.e. highlighted from black using Vallejo Dark Sea Blue and progressively mixing in more Vallejo Ghost Grey until pure Ghost Grey was used. The red is Kimera’s “The Red” which has insane coverage (These are all one coat over black).
From the box these came in I still have the two characters from Inferno Squad as well as Iden Versio herself. I’ll paint those up next time inspiration strikes!
For this round of the challenge we chose the HQ slot, which I immediately knew I wanted to paint up this warboss for. I’ve had this model (like most of my Orks!) for many years, and been looking forward to painting it for a long time. I got him in the Stormclaw box (Orks vs. Space Wolves), but I’m pretty sure you can get him in another set these days. One of my first ever models was the old metal warboss with an attack squig on his arm, so I think one of the reasons I like this model so much is nostalgia!
I painted this model much like the rest of the army so far. I don’t generally like to actively paint my characters to a higher standard, they just tend to get more details due to the fact I’m painting them alone rather than as part of a batch.
The first squig in the army was blue (on the Runtherd from last round), and I decided to make this one blue as well. Hadn’t quite decided if I was going to keep all of the army’s squigs blue, but it’s looking more likely now!
The rockets on the gun were an interesting challenge, I wanted them to stand out from each other, but not look too toylike even though I was going to paint them mostly straight primary colours. I think it worked out ok.
I really enjoyed painting those gun holsters, leather is one of those materials I find quite interesting to paint, you can add a lot of hard surface techniques like texture and scratches to this organic material. I usually paint leather from a dark warm brown all the way up to a bone colour for those extreme highlights. Here I tried something a bit different, by starting with my midtone (Vallejo Game Color Beasty Brown), and washing in the shadows with Agrax Earthshade. Then proceeded through with my usual steps up to bone. That felt like it lacked that richness I get from my usual process, so I glazed some Vallejo Game Ink Flesh Wash over the end result, which added that warmth back in. I think this ended up being a bit faster than layering all the way up from dark brown, so this may end up being my standard army painting method for brown leather.
The power klaw was a good testbed for a unit I’ll have to paint at some stage: Mega-nobz! I painted this exactly like the rest of the yellow in the army, and to me that’s ended up with a nice level of separation between the plates, so I think it’ll work well for models that will end up being 90% armour plates!
I’ve had plans to put together a Bolt Action army themed around the 2ème DB for quite a while now, and with renewed WW2 inspiration in the past few weeks I’ve made a bit of time to turn plans into reality. While painting my 6th airborne roughly a year ago I was listening to the audiobook version of Anthony Beevor’s “D-Day: The Battle for Normandy”, and his retelling of the liberation of Paris by the division struck a chord with me. Since then I’ve been gathering research materials and reading up what I can find on the history behind the creation and the actions of the division. The 9th company of the RMT (Régiment de Marche du Tchad) “La Nueve”, so called because it was home to many spanish revolutionary exiles, were first in Paris, and are who I’m going to mostly focus on in this army. This will mostly impact the vehicle painting, as most if not all of the vehicles in the 2ème DB were named, and had those names painted on them. In “La Nueve”, those names were based on important Spanish civil war battles and republican leaders. The division being mechanised there will be many vehicles to paint! I currently have 3 Half Tracks and an M8 Scott for the army, and I’m eyeing off some more vehicles.
These first models are the support weapons I’m thinking of including in the army. I assembled these first as they require the most specific poses. I’ll put together the regular infantry next without having to worry about whether I’m leaving the right parts for the support weapons!
The 2ème DB, as all late war Free French unit, were outfitted by the Americans so I used Perry Miniature’s late war US Infantry plastic set and their matching 60mm mortar metal kit.
The paintjobs are quick, done in two sittings, but should look good enough on the table. I’m mostly excited to get to the vehicles! I experimented with the bases some, trying out for the first time something else I’ve had for a while but never used: Green Stuff World’s Leaf Punches, specifically the oak leaf punch they make. I used dead leaves from the garden as the starting point, punching these small leaves out of them. These leaves are a bit out of scale for these models but I’m quite satisfied with the effect otherwise.
For round two of our army painting challenge, we picked elites as the unit type. I decided to paint up a collection of single character models Orks can take as elites choices: a nob with Waaagh! banner, a painboy, and a runtherd.
The nob with Waaagh! banner is a small conversion of one of the old metal nobs set. I just extended the banner pole and added the large moon symbol which I made out of plasticard.
The painboy and its grot orderly is the older metal version. Very fun model, love the idea of an ork wearing a surgical mask. I had a bit of fun painting the syringe to look like it’s filled with a red liquid, hopefully that comes across well.
The runtherd is simply the model from the grot kit, with a headswap from the old fantasy orc range. I like the idea of him having this yellow moon shaped bonnet to tie him in with the rest of the models.
As always with orks, these models are fun and characterful which makes them very enjoyable to paint!
Lair of the Lagomorph 