Bot War – Mercenaries

This is the end of the challenge.

All the bots I set out to paint have been completed.

There is only one more Merc in the faction that i have not yet painted, this is because its a resin Deceiver air warrior who unfortunately took a bit of a beating, so needs some TLC time with some glue before I can actually paint it.

Below you will see a gallery of all the bots I painted in the last 30 days.

It can be tough to see high mega pixel shots of your work, especially if you’re not a pro painter, and even more so when you’re painting with speed and to get models onto a gaming table.  I know people who are still painting the same 30mm miniature for the last 3 months, i knocked out 20 in 30 days, and this is slow compared to the February painting challenge, but its not a competition.  I am happy and proud of my work, its not perfect by any means, i can do better, but i wouldn’t have completed them.

And thats it, CHALLENGE COMPLETE !!!!!

……..the Bot War will continue

The penultimate day is upon me and so i have begun the final touches.

looking over the bots there are a few common areas left to paint:

• tracks
• weapons
• metalwork
• tyres

to make life simpler for me i grouped the bots based on what needed to be painted, so all of those with tracks went into one group, and those with tyres into another.  Every bot (bar Humvee) had a weapon of some kind, and the majority also had some metalwork (internal mechanics or grates etc).

First i painted the tracks, these were basecoated with vallejo game color extra opaque heavy sienna, this gives a nice ruddy brown foundation which i then highlighted with a mix of the sienna and p3 traitor green. This was then recess washed with secret weapon sewer water to give the tracks a grimy effect.

The tyres were first based in secret weapon rubber, then highlighted with secret weapon rubber highlight before getting a wash of secret weapon soft body black. This leaves a slightly gloss finish but they will all get matte varnished before gaming.

For the metal work and weapons these were already basecoated in vallejo model color German grey, so I simply sketched out highlights of P3 sickly skin before given them a glaze of Vallejo model color deep sea green to add an interesting colour change for the bots.

With these details painted its time to call it a night, but I’ll leave you with some shots of the finished details

Managed to get all bots reattached to their bases tonight, thanks to a trusty tube of Loctite.

I did wonder if I would have difficulty sticking flat metal feet onto rough textured painted bases, but so far so good, not sure they’d survive a lot of travel though…… Not that I have anyone to play against ?

Tomorrow will see the start of the end as I paint up the final details like tracks and weapons, and give whatever bot needs it a bit of a boost with some more edge highlighting and perhaps a glaze or 2 to help with contrast and saturation.

I managed to get all of the bases painted up today using my normal Bot War base workup.

After being left to set overnight, first they were all primed using an airbrush with Stynelrez Black, then had an airbrushed layer of a 50/50 mix of Scale75 Gobi Brown + Citadel XV88.

Next I then dabbed each base randomly with a mix of Army Painter Dark + Strong Tones with a little Citadel Drakenhoff added.

Once dry they were then lightly drybrushed with Citadel Typhon Ash to bring out the highlights.

Finally the edges were rimmed with 2 layers of the Gobi Brown + XV88 mix.

Once the bots are re-attched I can then add final touches like tufts.

With all bots to 90% complete it’s time to remove them from their bases and begin a big batch build so they can then be reattached before the finishing touches are applied.

If you haven’t seen my Bot War basing before it’s a pretty straight forward process but involves thick AK-Interactive diorama paste and airbrushing. I’d rather not risk messing up the bots at this stage so I’m going to carefully remove each one…. And hope that I don’t cause any damage in the process.

Sadly, I do expect some casualties, so I have taken my first proper group shot of them all before I begin.

Well it was a pretty successful debasing. 22 bases removed with only 1 mild chip on the food of one symbiote, so I’m happy with that as it will be an easy fix.

With the bases removed I set out with my pot of AK-Interactive Rough Terrain paste and some Instant Base Scatter from Rival Crafts and applied a mix of everything to the bases which after some drying time to firm up was blasted with Army Painter Anti-Shine varnish ready for painting tomorrow.

A short update today because I’m knackered.

After painting another Blackwheel recently (see my other project), I did debate painting this one in the original art, however I decided against it for faction coherency, meaning only Oleeta will be different as she is a Sell Sword and can be used by other factions.

So Blackwheel got my normal green workup only i decided to add some vallejo dark sea blue to some parts to increase interest. This colour will most likely be used in the coming days to paint weapons and other details as I think it fits the scheme well.

Blackwheel is the last of the bots I’ll be painting for this challenge, so from here on it will be final details and basing to wrap up this project on the 30th April.

Less than 7 days now until my challenge ends, and so it’s time to enter the final week.

Wraith is a repaint of the Valiant bot Speedracer, only much cooler. For 18 points Wraith is literally a ghost, able to become invisible, blind enemies it damages, and teleport anywhere on the battlefield not once, but twice. Pretty cool for getting some flank attacks or grabbing objectives.

The ordinal artwork for Wraith is very ashen greys, playing on its spectre like rules and playstyle, however I have once again opted for my Mercenaries green workup. I think it looks good, I added a subtle blue glaze to the grey face to make it look a bit cooler. It’s only a little thing but I like it and it’s another bot done!

One of the elements I like about Bot War is the resource management element which dictates how your units activate and what abilities you can use.

At the start of each turn all of your bots generate a small number of energy cubes that get added to a pool, you then distribute these cubes back to the Bots for them to then use as they activate. Each of the core actions (move, ranged attack, close attack) costs one cube, and you can do 2 activations a turn. What you can do though is “boost” once a turn, either a shield or an attack, meaning you can get an extra dice to that particular throw at the cost if an energy cube, this is where you want to dish out more than 2 cubes to the Bots that you know will want to have a more impacting ranged attack, or may be activating later in the turn so you’d want them to be a bit more resilient. Super Abilities also need cubes to activate and maintain, meaning some bots need to have 4+ cubes to stay powered up and then do their 2 activations with possibly additional cubes for boosting.

So energy cubes are a key resource to fight in Bot War, it’s extremely beneficial to have more to provide options during the game. A lot of the Mercenaries have the Artillery Support special rule which requires 2 cubes to maintain each turn after being activated. This makes the force quite energy hungry and most bots are only generating 2 energy each power up phase. This is where the concept of “batteries” comes into play, they are cheap units that are energy positive, they generate more than they use meaning there is additional cubes to go into the pool for redistribution. The Mercs have access to a Generator unit which is the perfect embodiment of a battery, it costs 4 points (forces in normal games are 80 points), and generates 2 cubes, but it has no movement, ranged or close attack stat, so it is adding 2 cubes into the pool and taking nothing out.

So, with all of that information taken on board, in order to fuel my energy hungry abilities I need a generator, so I dug out one of my spares and painted it up in my Mercs colour scheme. It’s only blu-tacked to the base for now, but I have chosen to put it on a 40mm base instead of the normal 35mm so I can also add a pile of energy cubes next to it for a cool looking piece that could also double as an objective marker.

The smallest and weakest of the non-symbiote Merc, Ordinance has a pretty meagre Statline and no special rules, at least he has a Ram Attack special ability and 3 ranged attack, but that’s it. I’d most likely take Humvee over Ordinance in most lists, but I needed to get him painted up anyway.

There’s a lot of detail on such a small model, especially on the chest and legs which have lots of recessed areas. I worked in some P3 Thamar Black and Greatcoat Grey to help with the colour separation.

Only 2 more bots to go

Stormbreak is up next, and i was originally thinking that it was another one of the classic Snake Corp bots (called Stryke), however it transpires that this is a new sculpt based upon the original art for a COILS air support bot named Messenger, however this has been a very fun bot to paint.

There were lots of flat surfaces which made the glazing a bit easier to get gradients on, working from the dark P3 Thornwood Green to the more vibrant P3 Bog Moss.  I have used the same workup throughout all of the mercs and i have made some subtle changes throughout, sometimes working up through all colours one over the other, sometimes blocking in the colours in different parts and blending them together.  On this bot i painted almost the whole model in the darkest thornwood brown, then used traitor green  over 80% of that area, then bog moss glazed over the top, making sure i took my brush off the model at the point i wanted to leave the most pigment (like the top edge of an armour plate). After i went back in with a sickly skin edge highlight i did go back in with another thin glaze of bog moss to try and blend in some of the edges and only leave those at the highest point. I have noticed some bots where i may have covered too much of the edge highlight, so will need to go back in and fix that in these last 9 days of the challenge.

for now, heres a shot of Stormbreak, and the 2 Snake Corp mercs from the last few days.

Accompanying Slyder is Slyther, another former bot from the now defunct Snake Corp organisation.

Some more digging in the Bot War Facebook group has provided additional background about how the Snake Corp bots found their way into the Mercenaries soldiers of Fortune faction, this is a bullet point summary by Anthony Mallett, who is the owner of Traders Galaxy and the creator of Bot War, of the short story “Instruments of Destruction” by Steve Remington who is a prolific story writer for the Bot War universe…..

– COILS labs took over Snake Corp although they were the same company in a way. At least COILS owned Snake Corp.

– COILS and Snake corp shared most of the same board members. Dr Mindtwist being head of coils and Venom being head of Snake Corp. but now Venom is chairman over all.

– The Snake Corp bots were destroyed when Dr Mindtwist bot-napped the Deceiver Digger (one of the Builders that combines to form Destroyer) and copied parts of his code in the attempt to power Conspiracy (COILS titanic scale Bot). But Destroyer attacked (minus an arm) and utterly crushed the COILS lab.

– Dr Mindtwist escaped in Stryke (AKA Stormbreak) but Slyther and Slyder were destroyed, or so Mindtwist thought.

– Turns out that Slyther and Slyder were just very seriously damaged.

– But thinking they were destroyed Mindtwist downloaded their copied codes and “updated” them. The COILs bots are more aligned with the corporate principles of coils and have less “free will”.

– But Slyther and Slyder scratched out an existence, their codes hanging on until they found other mercs who repaired them fully

– These mercs then led them both to Blackwheel who is building a mercenary bot empire of his own in the heart of the democracy.

So with this background in mind, Slyther has rightfully donned the Mercs green fatigues and ready to seek revenge on all who cross their path.

Today I get to paint of the oldest bots in my backlog, Slyder.

Slyder was one of the original Snake Corps bots and as the Bot War rages on so does the time line. For a while Slyder was thought to have been destroyed. But there are snippets of lore that exist in the Facebook group for Bot War which tells the tale of how Slyder became a Mercenary…..

“Slyder steadied himself. How long had he been in that storm drain?

Snake Corp was gone and his chassis was obsolete. It was obvious that he had been thought destroyed. By now Dr Mindtwist must has accessed his back up code.  

It could even be that two of him now exist. This would be a dangerous predicament. Especially if he came within close proximity of the doppleganger. He needed to think, to plan. Moving into his alt mode, an obsolete version one ABT, Slyder speed off down the dirt road not really knowing where he was going, only that he wasn’t going south. …….”

This was also then expanded into

“After the attack of Destroyer on the COILS facility, both Slyther and Slyder were thought destroyed. So Dr Mindtwist essentially cloned and modified their code from the back up to make Darkstate and Deepstate.  

However Slyther and Slyder still existed. This created a strange situation where slyther and slyder were no longer connected to COILS and potentially have awakened suppressed memory banks.

Buried in the lore of COILS is the event where human mercenaries were sent through a dimensional gate into the abyss. These mercenaries never returned.  

However from the abyss the code for all COILS bots were found. The speculation is that maybe the COILS bots are not Deceivers at all. Instead being the consciousness of disembodied COILS mercs.”

It’s these snippet of background that I love about Bot War. Whilst the game is not on the same scale as say Warhammer 40000, Infinity, or Battletech, with tomes filled with source and narrative, Bot War has plot progression and underlying stories that are always being dropped by Anthony, the creator of Bot War.

With Slyder and Slyther now being part of the Mercenaries faction I thought it right to paint Slyder up in the same P3 green triad that the rest of the main force is in. Slyther will also get the same treatment to really help distinguish themselves from the COILS faction. I haven’t quite decided about Stormbreak yet, who was a blue Snake Corp jet originally, but I suspect I will go with green as well.

For now though I will leave you with my Mercenaries Slyder

Pushing on through the Merc Bots after Oleeta and the symbiotes, I chose to focus on the big brute Heavy Barrage. With his lower half tank treads, and a turret on his back this guy is tough. In-game he rolls 3 shield dice with a re-roll for one against ranged attacks, has a pretty hard hitting 3 attack dice which when couple with his Artillery Support special ability can rain down some big blasts. He’s also a great battery as he can potentially generate 5 energy cubes per turn which is great for maintaining those super abilities.

Painting wise I realised this bot shares the same torso as Blackwheel and the Valiant Supercharge, I thought it looked familiar. This is how most of the Mercenaries are, formed from parts of previously sculpted bots and released as promos. Its been fun trying to work out the original models that these Mercs are based on.

Painting wise though I used the same workup as the rest, and have left the tracks just blocked on for now as I will tackle them all on one go later in the project.

Oleeta was going to be the original leader of the Mercenaries faction, a Valiant Sell Sword who is a beast in combat, she was first available as a Promo model, but has since become a mainstream release and has also had a collectors edition version as well.

Oleeta has a very unique aesthetic in the Mercenaries faction, she has lots of curves and is mostly formed of single layers of armour plates instead of the big bulky armour that is prevalent amongst the rest.

With these design cues I decided to paint her slightly differently to the other bits, instead opting for a black Templar contrast basecoat, this over the white lateral prime helped to instantly create some contrast and the bluey/green tint in the black Templar colour worked as a nice starter point for the rear of the model. Next up I used Vallejo Model Colour Dark Sea Blue mixed with a P3 Menoth White Highlight workup to paint in the volumes of her body instead of going for specific shapes.

This was a 3hr speed paint, it’s only tabletop standard like the rest but I’m really happy with the result. I managed to use the P3 beaten purple spot colour in the centre of her chest and in her eyes, and her shield features the same greys I have been using for my other bots.

Overall its a great result that I’d love to apply to the collectors edition model I also have some day.

C4, Bombot, & Methane got painted up today.  These 3 bots along with Arsenal are the Mercenaries Symbiote bits, meaning they have a special ability where they can be transported inside a Host, the Hosts for the Mercenaries being Redoubt and Demolition.

There is a tactical advantage to keeping a symbiote within a host, most notably when you get near to close attack the symbiote can pop out and due its proximity with an enemy engaged in combat you can boosted attack dice which makes it a lot easier to do sufficient damage in close attack as its not really the Mercs’ strong point.

Bit of a rush job today, trying to do too many things, but still managed to get some time at the paint table even if it’s right at the end of the day.

Painted up Humvee…. And he’s definitely on the list to go back and tidy up in the next 2 weeks.

Can’t believe I’m at the halfway mark already, there’s a huge stack on minis in front of me that I need to plough through, all the while knowing I still have to go back and finish all of the others I have done so far. It’s going to be close

Humvee is a Valiant, but is also a Sell Sword, which means he can be taken in any force excluding Deceivers and Infesters, so is perfect for joining the Mercs and lending his fists to boost their close attack options.

I decided to paint him up with the same scheme as the others to show that he is part of this Mercenary faction instead of the normal red. I have got a 2nd copy of this bot on my WIP shelf that is currently being painted red, so I was happy to have this one a bit different.

I’m hoping once I go back and refine the highlights and hit him with some matte varnish then I’ll be happier with the overall feel of the model.

Back to the ugly stages with most of the bots today, giving the Mercs a basecoat of Citadel Contrast Creed Camo mixed with some Snakebite Leather. This was airbrushed over the thole model to help mitigate some of the issues experienced with these types of paints on flat surfaces.

However whilst these bots were getting a grim start to their paint hood, I set about tackling Gargoyle.

A fun little model, like a flying demon, a bit like a bat, and a rat….. How I could I not pass up the opportunity to paint this little fella up in some classic cartoon inspired colours used in the Transformers cartoon, Ratbat.

After yesterday’s session building bots I was all set to begin the process of getting the base priming stages completed tonight. However I decided to try and find the remaining bots I needed to complete the faction. Their leader Blackwheel, and Highrise, the Deceiver Air Warrior.

If you have been following my other currently active Bot War project you will have seen that I painted Blackwheel very recently, only I went for a retro kick and painted him up as Cy-Kill, the evil bad guy from the 80s cartoon Go-Bots. Whilst I could use that Blackwheel, I was fortunate to have a second copy in my backlog so instead of having the bright red and blue version leading my Mercenaries, I figured I could at least paint up one that would be more fitting. So I built him.

Also whilst looking through my backlog I found my rewards for completing the February painting challenge over on the Bot War Facebook group. This year was a bit different and 2 rewards were up for grabs; the first being an exclusive sculpt of a Bot from the new White Knight faction which has just hit preorder and will play a huge role in the forthcoming global campaign. The other was a reward for completing 18 or more bots during February. As I painted 48 (which you can see in my other project) I was eligible for this so received a metal sculpt of another forthcoming release in the form of Gargoyle. I haven’t yet seen anyone from the Bot War community paint one yet so I’m hoping I may be able to be one of the first….. so Gargoyle also got built instead of Highrise.

And after that extra bit of building I hit them all with some Stynelrez Black primer and then a lateral spray with ComArt Opaque white.

With the first set of Bots painted up I needed some more to keep me going throughout April.

This group follows the Bots of Fortune 1 set with Bots of Fortune 2 comprising of the big guy Heavybarrage, 3 smaller symbiote bots, and Ordinance

• Heavybarrage
• Methane
• C4
• Bombot
• Ordinance

To fill out the Mercenaries faction and add in some additional gameplay options I have included most of the remaining bots in the current Mercenaries faction cards.  This invlides some classic Snake Corp bots from my backlog that have recently had new rules written for them and the sneaky ex-Valiant Wraith.  To wrap up this batch I have also included two sell swords Oleeta and Humvee who will provide some great close attack capabilities.

• Wraith
• Slyder
• Slyther
• Stormbreak
• Humvee
• Oleeta

Splashdamage is the 8th and final bot in the Bots of Fortune set and that see’s the first batch of Mercenaries wrapped up….. but not finished.

I’m really happy with how they look, the scheme works really well and has received very positive feedback. I’m not sure if I will paint the remainder of the Mercs in the same style or go with something different. I will get them built tomorrow and see what I have to work with.

For now though, Splashdamage and the gang posing for a group shot.