Trench Crusade New Antioch Warband

And just when I was sure the New Antioch warband is done…

The reinforcements arrived quite unexpectedly. I had some free time during another project, when time consuming, thick layers had to dry out before I could give it another go. I seized this opportunity to add a few more Antioch boys to the team. Mainly the Mechanized Heavy Infantry. These are all Wysiwyg choices to better represent my characters on the gaming board. Mixed with Meshmixer app by removing existing weapons, then moving new ones in and increasing their size a bit to cover the leftovers. Pretty easy process that allows for some amazing weapon swaps and reposing.

Anyways – the Principality of New Antioch warband grows and by now I am rather certain this is not the end of the project 🙂

That took much less than expected 😛 Last Friday I had a few games and now the second batch of the Principality of New Antioch warband is ready…

As promised I started working on a step-by-step painting tutorial. They way it usually works is I write a few parts, each focused on a certain group of colors. In this case the Part One is all about painting the New Antioch Armor and Clothes.

You will find it at Tutorial: Painting New Antioch Armor. It is free to access, no ads. Luckily the painting business is good and I can afford to write tutorial articles as a side-hobby.

I hope you like it. Cheers!

It took about eleven hours split between two days to push the entire collection to the milestone point, then finish up the diverged test batch. The first list was ready, properly based and varnished. What’s left now is to have a few games, get to know the Trench Crusade properly – on the battlefield – then eventually come back to finish the rest of the project.

For now I leave the project ongoing and hope to come back with a proper Trench Crusade board and the rest of the Principality of New Antioch range done and redy.

In the meantime I invite you to see the Trench Crusade New Antioch gallery for more pics and stay tuned as new articles are under way to join the Scarhandpainting Tutorial repository.

Until then, keep your helmets on, heads down and keep the trenches line defended!

Cheers!

Maybe this is because of years of experience and a well drilled methodology, but I’m not a one to gaze upon the color wheel and ponder about color schemes. This comes rather naturally and I just ‘know’ how things should end up looking. The way it works is I have a ‘feel’ of the vibe and can visualize the end result with a certain degree of accuracy. Then I just take the first paint and go.

For the New Antioch I wanted to follow the original theme of red helmets, green armor and metallic additions adding my own take on top with strong wash, hard weathering-like highlights and battered feel.

With the warband being a rather small, personal project -I let myself relax, choosing particular colors one layer at a time and letting the process guide me. I also took some pictures for future painting guide to track the newly founding color recipe,  then at some point share it with you fine folks.

Thus the process continued with the entire small collection being painted in bulk, until I hit a milestone of core armor/clothes colors pre-wash step. I then decided to save time (a lot of regular commissions on my head right now) and split the project in two. First batch was my first list comprising of a Leutenant, Sniper Priest, two Mechanized Infantrymen, a few Yeomen, one Shocktrooper and a Medic. The rest was left in the ‘final’ batch to comeback to later, after I had a few games behind my belt and decided to continue ‘crusading in the trenches’…

I’ve always been a huge fan of Mordheim, the game I played since day one (back in the days). Small warbands, insanity driven theme and yearl-long campaigns make for a huge chunk of my hobby memories. With all-star cast behind the Trench Crusade, including the amazing Tuomas Pirinen, the game was instantly on my radar. Thanks to a good pal of mine from https://battle-reports.org/ a few days back I finally got in. Being the hobby freak that cannot play a game with unpainted miniatures, I obviously started working on a warband… With Heavy Mechanized Infantry totally hitting my vibe I chose the Principality of New Antioch and thus the Trench Crusading begins!

The sculpts are great and although I like to have my miniatures individualized and special I went with stock minis, other than a single gear swap on one of the big guys. At that point the only things left for me to choose were basing and the color scheme.

Basing was definitely something I could put my creativity into and I went all-in, creating a set of battlefield themed bases with a trench’ish feel. The idea was simple: dirt, gravel, charred branches, trench planks and barbed wire, accompanied by Gamers Grass tufts to compliment the scene and round up the color palette.

I used the opportunity to write a step-by-step article for both modeling and painting the “Trench Bases” available (for free, no ads etc.) here.