Mud and Messiahs

Made some small progress on this with the Trench Pilgrims falling under the paintbrush.   Nothing too spectacular, just contrast paints, a stain for shading and a quick highlight afterwards.

I am trying to give each faction a different colour scheme whist still keeping things somewhat drab.

I found the stigmatic nuns to be a little boring to paint if I am honest.  I love the concept art for them but didn’t think the sculpts did the artwork justice.

I still have at least one more figure to paint for this faction, but I can already feel the pull to paint the Sultanate.

But before that, another little sneaky peek at how the Heretic Legion are shaping up.

Not much progress I’m afraid, but I am happy to share the small amount I have done.

I started work on some more figures again going down the lines of Zenith primers and contrast paints.  I have only done the base colours so far on these and have to do the wood stain shading followed by matt varnishing and highlighting.

The plan is to have each faction I do with its on colour palette.

I went with a ‘stripey pyjamas’ look for my Pilgrims.  I have no idea why, but I just thought they would look weird and a little twisted in their way.

For the Slave looking models, I again went with purely contrast paints.  Still only partially done at this point though.

On the terrain side of things, I painted up the woodwork with some Citadel Contrast Cygor Brown.  I watered the paint down in some areas to create some darker and lighter parts of the wood.  Once dry I dry brushed over it with Army Painter Necromancer Cloak and then Vallejo Game Colour Stonewall Grey.

I also started to add some weathering using streaks of light grey wash.

I know that this all looks rather gloomy at the moment, but that’s kind of the feel I am aiming for with this.  I imagine that this is a terrible world to live in, and having bright colours would look a bit out of place.

I also started to do some work on the Heretic Legion.  He looks a little blue at the moment, but once he is hit with some wood stain and some highlights I am hoping that he will start to look a bit greyer.

Okay, I did the figure painting thing for a bit, so it must be time for some terrain.

I love making terrain.  It’s the one part of the hobby that I enjoy above all others.  I can happily make terrain for games I have no intention of ever playing.  I make more terrain than I will ever use and often find myself in the position of having to get rid of stuff just to make space for more.

Trench Crusade is a skirmish game, and like all skirmish games terrain can make or break it.  I know that going by what it says on the tin, I should be building trenches, but that just seems too cliché.  Everyone will be doing that.

What I want to do is something a little more like early WW1 trenches, when they were less ‘uniform’ for want of a better word.  I also want to include buildings.  Not a city or anything so grand, and not a church.   Something more homely.   After all, war affects everyone.   So, with that in mind, I’m going with a Watermill and cottages in a rural setting.  There will be trenches and craters, but they will be more rustic than what we immediately think of when it comes to trench warfare.

Well, that’s the intent anyway.

The buildings won’t be so cramped together as they are in the picture.  There will be country walls and tree stumps.  Maybe some dead cattle and a stream.   Trenches and shell scrapes will be dug into the mud.  Maybe I can find an old tractor or some kind of plough or agricultural equipment to act as scatter terrain.

I don’t want to spend too much time on these buildings, so I decided to stick with my tried and tested style of doing the brickwork.   Slightly different colours this time around though to give a colder and bleaker felling to them compared to say my Victorian buildings.

Nothing too fancy with the painting, just regular rattle cans for the most part, with some simple dry brushing with household paint from the DIY store.   I have some weathering to do, but other than that, I am not going to do an awful lot more to them.

I will take some better pictures once I have the weathering done, but these pictures hopefully give an idea of the feel I’m going for.   At a push, I could fit these buildings into my Cedarwood Road Project 

It turns out that once I had the style and colours settled on, getting these painted up was not too time-consuming and a nice change of pace from what I normally do.  I have been fighting my way through some Perry Miniatures, so doing these was a breath of fresh air.

Of course, these names are purely for my amusement and will not be what I end up calling them when I get to playing a game. Heck, knowing me, I will probably go off on a complete tangent and change the faction I end up playing by the end of this.

I have to say it; I have been having loads of fun painting these up.  It has been nice to use a grittier style and quick paint jobs.   They have come together quite well, if I do say so myself.  Still plenty more to do, but I am sure they will also be as much fun as this first lot.

I will probably end up with more than I will use, but at least it will give me options.

One figure does not make a crusade; I need at least three.  (ideally more)

With the colour palette settled on for my little Antioch force, I set about getting the troops together.

Brian was lucky, he got an extra unit badge on his backpack, which reminds me of 1937 army webbing that we used to wear when I was a lad in the army cadets, oh so long ago.

Of course, Brian also needs a mate, so it was time to get Dave together,

Like so many other people, I jumped on board with the Trench Crusade Kickstarter.  I love the idea of small skirmish games where each individual is a character in their own right. With a low figure count and an interesting set of rules, I thought, why not?

Anyway, that was a while ago, and I didn’t do anything with the files when they arrived.   Life got busy, as it does.

Anyway, it came to my attention that Trench Crusade seems to be quite big here, and I thought to myself, I can do that, I can squeeze in a small project whilst juggling everything else in life.  I mean, it’s a handful of figures on each side.  What could be the harm in that?

Nothing too fancy with the painting on these, just a black primer with a couple of zenith highlights before slapping on the contrast paints.

I think the grittiness of the setting fits well with the rustic paint style.

Once the contrast paints were dry, I gave the model a good old coating of brown wood stain to both act as a varnish and to create more shadows.  It dried very glossy, and it took a few coats of matt varnish to bring it back to something half decent.

It took a long time for the model to dry, but eventually it did, and it was then just a case of going over with a small brush and adding in a few highlights here and there.

So far, I am pretty happy with how it has turned out.

To add a little colour to an otherwise drab figure, I painted the little patches in a nice blue with white trim.  It is not based off any particular regiment or unit; I just felt the urge to add some colour to it.  I also painted the medal ribbons in white and red for the same reason.