ANZACS and the return of ‘Them’, ( & Cthulu Kong, Goldylocks etc!))

Now I will upfront apologise for not being able to describe the painting of the figure part of this model as:

I had brought this on Impulse, as had Kevin and Jo from our group on seeing  it on the Friday at Games Expo. As usual we held off buying straight away, and having forgot where the stand was , Kevin brought them on  the Sunday from.

https://xwcminiatures.com/pages/miniatures.

I had no idea at the time what I was going g to use it for, but knew I would eventually.  Any way it was ideal for Black Sun, and has sat by the side of hobby table since the end of August

( having been built as I kept knocking it on floor , and having  to find the bits!)

I had a paint scheme in mind based on;

So I tried various Speed and Contrast paints , with lighter drybrushing, but couldn’t get it right. In between it would sit on side table whilst I thought about it again.

Eventually I tried a white light dry brush and it worked and I had base colour. But I didn’t want wings to be same colour, as it would be too green. I had originally thought about doing whole model Blue but decided against it goong  would work for just the  wings going provisionally matching a  light fading night sky.  Again  I had the  same problem and it didn’t look right till you guessed it, light white dry brush.

Afterwards it was a little experimenting with the boney bits claws etc  but figure was finished.

Then how to base it. I originally was going to be clichéd and put it standing over a mountain of skulls but Kevin pointed out that would scale it, and I wanted it for multiple games. So base was painted black and it sat at side of hobby table fo a few more weeks.

Anyway I looked at it and thought about it’s name StarSpawn  and looking at black base thought Space (the f…..you know the rest)

So paint a star spotted base, but would it look odd on a Vietnam Jungle, then thought,  how if its crossing from the void into our reality across dimensions!

So using a bit of textured paint, did a roughly semi circle for a blazing sun with a firey corona ( I slipped with brush putting down textured paint) and then did a roughly linear strip of textured paint for the Jungle for our dimension with a white line for the crossover. Both the Sun and Jungle painted with appropriate speed paints.

I had wanted to convey it shattering the barrier between dimensions,  but how to do it, till I found some old orange clear plastic card.. which shattered appropriately when being cut and voila!

For Varnishing I generally went for AK’s ultra Matt, but used gloss on Sun tentacles and edge of claws. I did a light dry brush of gloss over all to give model a slight sheen.

Having done a Marine tank I finally got to do my 2st squad of Rubicon’s U.S.M.C. which are some of the nicest figures in range. Mostly done using techniques used on previous figures. Only difference was they had flak jackets  and on looking at photos of Marines in Nam, they seemed to come in various shades of green  so plumped for the old staple GW Contrast Gutrippa Flesh, for a lighter contrasting colour.

Then it was the SAS, a set of figures that I wanted to do a lot earlier but dropped off schedule.

I originally thought they would be completely glad in Tiger stripe Cammo but was suprised to find it was a mirror subtle Cammo similar to 1950’s British Paras, and they wore a similar smock.

As I was playing with a different set of colours  and wasn’t sure how it would go  did it on 1st batch of figures just on the bits of smock that showed under all the Kit.

Unlike the British for Forgotten Ruins,  I only used colours, the base light Green, the usual Wraithbone  dabs then a Brown with GW Skeleton Horde ( as was very light looking on the Osprey picture, with Forest Sprite .

Happy with the subtle effect I used it on both jackets and trousers on next batch of Six.

In addition I decided to try Cammo face paint, partially as I had been Impresed with how Speedpaints Forrst Sprite had worked on the Ork faces earlier.

I then just put a couple bands of Militarum Green GW contrast, finding it easier to do than standard faces

For the Eagle eyed, yes the Beret is Cammo’d as well.

Well after that interlude, and Halo Project it was back to Black Suns proper (also needed to clear partiallystsrtrd figures fron hobby table), with the Forgotten ARVN , Heroes/Command, Pulp Figures don’t do ARVN so we had Empress mintures Command teams for this.

Fairly straightforward paint jobs on these  ( see previous)

Having done the Modern force for the game I needed some opponents,  Now I don’t have a lot of fantasy figures , other than a small number I painted for Frostgrave some time ago. So to make the bulk I brought a boxof Oathmark Orks and one of their heavy Orks , to add to the Goblins I picked up form Wargames Atlantic. It did strike me that although these figures are for Forgotten Ruin, I don’t see why they couldn’t also appear as a faction in Black Sun, say for instance  wandering band from other parts of Planet ( I am developing an idea for am expanded Black Suns setting with various possible crossovers)

For the Orks so far complete I used a palette of Speed Paints and GW contrast.

Skin was the now tried and trusted Speedpaints Forest Sprite.

Their clothing was a mix of GW Basilicum Grey , Skeleton Horde, with Speed Paint Pallid Bone and Hardened Leather.

Armour was Speedpaint  Enchanted Steel for the mail , Broadsword Silver for Plate,

All given the now usual diluted Agrax Eartshade Wash.

The Figures were pretty much block painting of the various Contrast shades doing rather work and were a nice relaxing break from all the Cammo.

I still have to paint the Goblins , but did finish the two Bigger monsters I brought via Oathmark.

More will be added later, as I have now ordered British Heavy Wpns and Armour.

Once the wash had dried, I tidied up the paint lines before di g faces, luckily many if the figures had sunglasses on which reduced the number of eyes I had to do.

I did a specialist weapons  with Sniper and Milan. Added were 3 figures from Wargames Atlanic Operator box, in one figure with Marksman Rifle and 2 Command with Berets.

Finally I added a SAS team. Botvof variation on cammo plus kit on there figures.

There I was thinking, finished current HALO Collection so can get back to Black Sun’s Fantasy Nam  when I catch a you tube video on the ideal pairing of Wargames Atlantic Operators with Modifeus’s Forgotten Ruins Rule Book

I had caught the weekender discussion on mixing the new Atlantic Operators , and forthcoming Agents to do an SG team for SG1, one of my favourite shows. I have Jaffa, , and was intrigued on this fantasy world  in could elements be merged into Black Sun. I already thought maybe use Stargate rather than random portals.

Anyway on getting my copy  realised that it was based on a series of books , with the 2st having same name as the Rule set.

Although there was a World Map, and a bestiary   not much background, so I Kindled the 1st book.

Now I can and will play it with my Vietnam figures. But , did like the Idea of Ultra Modern forces in Fantasy World  having watched odd episodes of The Anima ‘The Gate’.

Not that I needed much prompting, so rather than U.S. Rangers , I went for British Para’s,.

Of course I couldn’t just use the figures in Agents Box,, as they only had 4 or 5 SA80′, so I did quick order to Empress Minatures again!

12 British Infanrty and 4 SAS ( I have a unpainted Mortar Team from previous project) later, with a few extras from the operators box, and the ‘good guys’ are sorted.

Now how to paint them, particularly their Cammo uniforms?

I was not going to be able to paint that fine to match it, best would be doing them so they looked approximately right from normal table distance for 28mm figures.

My work on Arnies Predator squad gave me an idea for the base colour,  which is what I gave the figures a base coat( Including boots.) GW Contrast Gutrrippa Flesh, in 2 part paints to one water mix.

Finally to merge it all together, zI coated it in liquid talent  with  a coat of Agrax Earthshade wash., thinned 50/50.

Now I do agree with Geryy that the wash can sometimes darken and detract from original colour shading,  but I  this case it does seem to bring it altogether.

With our 1st Monster and the finishing of Ozzy Heroes, it was only right that I did some Vietnamese Heroes. Again I used a couple of packs of Crucible Crushes Pulp Figures to represent these slightly larger than life characters.

I was able to pick out 4 for the NVA.

I then had 6 Vietcong Heroes

If anyone is wondering why they get more, there are 2 reasons.

1)The Vietcong were often working on  their own away in small cares, which gave more scope for heroics (in theory)

2) (and main reason) there were more figures that looked Viet Kong than NVA.