...or beautiful Swans?
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| Sneak peak, Shuuuushhhh! |
I’ve had a cheeky side project on the go now for several
months, namely a small Cygnar force; not that I’ve been planning on playing the
Swans particularly, just more of a circumstance to be honest. I’ll elaborate: I won quite a bit of store credit at the
Outpost store through various ‘best army’ and tournament wins, plus they offer
an extra 10% discount to tournament players on the day of an event and somehow
I managed to see the shiny appeal of a Stormwall and bought one…. I fancied painting one up to be fair and had
a few ideas on a basing style; initially I contemplated selling it on eBay to
make a bit of money, but now he’s staying!
As luck would have it I managed to win a couple of el-cheapo bits on
eBay to add to the Stormwall and at the time I’d just sold a load of old GW
crap on eBay so had some spare cash…
Cygnar army… mmmmm!!
I’m unlikely to actually take the Cygnar to any events,
though Iron Gauntlet is appealing (i.e. where you can take multiple factions
and one of which would be the Cygnar), the project is more for painting and in
particular the basing style which I will go into more detail later in the
article. The top Cygnar lists cause me
and my buddies trouble in tournaments and I felt that having a ‘practice army’
was a good idea, from my point of view playing with Haley2 would highlight her
weaknesses for when I play against her in tournaments I also felt it my duty to
play it against my friends for their benefit (awaiting a whole torrent of abuse for that comment)! As far as lists go I admit to ‘net-decking’
the top lists, but that is the point of the project to be fair. Having played the eHaley, bonded Stormwall
list a couple of times now it is like test driving an M5 when you’re used to a
boring family car!!
Painting
With regards to painting, where this article is focussed, I
opted to use the Cygnar painting guide from the faction book. I’ve found these guides to be really good and
results from following these guidelines to be similar to the studio finished
product. I made sure that the blues and
whites were well painted, i.e. several
thin layers to get a good smooth finish, I like to use mixing medium to achieve
this and of course lots of laborious ink lining. The latter is a real ball ache and takes a
long time, but as I do it I can really see the difference. It makes armour plates stand out and
differentiates two surfaces which may have started to merge – my best method of
describing it is to make the model ‘punch’ out, a bit like a cartoon I guess.
Bases
As I noted above the basing was a key element in the project
and I wanted to do a blasted urban scheme, like in the faction book artwork; I
wanted to incorporate rusted metal girders, broken pipes, razor wire and
standing dirty water.
I wanted to give
my models some height too so I envisaged the bases being considerably higher
than other models I’ve previously based.
Below are a couple of snaps of the work in progress large bases, I used
various off cut plasticard girders, some GW bitzbox bits and slate for the
interesting elements of the base.
For
the rubble itself I used a coarse-grade railway ballast mixed into a thick
paste with PVA, this made the ‘clumps’ I was after.
For the painting I kept a simple grey drybrush, picking out
the rusted and tarnished metal girders and various other aspects. The water was made using GW water effects,
running water was an off cut of dried hot glue gun glue. I used a variety of green/brown washes in the
water areas to add contrast. Finally I
added grass tufts and occasional bits razor wire. I kept the majority of the base grass free as
I wanted it to look like weeds growing on a mainly urban grey base, I felt that
the grass was necessary to add colour to the miniatures.
The first few painted miniatures
Battle group:
*Major Victoria Haley
*Stormwall &
Stormpods
*Squire
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| Haley2 |
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| Haley2 |
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| Haley2 |
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| Stormwall |
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| Stormwall |
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| Stormwall |
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| Stormwall |
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Stormwall's base
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| Stormwall's base |
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Stormwall's lightning pods
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| Squire |
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| Squire |
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| Squire |
Units:
*Arcane Tempest Gun Mages + UA and a marshalled Hunter
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| Arcane Tempest Gun Mages |
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| Arcane Tempest Gun Mages |
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| Arcane Tempest Gun Mages |
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| Arcane Tempest Gun Mages marshalled Hunter |
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| Arcane Tempest Gun Mages marshalled Hunter |
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| Arcane Tempest Gun Mages marshalled Hunter |
I’ll be
starting work on the Black 13th soon, then some solos and finally
some Stormlance cavalry so watch this space!
As I noted above the basing was a key element in the project
and I wanted to do a blasted urban scheme, like in the faction book artwork; I
wanted to incorporate rusted metal girders, broken pipes, razor wire and
standing dirty water. I wanted to give
my models some height too so I envisaged the bases being considerably higher
than other models I’ve previously based.
Below are a couple of snaps of the work in progress large bases, I used
various off cut plasticard girders, some GW bitzbox bits and slate for the
interesting elements of the base. For
the rubble itself I used a coarse-grade railway ballast mixed into a thick
paste with PVA, this made the ‘clumps’ I was after.
