Sunday, June 7, 2009

21 - Imperial Guard Shock Troops - Flamer Trooper


Next up - the flamer trooper for my standard Guardsmen squad. He's missing the decals on his shoulder pads and a varnish, but for all intents and purposes, he's finished. I'm pretty satisfied with his paintjob - nothing special, not too much highlighting (in fact, almost none other than bringing the base color back after shading the model with Citadel Washes). As I've mentioned in my earlier posts, I've continued to use craft paints up to this point - all of my Guardsmen (Veteran and Standard) have been painted using Delta Ceramcoat Hunter Green and Bridge Grey, Americana Fawn, and Folk Art Skin Tone. While the craft paints have been, on the whole, acceptable, their covering properties are definitely a bit on the transparent end (especially after being thinned, which they must be in order to avoid being slathered on too thickly). I've recently been looking into investing in some dedicated miniature model paints - Vallejo, Reaper, or Games Workshop - but the cost of these paints still seems prohibitive to me.

I've tried to paint the Standard Guardsmen (Third Squad/ 1st Platoon) in a cleaner, less grittier style than my Veterans. The reason, obviously, is to imply that the Standard Guardsmen squads are constantly getting influxes of fresh-faced replacements to replenish the heavy casualties that Imperial Guard units are infamous for enduring. Thus, at any given time, Standard Guard squads are full of troopers in newly pressed, crisp uniforms, flak armor that still have that new factory smell, and the deer in the headlights look. This squad has the 265 decal on their left shoulder pads (and the Cadian structure symbol on their right shoulder pad), so I'm working under the assumption that they belong to the 265th Cadian Shock Troops Regiment. A cursory Google search doesn't reveal any canonical references to the 265th Cadian Regiment, so I guess I'll have to sit down and create some fluff for them on my own (Yay!).

So, this flamer trooper makes 5 Standard Guardsmen from Third Squad. 3 more lasgun troopers to go and then a Heavy Weapons Team (either autocannon or heavy bolter) to round them out. At this point, I'll have used 16 of the 20 available models from the Cadian Shock Troops box I purchased five or so months back (before they went OOP). That leaves 4 models left. I've already begun converting those 4 remaining models for my 1st Platoon Command Squad (I've got enough bits collected and set aside for a Junior Officer, a Standard Bearer, a vox-caster operator, and a veteran with a special weapon). After that, I might move on to trying my hand at converting (with green stuff) some Ogryn from an Ogre Kingdoms Leadbelcher set I have. More likely though, I'll head back to my Blood Ravens as I have plans to convert some regular Tactical Space Marines into Sternguard. Unless, of course, I'm able to find some Heavy Weapons Squad boxes cheap on eBay, but ever since the recent release of the 5th Ed. Imperial Guard Codex, it's been impossible to get IG stuff cheaply. Interestingly enough, it's also really hard to get Space Marine Scout boxes cheaply on eBay. Considering everything I've read on the Interwebs about SM Scouts are that they're not all that good, I'm a bit confuzzled as to why people seem to want them so badly.

Again, click here for more pics.

7 comments:

SC John said...

nice work on the guardsmen , great paint work, I recently started to buy Vallejo paints and I am very happy with them , they have more paint in the pot and I like the consistency, and the squeeze bottle seems to waste less.

John
Santa Cruz Warhammer

Anonymous said...

I've weened myself off GW paints and move to Vallejo Game Color, and I couldn't be happier. I know the price point on these is high compared to CeramCoat, but I think you'll find the quality worth every penny. Your conversions look great, so don't skimp on the paint!

Paul Wu said...

Hmm, it seems like my next major hobby purchase would wisely be some Vallejo paints (I'm looking at the 72 bottle suitcase sets they sell) rather than more miniatures that would just join the massive backlog of miniatures I have sitting on my shelves.

@ scdarkangel

santa cruz warhammer's a great site, btw. I've been visiting it and lurking ever since I got into the hobby. Keep up the good work and thanks for visiting!

@ Jonathan

I assume, then, that you would recommend the Vallejo Game Color paints over the Model Color paints?

The 25mm Warrior said...

Oh yeah gave you a shout out on my blog... with material this good you need more followers there mate!

Please do a tutorial about how you do those eyes... would help us all out me thinks :)

Paul Wu said...

@ 25mm Warrior

Wow, thanks for the kind gesture! I'm honestly not sure the eyes on my miniatures are really good enough to warrant a tutorial, but I'll see what I can do about maybe putting something up. I'm still learning about this hobby on a daily basis, so maybe a POV from the perspective of a hobbyist struggling with all of the frustrations model painting brings to the table can be helpful.

Anonymous said...

Vallejo Game Color and Model Color are both superior products, but I mentioned the Game Color line simply because they have GW color equivalents, so it will be easier to match colors. For example, GW Red Gore is VGC Gory Red :D

AoM said...

Reaper Masters series, all the way. If you're going with Vallejo, get VMC. VGC is just too thin and doesn't cover any better.

The RMS paint is great, flows nicely, and the triads make shades and highlights really easy to find if you're looking for quick and easy. They work very similarly to the Foundry paints in that respect.

The P3 paints are also really nice, and the coverage is superb.

I use mostly P3 with some RMS in there, and 1 or 2 colors of VMC that I either couldn't find elsewhere, or had left over from previous purchases. It's getting time to replace a few of the P# colors I've used a lot, and I'm not sure if I'm going to replace them with P3 or pick out a few RMS colors.

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