33 - "The 50/ 50s" Heavy Weapons Lascannon Team

"The 50s/ 50s" are finally at full strength! My Veteran Squad now consists of: Veteran Sergeant Greyloch, plasma pistol and a chainsword; Corporal Marsham, lasgun; Specialist Samori, vox-caster and shotgun; Specialist Condan, meltagun; Specialist Chule, heavy flamer; Specialist Ruddard, sniper rifle; Specialist Slagan, shotgun and demolition charge; Specialist Blacker, lasgun; and Specialists Kajall (spotter) and Glutter (lascannon operator). Since their capabilities seem to be more geared towards anti-armor, I'll be mounting them in a Chimera to give them added mobility. I realize they're not optimized to the fullest (Ruddard, the sniper, for instance, doesn't really add much to the anti-tank specialization of this squad, Sergeant Greyloch probably should be wielding a power weapon instead of his chainsword, and Chule very likely would be more effective armed with another meltagun rather than his heavy flamer), but their composition was selected based less on min-maxing and more on 2 criteria: 1) what would be fun to model and paint, and 2) what bits I had available laying around.

The Lascannon Team took much longer than I expected. Overall, it took me about 3 days of painting at about 3 hours a day (so a total of 9 hours). It's not perfect, not by a longshot, but I'm fairly satisfied with it. I like how the skin turned out on the two troopers. I basically painted a skintone over a black undercoat, then drenched it with an Ogryn Flesh wash. I finished up by bringing the skintone back up with a layer or two while being careful not to paint over the wash darkened recesses. Specialist Kajall (the spotter) endured a painting mishap when a blob of red paint dropped onto his face. After much vile cursing and exasperated sighs, I managed to salvage his mug by removing as much of the wet paint as I could with a moist brush and then applying very thin layers of skintone to cover the red while trying very hard not to a) thicken the paint on his face too much (especially since the painting surfaces on the faces of these miniatures are at such a premium) or b) marr the 1st layer of skintone basecoat I had already painted on.

You'll notice that these two "Cadian" troopers have been put together using a lot of Catachan bits. Well this is primarily because the Catachan Heavy Weapon Squad kit was the only one I was able to buy off of eBay at a reasonable price. So what I did was improvise/ convert a little bit - I partnered a Cadian Shock Trooper torso with a Catachan Heavy Weapon legs for Kajall, and for Glutter, I attempted to give the appearance of a Cadian trooper by using the Cadian head on a Catachan torso and legs. Finally, I painted them in Cadian colors to further add to the illusion. Also since this team is part of a Veteran Squad, a fair amount of irregularity in uniform and equipment can be expected and tolerated.

Not much highlighting was done (again) on this team (aside from the standard bringing the base colors up after shading them with washes), although I did make an amateur's attempt at painting Kajall's big muthafrakkin' machete in the non-metallic metal technique.

Okay, well thanks for voting in the poll, all! There are still 4 days left, so please keep voting (over at Post 31) if you'd like. Between now and the end of the poll, I might paint up another miniature. Or I might just start getting everything ready for my first attempt at putting together a tutorial.

Click here for more pics.