13 - Imperial Guard Veterans Squad Sergeant

Welcome to the Imperial Guard, Veteran Sergeant Greyloch! Just finished shading him with Citadel washes (Ogryn Flesh for the skin; Badab Black for the flak armor, metallic parts, the cloak, and the insignia bits; Devlan Mud for the khaki parts of the uniform) and bringing the upraised areas back up to the basecolor. For the eagle-eyed among you, you'll notice that Sergeant Greyloch has changed a bit from the WIP photos I put up in my last post. His base model was originally to be a standard bearer for my Hardened Veteran squad, but it turns out...Hardened Vet squads don't get standard bearers! Only Command Squads do. On top of that, I had armed the standard bearer with a plasma pistol which is a weapon only a Sergeant of a squad can wield. Now, even though I don't plan on playing games of Warhammer 40k in the foreseeable future (and thus aren't barred from breaking the army list rules and rewriting them for my own purposes for fear of having my work wasted when I'm not allowed to field my conversions in a game), I personally find more enjoyment in creatively interpreting the rules as they are written. I guess it's the same reason why I find poetry with definite rules regarding rhyme sequence and metered lines (English sonnets, for instance) more interesting than free verse.

As for the paint job - I think I'm able, at the moment, to consistently put out table-top quality figures. In Greyloch's case, his paint job doesn't seem worse or better than any of the last 2 or 3 Guardsmen I've done (although I did mess up Greyloch's left eye). I believe from this point forward, I'll be focusing on improving and mastering my highlights. It's taken me about 5-6 months to get this far; I'm hoping after a year, I'll be moving on to the more advanced techniques of wet blending, layering, glazing, and, of course, near-metallic metals. I've also decided to hold off on buying proper model paint until the end of the year.

Oh, and I've settled on a nickname for my Hardened Veterans squad! I'm going to call them "The 50/50s" because according to their fatalistic and cynical view of things, life and death are determined purely by the flip of a coin - 50% of the time, the bullet (or something even worse) finds you and tears you to bits, and the other 50% of the time, the bullet whizzes past your ear.

For more pics, click here.

Up next - an Ork Boy from the Assault on Black Reach starter set that I've almost completed.