86 - Shock Trooper for Third Squad/ 1st Platoon of the Cadian 265th Regiment

Cadian Shock Troopers are almost as easy and quick to paint as skeletons! Whoohoo! Now I have 2 fall-back miniature types I can use when I find myself pressed for time.

Again, in my haste, I realized only after the fact that I forgot to paint in his eyes. A few of these miniatures I've painted up in the past 2 weeks have been missing painted bits here and there. I'm really going to have to establish a pace whereby I don't feel too under the clock where my miniatures end up looking like half-painted blobs of paint but also where I don't torture myself over minute details to the point where I refuse to put a miniature down and say it's done.

So, this Cadian Shock Trooper begins my 3rd Squad (the 1st Squad being my Veterans - "The 50/50s" - and the 2nd Squad being a standard rank and file squad with an attached mortar team) for my planned Imperial Guard platoon. He was pre-primed months ago so all I had to do was slap the Cadian color scheme on him and then give him a liberal ink wash with Badab Black, Devlan Mud and Ogryn Flesh followed by highlights of Hunter Green, Fawn, and Dolphin Gray. Well, actually, I replaced the Badab Black ink wash with a Liquitex Carbon Black ink because I was almost out of the GW wash. The Liquitex Carbon Black actually worked quite well...after I mixed it with about 10-15 drops of Liquitex Flow Aid. Without the Flow Aid, the Liquitex ink was not watery enough to slip into the cracks and crevices of the miniature. Instead, it kind of just acted like watered down acrylic paint and clung to the surface. After massively diluting it with Flow Aid, it then began to perform almost as well as GW's Badab Black. It seems like the key to GW's inks, then, is how ultra-watered down they are. I've also picked up 2 or 3 other bottles of Liquitex's inks as supplements to my GW inks mostly because they're much cheaper. I'll still primarily use GW's inks though because, honestly, they're awesome.

Okay, I'm still 2 miniatures behind. I probably won't have time to do another model tonight (the wife and I have to attend a friend's birthday soiree), but I'll try my darndest to get 2 done tomorrow. On the docket: a Necron Warrior (easy-peasy, I'm expecting) and maybe my Gunnery Sergeant Harker conversion if I'm feeling particularly ambitious. If not, then another Cadian Shock Trooper or possibly a Blood Ravens Multi-Melta Operator for Tactical Squad Fortis.

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27 - Imperial Guard Cadian Shock Troops (Second Infantry Squad Complete!)

Well, except for the Heavy Weapons Team (very likely either a mortar or a heavy bolter) that will be attached to them. These final 3 grunts are all armed with the humble lasgun. The trooper in the middle is in the process of hurling a fragmentation grenade at some mutant monstrosity bearing down on his squad's position. The man on the right is pointing at said mutant monstrosity and urging his fellow troopers to pour on the lasgun fire. All in all, I give these 3 and their fellow squadmates about 15 seconds before they're all ripped into bloody gribbly bits and consumed. Which is par for the course for the Imperial Guard. I think their junior officers, upon graduating from War College, get a field manual entitled, "They Can't Kill Us All, Can They?!?"

I thoroughly enjoyed painting all of these Guardsmen. They make an excellent canvas for practicing basic painting techniques, and due to their uniformity, you can very clearly mark your progress from one trooper to the next. It's quite a good thing I liked painting them so much (and the fluff which accompanies them) because according to my army list, I think I have 30-40 more of these Guardsmen to paint up (and that's not even counting the 2 Command Squads).

Up next - I might just jump right in an finish off the Imperial Guard assets I have left (that would be around 6 Heavy Weapons Teams and 3 members of a Platoon Command Squad), or I might shift gears and work on some random miniature I have laying around. I really should resume painting my Blood Ravens as that army is practically complete (I'm mostly missing vehicles which I've yet to find at the appropriate rock bottom price on eBay). We'll see...

Click here for more pics.

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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.

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6 - Imperial Guard Cadian Shock Troops w/ Vox-Caster Operator

I've just finished the most recent addition to my Imperial Guard Cadian Shock Troopers - the vox-caster operator! At this point, painting Cadian troopers has become almost zen-like in its lack of thinking and consideration. I think it's actually very good practice going through these Guardsmen, forcing myself to put down cleaner and smoother brushstrokes over the same contours and segments of similar miniatures. I believe I'm improving drastically in the use of washes (I've begun to add a drop of flow-improver into my Citadel washes), and am now pretty confident with shading. Highlighting and blending are still a challenge though.

Another element of advanced painting that I'll slowly ease myself into is the use of the near metallic metals (NMM for short) technique. If you've noticed, most of the miniatures I've posted on this blog use a combination of metallic paint to represent metal and non-metallic paint. The non-metallic paint, for now, is usually applied flatly, without any real attempts at mimicking metal. This is because I'm not at all ready to tackle this advanced technique. But one day, I'd like to master NMM because I'm not very fond of the look of metallic paint on miniature models.

One more thing - one of the Cadian troopers from my earlier post (the one with the 5 o'clock shadow) will be transformed into a Hardened Veteran shortly. According to the Games Workshop Warhammer 40k mythos, Hardened Veterans of the Imperial Guard "have their skills honed by constant battle and this experience sets them apart from others. These hardened individuals are drafted into special squads where they are given access to more specific weapons for their unique jobs. Due to the status given to them by their skill and experience, they are regarded with some degree of respect and fear by their peers." I'm expecting a batch of bits for conversion in the mail and will begin working on a heavily-converted Hardened Veterans Squad.

Click here for a gallery of more pictures.

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2 - Imperial Guard Cadian Shock Troops w/ Veteran Sergeant

A new addition to my slowly developing Cadian Infantry Squad - a veteran sergeant with laspistol and chain sword! Again, the basing materials used for the sergeant's base were all purchased cheaply and in large quantities from Michael's. I tried to paint black hazard stripes on the sergeant's chainsword, but it turned out terribly, so I primed it over and just kept it yellow. Maybe at a later date, I'll try to paint those black hazard stripes back on. A gallery of the figures can be found here.

Six more Cadian Shock Troops to go before First Squad is complete! Out of the remaining six, one will be a special weapons trooper (either a flamer or a grenade launcher) and another one will be equipped with a vox-caster.

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1 - Imperial Guard Cadian Shock Troops

My first attempt at basing miniatures on something more than the default plastic black bases. I think the bases turned out well. All of the materials used were purchased at Michael's in large quantities and at very reasonable prices - much cheaper than I would've had to pay if I had bought scenic material specifically geared towards miniature models. The painting on the figures is also of the highest quality I've been able to muster in the 3 months since I took up this hobby. The paint I'm using is craft store paint - I don't believe my painting skills are at a strong enough level to invest in expensive miniature modeling paint just yet. I did use Games Workshop Citadel washes to shade the figures. I'm slowly getting the hang of using inks and washes to provide shading and depth, but I'm still a rank amateur in regards to highlighting and blending.

The three plastic figures are rank and file Cadian Shock Troops from the soon to be out of production Imperial Guard Cadian Shock Troop box set. You can view a gallery of the figures here.

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