Thursday, April 18, 2013

Concept Tau Firewarrior - Part 3: basing + Rant

This is where we left off...
Welcome to the final part of my Shas'la S'mik painting concept.

Yesterday, I had a PPP (Peer Pressure Painting) session with a friend of mine who just started the hobby and bought the limited edition Dark Vengeance (in Dutch... Duistere Wraak) box.
He had no idea where to start painting his models, so he needed me to give him some pointers.

I didn't have the chance to do much, but I did manage do try my hand at a desert base for S'mik.



Let me start by talking a bit about "Duistere Wraak". It's the Dutch version of Dark Vengeance and the name is translated literally... which sounds a bit silly to me.

When I first bought my box of Dark Vengeance, it was the limited edition in English, as I wanted the Limited edition Chaplain model and an English rulebook. (The dutch translation of rules is usually not something I want to read... it just feels wrong).

I ordered the box from Maelstrom Games. Bad move...
Before, I never had problems with Maelstrom, but soon they sent me an email saying they had problems getting stock from their supplier (GW) and that the limited edition I ordered would be swapped into a regular edition and I would get a refund for the difference in cost.

The refund was given to me in the form of store credit so I was then just eagerly awaiting the arrival of my order...

Many of you probably know about the Maelstrom debacle so, long story short: I never received my order, Maelstrom stopped answering my emails and Paypal refused to refund the payment because my complaint was too late. Soon after, Maelstrom went belly-up.

Luckily for me, I payed with Visa, and they were kind enough to refund me the payment. So shortly after that, I ordered the regular edition Dark Vengeance box from Firestorm games.

Anyway, that was just some background why I don't have the Limited Edition Chaplain...
and all this leads up to: The Limited Edition Chaplain is a super nice miniature... I'm so jealous that my friend has it and I don't.

There, I said it... now onto more pressing matters:

As suggested by EllisW and corroborated by Dries, I decided to try a Desert basing scheme for my Tau dudes. Seeing as I only buy the paint colors I really need, I didn't seem to have any decent desert sand color... hmm... what to do...

I tried the closest thing I had, which was VGC Dead Flesh... I don't have a picture of this applied to the base, but suffice to say, it looked yucky.

Since this is still S'mik I thought: "what the heck" and I went on to apply a Sepia wash and when that was dry, I added a Dead Flesh drybrush and Bone White highlight. (the old Bleached Bone... don't know what the name of the GW equivalent is now)

It ended up being not half bad:
Excuse the bad pic, I was not at my regular spot and the lighting was abysmal.
To me, it looks like an arid alien planet... which was the whole point :D

I also started 2 more firewarriors and a gun drone to see if I could reliably replicate the color scheme and if it looks good on drones. Those will feature in a later post, once I get them done.

Have you had any bad experiences with web shops?
What do you think about S'mik's base?

4 comments:

  1. The base looks nice; I like it. I've found you can usually make something work if you have anything remotely close to the shade you want - something I didn't have the confidence to do for a long time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks.

      You have a good point. I think now, after a good 15 years on the hobby, I'm finally starting to become a 'painter'. (notice the quotes... looking at some of the stuff that's posted on the internet, my painting is still rather crappy)
      What I mean is that I'm starting to really see what goes where to create something I have in mind.

      Mind you, I'm painting these primarily to get them on the battlefield quickly... I have started another S'mik using a turquoise armor color, which is really nice as well (better than the violet even), but not nearly as fast to paint!

      Delete
  2. Looking good base turned out good, can I make 2 suggestions? 1: paint the rim maybe a snakebite leather color to reinforce the desert theme and 2: maybe add a piece of static grass like GW sells to reinforce the aeird world theme being that deserts have plants, the GW static is more of a brown then green grass other then that looks really good. Keep up the good work

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 1: I could try that, but I think the black rim balances out the lightness of the base with the darkness of the firewarrior. Next painting session, I'll try it out... it's easy enough to paint it black again if I don't like it ;)

      2: Will do, but first I want to add a coat of varnish. I have GF9 Dead static grass, which is mostly brown. (http://totalwargamer.co.uk/images/detailed/2/gale-force-nine-winter-dead-static-grass.jpg)

      Delete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...