An Irish Scotsman?

The most recent Mayacast masterglass requirement was a "Named Character" - So I decided I had to finally paint up McMurrough for my Nomads.

I had debated how I was going to do his armour for a while, before I decided to go just dark, to call more attention to his kilt and face. The skin (fur?) colours were decided by me wanting him to be red-ish, and still skin-ish. I figured a dark grey almost-black would allow those to stand out more, and would believably be an armour colour he'd have as a default. I figured it'd be odd for him to have white, and equally weird for it to be camouflaged, since he gains no benefit from camouflage.

The fur was airbrushed with Vallejo Light Rust (71 129) before being washed with sepia, highlighted with Iraqi Sand. The more skin bits of his face, hands, and feet were midtone flesh.

The symbol on his shoulder is a simplified version of his infinity army profile symbol. The tartan was airbrushed with dark-red to bright-red, having masked off the rest of his fur. After I painted the reds, I struggled a bit with how to make his tartan look like woven fabric. First I did hatch-style highlighting on the red, and then tried it on the bands. I gave up after a few attempts, painted solid bands, and then 'worried' the edges of the bands with the red of the undertone kilt to get the effect. Crossovers between two sections of tartan were done in solid black, hatch-painted to give it a rough-edge vibe.

The final thin band is fleshtone lightly dotted for the main lines, before being dotted with a bleached bone colour where two lines would meet.

The rough leather of the backpack and his torso gear was a lot of fun. I painted it with a leather brown, washed heavily with mahogany brown after. I then stippled on corners and edges with a colour roughly equivalent to the old snakebite leather, before again washing with the mahogany brown. After that dried, I painted a very rough and random line of the medium fleshtone, making sure to do at least one round with a fine brush adding scratches and random creases to the leather. My metals were done in the usual way for me. (I think I've done a tutorial. If not I'll do one in a future entry!)

The sword was my first real attempt at masked airbrush metallics, since it's supposed to be a crazy sci-fi sword. The colours are all Vallejo, from pure black through default blue, a bright cyan and white. I went back and added white scratches, light glints, and worry-marks, since his blade has not been upkept properly! The same colours are on his gauntlet tech, and the sword's hilt.

I kept his armour markings to a minimum, since he's a mercenary.

But now to the fun stuff alluded to in the title; I had a hard time picking out a tartan because I couldn't find a Scottish clan named McMurrough: Turns out that's because McMurrough is an Irish family name! That suggests that our boy here has a very interesting history. His first name, "Tearlach" is a Scottish Gaelic version of "Charles", "Dearg" is Gaelic for "Red", and McMurrough is Irish.

Even his clan slogan, or personal slogan, "Buaidh No Bas" is an Irish/Scottish clan motto for "Victory or Death"!

So what does that mean? Well, if his last name is Irish, it means he wouldn't have a family/clan tartan. Irish tartans are based on county or region. So in this case, working as he is for Corregidor, he wears a kilt with primarily red, with black and white highlights in honour of his clients/patrons, the Corregidorans!

I love playing with McMurrough. Win or lose, he's almost guaranteed to do something epic, and the look on an opponent's face if he succeeds, and rampages across half an army alone is worth the effort!

DRUZE!

Hey folks,

This started because of the contest in early 2018 (I'm trying to back-fill all the things I didn't post!)

An entire Druze force, and I tried to make it not look like any force that already exists. Green is already taken by Ariadna (and to a lesser extent by Haqqislam).

I thought about what colour is not taken by any army, and brown came to mind. Supported by Red, because that'd look cool. Hilariously I later realized that also makes it look like the Browncoats from Firefly!

The labeled picture! A link team of 5 to the left with a few proxies (notably the brawler doctor from Bipandra, and Valeria Gromoz as played by the Druze limited hacker. On the right is the Brawler Haris, with a Heavy Rocket Launcher, the Haris leader, and the spec ops as Doctor.

Back view. The bases are custom-made by me on a laser etcher: I wanted to get a different feel than my typical transparent bases, and especially with how many of the models have very thin connection points, it would make it easier to lock the models in place!

A cluster-shot of the group, dynamically posed, and finally:

The glamour shot!

Hope you like it, next time I try to find more of my "oh yeah, I did take photos of this" stuff!

Heroes in a Full Shell

Hey folks! Happy New Year and happy gaming!

For the most recent Mayacast contest, the challenge was to produce a TAG. Any TAG (From Infinity) painted to the best of your ability. I decided to paint up my Guijia:

The idea I have for my Yu Jing is for them to be the Emperor's personal guard (The Jade Guard) - As such, he doesn't want mundane war-tech in his beautifully crafted palace halls, so every heavy infantry or TAG under his personal guard is painted like jade statues.

Let me tell you; it's tough to get the iridescence of jade right on a flat pewter model...

This is a primer coat black with airbrush, followed by a carefully layered up "Sick Green" (72.029 Vallejo Game Colour). following this was a bit of a white airbrush of highlight spots and some edge-lining with the same, followed by Light Green (Vallejo 70.942) over the white and to clean up any missed spots in the first run. This switch of greens gives the somewhat varying iridescence. Next comes a layer of gloss varnish, black-lining in the cracks to really pop the highlights, and a few final spots of white lines on high gloss areas.

As a result of the "Jade Statue" design intent, I played down my usual heavy detailing of warning signs, arrows, stripes and other elements to better suggest the statue trompe l'oeil, and since these would be only the most veteran pilots, they'd already know the warnings!

I also converted the TAG to be holding the HMG. Considering a Guijia has almost no close combat ability to speak of, there's little purpose to having him only brandish the sword, when the gun (and armour) is so much the reason you take one!

On this shoulder, you can also see a Chinese-styled design, surrounding a cleaned up (not neon green) Yu Jing logo.

The opposite shoulder had the Guijia logo, more neat designs, and also shows what few markings there are (For example, the unit number, and a pilot's mark on the small shoulderpad.

The base was custom-lasered to look like a Chinese carved pattern, all aglow with science fiction tech. The Seraph corpse is treated cleanly, since it may be a wreck, but since it's fresh, it's not going to have rusted or gotten all chipped by wear. The sword was my first attempt airbrushing with tape to cover half, and seemed to work out reasonably well. The hilt is a very impractical gold-leaf design, but hey; only the most flashy for the Emperor of Yu Jing!

The sword follows much the same pattern as the armour, replacing Prussian Blue (70965) and Light Turquoise (70840) followed by white.

I'm eager to find out what the next project will be, in the meantime I've been relaxing with Team Yankee conversions and another weird project or two I'll show off soon!

Iguana post more often, really I do!

Well, it's been a while! I swear I've been painting and all, I just keep forgetting to post or to photograph!

This is a bit an older post, but I finally re-found the photos for this and have decided to put them online at long last:

This is my entry from Q2 into the Mayacast Contest, the ever-awesome Infinity Nomad Iguana TAG.

Starting out, I decided to go with a more Central-American theme with this TAG, having done Africa with the two Geckos. The TAG's pilot is named Yupanki, which is a famous warrior/military leader, and translates roughly to "With Honour". It's been painted to stay consistent with the Geckos in colour scheme, except for that ominous and I'm sure in no way relevant right hand paint!

You may also notice the TAG is converted! I wasn't a fan of the angry point, so I decided to shift the pose to be a broad-shape shooting stance. With the belt feed HMG, it looked more dramatic that way.

Here you can see a more top-to-bottom pose for the TAG. I have the same safety warnings across the guy as with the Geckos, and while I considered a bunch of integrated black and white striping, I felt the full red just felt more in keeping with how I've been painting my TAGs so far.

The tail, from behind: this tail was annoying to paint. It's a lot of segments, and I primarily airbrushed it. You can also see the warning labels on the ammo hopper, and in general my non-metallic-metal styled metallic painting. It keeps it shiny IRL, and still has a nice light-to-dark.

The markings on the side of the leg and the shoulder pads are, in Mayan and Aztec writings, essentially translated are "Death Lizard" (on the shoulderpad in this case) and "Storm Lord/Chief" - I figure this pilot, with the honour of fighting in a full Iguana, has quite a bit of ego to him!

The colours are personal artistic license, but as with the Geckos, I want to make my TAGs look as much as possible like they've been decorated by crews with a great love for machines, and a bit less a love of military regulation. No idea what I'll do for the Salamander once it gets resculpted!

Upcoming should be the Van Zant from the most recent contest, as well as (hopefully) some of the other wild things I've been working on. I'll also try to limit the amount of downtime between posts, and actually get my butt back in gear painting and not just assembling and buying!

As always, happy painting!

Infowar Contest Entry

As I work towards completing the next of my quarterly Mayacast painting contests, I figured I ought to upload my previous entry!

I tried to figure out a pairing that I had not previously done, and didn't want to group-paint with other folks (such as the Mobile Brigada hacker). I of course had just finished painting my Interventors at the time, and so they would not count for the project.

Then I realized I possessed the only two hackers allowed by Ariadna! Who better to paint up as a pair of hackers than the only two? (Especially since they're both pigtailed redheads, for some reason.)

Shown here interrupted in their attempt to hack into an Aleph base, the two hackers are intended to be aiming at a target off-diorama.

I went for a very basic, traditional look on their guns and gear, trying to make it look industrially hard-wearing. Since they're both hackers either mercenary or working for the most tech-limited faction, they wouldn't have fancy delicate comm gear that would smash the first time it was looked at funny.

Other than that, it was spot colours here and there to accentuate the look of the pair, and a slightly different means of painting the fiery red hair on each, so they didn't entirely look like twins. The base is made from laser-cut acrylic, glued together and lightly airbrushed, with the screen likewise made of fluorescent orange acrylic painted with white.

You can also see I have painted Isobel MacGregor's pants using the stereotypical "Canadian Plaid" - I will be making my USAriadna models into CANAriadnans, and so this will help fit the theme.

The hardest part about painting this pair was trying to make Isobel's face look right. The casting of the model has it incredibly flat - like someone squished her face with cling wrap. I had to reference the official paintscheme a few times to make sure I was sectioning off the face right, and ended up doing the equivalent of a makeup job to ensure the face felt right.

Eventually they'll be plucked off this diorama and based individually for gaming, but for now it makes for an interesting display-case-piece!

Variety, Hacking, and Trends

CB, we need to talk. You make an amazing game, your models are often the best on the market. You are very good at making varied poses for HMGs, missile launchers, TAGs, heavy infantry. Your female models are a bit too 'sexypose' too often, but I understand why...

...But there's a problem. You don't seem to know what to do with your hackers! With most other categories of soldier in the game, you have a firm grasp of varied poses, and the idea that just because they're for a combat game doesn't mean they need to be in-that-moment shooting. Why, then, do you entirely forget that when it comes to making interesting and varied poses for perhaps the most important models in the game?

Not certain what I mean? Let's look:

 Look at this: These are all hacker-specific models, produced recently in the timeline of Infinity, that are every one of them AT THIS MOMENT hacking by waving the magic hand. In the most egregious cases, their poses are identical! The fusilier, Morat, Hac Tao, Govad, Ragik, both Interventors, Ghulam... all legs slightly wider than shoulder-width apart, all actively hacking off to the side. For some, like the Nisses, Naga, Dasyus, or Hellcat, they're at least in motion as they hack, but hey, let's compare that to the non-hacking right? Could be a coincidence:

Hm, whereas we had 18 'hacking' models, of which arguably 11 are in a nearly identical pose, there are 9 photographed (another two unphotographed: Valerya Gromoz and Isobel MacGregor). I include the Ninja in this group because arguably she could be slicing someone, adding some variety. In this group is also the Alguacile, because though he's depicted in pics as hacking at this moment, I would argue the pose doesn't require him to be.

Otherwise, one firing the gun she was equipped with, one tossing off a sassy salute, three with hand-on-hip basic pose, and two 'other'. The unphotographed pair are kneeling and lifting goggles, and turning to fire at someone for interrupting a hack in progress.

That's really boring. There are other ways I must assume to depict that a soldier is a hacker besides "See? They hack!" that can fill some more models. The thing that finally made me decide to post about this is this month's releases, which saw a Nisses Hacker in "I WILL GRAB YOUR FACE" hack pose, the Hac Tao in spread stance, AND the Govad in spread stance all in one go. The Hac Tao is HOLDING the big scary sword! Why not have him in an active sword-brandishing pose that also has an 'empty hand' that could be hacking? Make it look like he's reinforcing an attack on an enemy HI (say, a Father Knight) by messing with his armour systems in combat? He's a CC 19, WIP 14, BTS 6 dude, he can probably pull off the split attention!

Now, there's one model I've not included here because I've complained about her before, but you can look at a previous post on this blog to see an example: The Mobile Brigada hacker is just painful. She's equipped with a combi rifle, a pistol, and a close combat weapon, and is depicted with the pistol? (And for some reason is minus her suit's power plant?)

Please vary up the poses more. It actually turned me off buying the Hac Tao Hacker this month.

Crates!

A friend and I have been trying for a while to create our own set of terrain, tokens, etc. You've likely seen some of the previous posts involving laser-etching things, but here's a new neat discovery.

I wanted to make a personalized USB for my brother, and accidentally discovered basswood. It's a kind of balsa I think, and it is amazing. Acrylic can warp under the laser, cut strangely, and is immensely temperamental when it comes to trying to print anything out consistently. Basswood on the other hand, is consistent, cheap, surprisingly durable, and smells a lot less harmful to breathe in during cutting.

So I went to town on some ideas. Initially I tested on regular rectangular crates, but after the first run of those, I had to try something more Infinty-fitting. For my first test runs, I mocked up a few different Nomad-style crates: Tunguska Secure Transportation (A well secured crate for important documents); Corregidor armaments (no words, just warnings on the side); and the basic Nomad Shipping and Freight (for all other concerns).

This is what they look like assembled! The pattern is loosely inspired by something I saw another company doing to mitigate the angles, since laser cutters cut mostly at 90 degrees, which means you can't put two angles flush to one another without a lot of post-cut bevel work. This over-under solution still looks like an interesting intentional design, and removes the weird gaps people would have to fill in.

They're rather sizeable, but I did want to make them big enough where some detail would register. I'll have another post soon about round two, where I fixed up the measurements and started crafting my own corporations, rather than the CB-trademark ones. The nice thing about this design too, is if one doesn't want the pre-etched logos, reversing the end-caps and two of the plates entirely hides them!

I'm running through painting tests now, to see how visible the grain is after painting. I can say so far black primer (vallejo surface) works a lot better than white.

Staging an Intervention

With the Create Your Fate contest over, I'm able to return to more just-for-me pursuits, and so I have decided to show off my Interventors!

These two are the supreme hackers in the Human Sphere. Not necessarily scary combatants, but with a Hacking Device Plus, and Fast Pandas (shown soon) they are able to make any tech-advanced enemy quake.

They are both dark skinned, a practice I am refining. The one has a bright flame-coloured yellow-orange hair to contrast their mostly black appearance.

I figure Interventors are about as pure Tunguska as one can get, hence their almost exclusively black outfits. The slinky armour is highlighted a bit heavier to seem perhaps grey, and just to provide some contrast, their shoulderpads and gunbelts are Nomad Red, with white featured on their gloves.

Their outfits of course scream "TRON", so I had to decorate the one's personality disc glowing blue, and that led the charge for them to glow blue from a few places. This time it's not an ODD or Thermoptic Camo, but perhaps sensors, HUDs, or indicators that they're not meant to rush in to the front line!

Last but not least, the FastPandas! The photos are slightly oversaturated, but it's really tough to balance the light so their bright white bits and dark black bits both show! I decided to slightly differentiate them, in part by accident, and gave one spats (He's the dapper gent) and both were carefully posed to seem as agressive as a non-combatant plump robo-panda can be!

That finishes all the models I've had painted recently, leaving only a super-fun project to go before I need to start taking all kinds of new pictures to put up! I've decided that as I paint my newest attempt to win a Mayacast Masterglass, I will set to work converting a PHR force so the mechs feel a bit more appropriately dynamic than just "I am here, I am a mech." Sadly, not much I'll be able to do about their infantry.

Enjoy!

A Whisper on the Board

Well, I've been busy the last while! There's been a lot of things happening on my end creatively, but very little that would work its way around to an interesting blog post. That said, I have managed to make time for more photos!

Next up from Icestorm are the Spektrs. They're infiltration specialists, equipped in O:IS with combi-rifles and blades, though also able to take boarding shotguns (very scary) and mines. Their true advantage in the game though is Thermoptic Camo, or camouflage that renders them invisible from both the chromatic spectrum, and the infra-red. (They never say whether or not it helps with UV, but who knows!) If you want an idea of what this is like, Ghost in the Shell makes great use of it.

In-game, they're stealthy units that aren't ninja. They're far better at range than close-quarters combat, but boy will they be a nuisance for your opponent to take care of.

Coming from Tunguska like the Grenzers, I had to go with a similar moody scheme. The default scheme puts a lot of white on them, which to me just means really obvious head target as soon as the camo goes down. I went again with a more muted red, a shiny black, and despite my protestations against elsewhere, glowy bits. In this case, my assumption is the glow is the TO Camo device's output.

They again are somewhat boring in paintscheme, but I'd much rather have them somewhat boring but logical, rather than crazy colours and silly as a result. I figure Nomads, especially Tunguskans, are no-nonsense sorts. You can see I've even done a black blade except for the razor cutting edge for the one to the right.

Also visible here is my conversion of a Spektr with Sniper Rifle. I've pulled the other arm set from the Grenzer, kept the shoulderpads, and, thanks to a wonderfully adaptable body pose, made the second Spektr look like he's leaning into a shot. Possibly over a building parapet, possibly around a corner... The head realignment went easier than the arm adjustments, and saves me from having to use the Jethro Tull Sniper (the old Spektr) which is a pose that gets more bizarre the more you look at it!

We're coming to the end of what I have finished painting shortly! I guess I'll have to pull out the brushes and paint soon, get some more finished off. In the meantime, enjoy and keep painting!

Grenzers

Continuing on the theme of Icestorm models I've finally photographed, we have the Grenzers!

The one on the left wields the default sniper rifle, all lefty-style, while the one on the right brandishes a weapons combination I doubt CB will be quick to put out in box or blister: The Combi-Rifle.

The paintscheme for this pair was relatively close to their 'official' scheme, with my usual blue glow, really highlighted with a bunch of black clothing. The black itself is mostly an edge highlight method, and the red is the same as on the Alguaciles, to make it a bit muted. While they end up kind of looking uniform black, the blue and red elements help break up that feel, and why shouldn't they be black? They're snipers that sit on a rooftop!

I'm also trying out a theme overall across the Nomads: Anything Corregidor is themed with more red elements, anything Tunguska is given more black, and anything Bakunin gets more white. The drab tan will be used on any frontline mooks heavily, and placed where I feel it'll fit the scheme well.

In case you're wondering, the other set of arms is taken from the Spektr, and it's a testament to how well the poses are set that even with an arm swap from a Spektr, the pose still works! The flowing cape is cool looking, with enough detail lines on it that you can decide to paint it in a wide variety of ways.

Next time I'll have Spektrs, but in the meantime happy holidays and keep gaming!

Mobile Brigada

After a long hiatus, I finally have photos of my Mobile Brigada. Currently, they have a gloss coat on them, but I may overlay that with a matte varnish, at least on the armour. I like them shiny, but I'm not certain I like them quite so shiny.

First up is the converted Mobile Brigada with Combi-Rifle. For the sake of Ice Storm, he has this weapon for most of the time, so I figured I might as well convert him with one. It's also convenient that there's a profile of this with tinbot, who I'll have fun converting in a little while.

His look, since the red-paint blog post, now has select white shin guards, a unique number (which I intend to carry across the entire cluster of them), and white detailing on either shoulder pad, as well as on the mask. There's multiple layers of faceplate, and I wanted to make each one distinct. The gun's a basic matte black, and the glowy vents are my usual light turquoise over white. Much like the Geckos, my figuring is the Mobile Brigada are meant to take heat from enemies, letting lighter armed infantry get away with minimal shots, so they're bright red, rather than a typical combat-subtle drab.

Next up is the converted Multi-Rifle armed Brigada. I didn't want to just do same pose different weapon, so this guy's been converted to actually be holding his gun. It was an interesting conversion to make, and was done before the box was announced with an HMG pose almost identical. The shoulderpads' insignia is the usual Nomad symbol, combined with the one for Corregidor. The upper right arm is scratch-built in essence, attempting to mimic the armour plating already there, and the head reposition was remarkably easy, needing minimal puttying.

Those guys aside, let's talk for a second about the new Mobile Brigada box...

(Taken from the Corvus Belli store page)

First, I love the look of the HMG and Boarding Shotgun versions. Very aggressive, very combat-but-not-shooting.

Then there's the female models. I don't mind the Missile Launcher's pose, but why. Why are there boob-plates? They're so ineffective, and unlike light armour, where you could argue they need to not be massively clunky, heavy armour has no similar problems!

That, and why is the hacker variant directing traffic? Why is she armed with a pistol? I think this could have been a time for CB to make really interesting combat-pose models, distinctively female without boobplates, and a hacker who is first and foremost a heavy infantry with a big scary gun, and a hacker second. I would love for them to take more influence from Ghost in the Shell, and less from Minority Report!

Also, final issue, and this is a big one, for the Mobile Brigada hacker: she doesn't have a backpack. Somehow, unlike every single other MB soldier, she has no power plant, no heavier weapon I guess, and if you ask CB, they can't even send one as a backup. Heck, they couldn't even send a fourth in the box and let me decide whether I want it or not. We've seen such an increasing standard from Corvus Belli over the last while, and this seems a step back in an annoying way.

Anyway, next time I shall have Grenzers or Spektrs, (or both, I guess) almost rounding out the Icestorm adventure!

Icestorm Alguaciles and More

It's funny how the sense of scale and numbers change based on the game system. Back when I was painting 40k, 10 models would be the standard, with 30 being high-end. Painting a single mini was a luxury reserved for commanders and special characters!

Comparatively, Flames of War often sees one painting a hundred infantry in a go (even if they're far smaller) and anywhere from 4-10 tanks let's say at a shot.

Then there's Infinity. So often even getting a box set you cap out at 4 models of a certain type. Sure you may paint 6 overall in a starter set, but it's rare you'd be painting them all at once.

Surprisingly, painting 10 Alguaciles took me a long time! That said, they're done, based, decorated, and ready to see a field. This is all 6 I got from the Operation: Icestorm boxes, plus the four from the SWC box.

First up is the cornrows variant. I am not certain why my camera's blurring. I suspect a dirty lens... Anyway: dark skinned one is given a nice fiery hairset for contrast, and the other is one of my rare 'white' models. You can see a simple arms swap for the male pair gives an interesting look with minimal putty work.

Originally, the one would have just red hair, but I realized it made him look like Ganon, and that's not entirely the look I want.

I've also streamlined my Nomad painting a bit: black guns rather than green, and boots in black as well. The green boots wasn't enough contrast with the pale armour, and really felt forced. I'll reserve my drab green for when I do the USAriadna!

Next up is the other hairstyle. Here you can see again the mundane black guns, and swapped arms from before. The first guy appropriately looks to be aiming down the sight (and has a nice central American brown colour) and the other, thanks to an inadvertent realization of what his face looks like, is pulling a mid-90s frosted tips JT look.

As you can see here, as one sights down his gun like a good Alguacile, the other looks to be saying "Really? You're fighting us? You know we're the Nomads right?" - It's just such a perfect condescending smirk that I had to keep it as visible and highlighted as possible.

Next up are the female Alguacile pair. I converted the pose on one so she's leaning slightly around a corner to get a shot off, and the other's kept in the classical 'totally not a lieutenant' pose. Their hair is likewise nice and bright, with one converted to have short hair sloping around to jaw-length from left to right.

Next up is the first of the SWC pair. the LGL model is very dark skinned, with a funky red flair. I initially thought about theming the hair colours after Hunger Games-like Capitol madness, and decided to pull it in a bit for Corregidor, and go all out for Bakunin when/if I start assembling loads of them.

Next up are the rocket launcher guy (very kindly put in a cool position) and the HMG. For the first, the same brown Central American look is set off with a nice bright Blue Jays blue (go Toronto!). HMG-girl also has blue hair tassels, but black hair. I got a kind of Chun Li vibe off her, and so attempted to make her look more Asian-themed. Perhaps a former Yu Jing 'citizen' who managed to slip cordons and join the Nomad nation!

Well, that's that: 10 Alguaciles based, painted, and ready to play. I also finally managed to get a paintscheme for my Daktari I didn't entirely hate, so I can field the traditional doctor/engi pair.

Her stuffed animal matches her haircolour, and the face is a kind of Indian brown, with glowing blue (augmented) eyes. Her uniform is a lot paler. I decided for Corregidor, I'll do a bit more red than usual, Tunguska will be primarily black, and Bakunin will have more white, with the bone colour with more or less prevalence depending. This will be good for suggesting Corregidor's aggression, Tunguska's sneakiness, and Bakunin's "all varieties in one", as well as tying together well with the Nomad symbol's three in one.

With that down, it's on to the Mobile Brigada, which have been varnished just today, and await photographing, and then all the Tunguska-like elements of Icestorm and beyond!

Geckos Done, Based, and Photographed!

Not that they're going to be a surprise to anyone, what with my in-progress reports, but I finally finished off the Geckos! I'm using bases I custom-printed for the task, with nice front/back arc indicators.

First up is the Mk.12, known as "Huntress" - I decided to keep the glossy look, so even though it obscures a bit of detail in the photos, it really adds a nice bit of shine when you see them in person. You can see on the pictures where I added decals: Two on the Mk.12 itself, (Caution warnings to keep people away from the magazine ejector and shell ports!) Plus, a large warning label behind the head to denote the various important things that are there.

On the back, a few decals denoting what I figure are the Zero-G movement packs. No matter what exact method they're supposed to use to move around, you can guarantee they'll involve things you don't want to be close to without significant protection!

Next up is the very actively posed Combi Rifle Gecko. His decals are much the same. You can also sort of see on the images how unobtrusive the front/back indicators are: Visible enough to be clearly identified in game, but not distracting when displayed.

In this shot, you can see both a clear view of the caution warnings on the massive Combi Rifles, and see the tiny caution warning at the head of the Chain Colt. Especially for a gun like that I assume they'd have warning avoidance indicators!

Also, I'm gradually refining my NMM-with-metallics painting methods. It's easier on models like this that are supposed to be all bright and shiny and well kept. (I dislike the look of rust on Infinity models: I assume they must have figured out some means of keeping them rust-free that far into the future!)

Final shot for this post: A very-close-up shot of the inner leg. I have a large set of warnings there, since that's where the pilot needs to get in. Stuff like where to hold, what to avoid, how not to lose an arm... Only on one leg, but matched on them both. Now I just can't wait to field them in a battle!

You may also be able to notice what the next post will be, hopefully not as delayed as this one: Alguaciles! I've been painting like mad this summer, trying to get Icestorm stuff finished, in part to play with it, and in part to justify getting more models >.>...

Look for that soon!