Belated Monday Miniatures - Blasts from the Past

I missed posting yesterday because I was busy getting things done to make the move to California. Fortunately, it looks like things are moving along well, and I should be there sometime next month. In the meantime, I'm having to curb a bit of my gaming and focus on other things. I'm still painting and working on things for my Labyrinth Lord and B/X games, just not nearly as much as before.

On the painting front, I've been working on the Liberi centaurs for Fanticide and finishing the last bits of terrain. As always, I'll post some work in progress and finished pics when I can. I also got a chance to play another game of Fanticide on Sunday, and I'll have a battle report of that posted soon as well.

During the game, I was talking with Nick about a lot of the hobby stuff I've done in the last few decades. One of the things that came up is my former love for all things Imperial for Warhammer 40K. I used to play a lot of 40K, and I always played Imperial armies. I collected space marines at first, starting with the old RTB01 beakies, and later moved on to Imperial Guard.

Over time, I painted quite a few armies. For space marines, I painted a Dark Angels army, two Blood Angels armies, a pair of Ultramarines armies, a Black Templars force, some White Scars, and a few non-codex chapters. I also painted tons of individual character pieces for all of those chapters plus the Crimson Fists, Imperial Fists, and more. As I got better at painting, I got to where I could turn out a decent squad of space marines in almost no time.

Even though they are some of the most common minis for the game, they can be a lot more difficult to paint than other armies, because you really need to keep your painting smooth to make them look good. It took me years of painting before I really developed the skill I needed to make these models look good.

Imperial Guard, on the other hand, were a lot more forgiving initially. Once I learned to paint flesh and cloth decently, I could paint most of the IG models produced in the 90s pretty well. I started painting the guard with a Catachan army and some Mordians for the owners of a local game shop in the early 90s. I also painted a lot of the plastic Catachans when I worked at Games Workshop.

Later I collected a lot of guard figures of my own. Over time, I collected and painted a Praetorian army, a Valhallan army, a gigantic Steel Legion army, a couple of Catachan armies, and a couple of Cadian armies. I've since sold all of these except the Catachans. I still have some ideas of painting and detailing them, but that's pretty far down my list of projects.

Unfortunately, I sold most of the models I painted and never got pictures of them. I did get a few pictures of some of my favorites, though.

Praetorians

I started collecting the Praetorians at a minis swap meet. I was able to put together just enough models to make a command section, a couple of infantry platoons, a squad of veterans, and a pair of sentinels. That gave me just enough to field them as a complete army in most standard scenarios under the 3rd edition rules. I painted them in fairly standard colors - red coats, black pants with a red stripe, gold braid, and the pith helmet.

Looking at the paint jobs now, I stayed pretty naturalistic on them. Now I use a lot more highlighting and blending. I'm still pretty happy with the job I did on these, though. I sold these guys on eBay sometime around 2000 or 2001.

Command squads - officers not pictured

Veteran squad

Steel Legion

Armageddon Steel Legion

These guys were my playing army for years. I fielded them as straight Imperial Guard, Mechanized Guard, and as Armoured Company. This army was the first where I really got the idea that it's better to paint imperfect models and get them on the table than worry about trying to make every model perfect.

I painted them in a dark field gray scheme. I started with black primer, followed by a light spray from the top with some gray spray paint. That gave me the base coloring for everything. After that, I did some simple highlights to the uniforms with a lighter gray. All of the gloves, boots, gas masks, pouches, and cases were painted dark brown to look like leather. Overall, I kept things simple and knocked them out as fast as possible.

My Commander and his command squad

Heavy weapon teams

Ratling snipers

For the tanks, I started with the same black primer and gray spray combination. Then I gave them a light drybrush with the medium gray. All of the tanks had stowage and other details to make them look like field tanks. I painted the camouflage netting dark brown and drybrushed it with an olive brown. The packs and rolls were painted dark brown like the leather on the troops. I drybrushed the tracks with metal separately and then glued them on the model.

I weathered all the vehicles by painting on corrosion. For that, I painted spots black, followed by a dark metal color. Then I washed the areas with a but of ink. The other weathering was all done with different colors of pastel chalk. I ground the chalk using a bit of sandpaper and then blew it into place on the models.

Leman Russ tanks

The Steel Legion went out as part of my great purge in 2010. I auctioned them on eBay and shipped them to their new home in France.

Valhallans

Valhallans

I collected the Valhallans in dribs and drabs over about ten years. I'd see a blister or two of them for sale somewhere and pick them up. Eventually, I had enough models to put together a decent force of infantry. I painted them using the same base as the Steel Legion - black primer followed by a gray spray. For the Valhallans, though, I highlighted all their coats to a soft green. I also added a bit of mud and dirt to the bottoms of their coats. You'll notice that I used the same commissar model as the commander for these guys as I did for my Steel Legion. For some reason, every time I ordered a commissar from Games Workshop, I'd end up with this guy. I think he makes a great officer.

Commander and his command squad

This army was a fun one to paint, because I tried a couple of new things with it.

First, I got a few different colors of Tamiya acrylic paints to try. This was the first time I used them, and I found them a joy to work with. The alcohol base of them took a bit of getting used to, but they painted wonderfully.

Second, this was one of the first times I used this paint wash technique to do mud on clothing. I mixed a thin paint wash with some medium brown craft paint and did a few layers of washing on the bottoms of their coats. I'd go through and paint the wash on an entire squad. Then I would brush the wash off toward the hem of the coat, leaving smears of mud on them. Simple and effective.

Just like the others, I auctioned these on eBay a couple years ago.