Gray Death detailing

Detailing rounds

Ah, it was the time for picking out details and tinkering on absurdly small things, and that was glorious. The cockpits, energy weapons, and all the individual bits on each mini - just the stuff I enjoyed the most in painting these little pieces. Of course I always came up with something new to fool around with so I never got very quick at this stage.

Reddening the cockpits

I liked to have the cockpits standing clearly out from the rest of the paintjob, and quite often I've ended up painting them in red. That being said, they ended red again. Over the flat black bases I painted a red-brown (RLM26) layer, then into the lower right sectors a red (RLM23) inverted L-shape or a blob if I was low on space. Into the red corners and their opposite corners I painted a white (VGA 72701 Dead White) dots or shapes as reflections, as space allowed. Like every other time, some panels succeeded better than some others.

Everything looked so much nicer in the Lance photo than in these individual supercloseups:

Energy weapon lenses

My process hadn't really changed since I started with this silliness. First I wrote down a list of what I actually needed to get done and in which colours:

1. Small Laser / Bloody Red (VGA 72710)
1. Warhammer 2pcs [LT,RT] even though I hadn't found out their places yet
2. Medium Laser / Escorpena Green (VGA 72732)
1. Warhammer 2pcs [LT, RT]
2. Ostsol 4pcs [LT, RT, LT[R], RT[R]]
3. Shadow Hawk 1pcs [RA]
3. Large Laser / Magic Blue (VGA 72721)
1. Ostsol 2pcs [LT, RT]
4. PPC / Electric Blue (VGC 72023)
1. Warhammer 2pcs [LA, RA] 

I didn't take the intermediate photos again and just took the "and now they're done" shots afterwards. My reasoning with this was that I had documented it many times enough and it didn't make sense to repeat the same substeps with photos every time.

The Warhammer was supposed to carry two Small Lasers in its torso but I simply didn't find them marked. That CT grille definitely didn't work as a palceholder so I skipped them. I decided not to worry with the gloss varnishes at this point on any of the surfaces but to do that much later.

Jump Jets

We had two jump-capable 'Mechs, Shadow Hawk was obviously one of them and the similarly named Phoenix Hawk IIC also carried a load of JJs in its back. This time, like I've done for all the nozzles, I painted them with electric blue and added some diluted white to the outer edges. I didn't paint the Shadow Hawk's nozzles as they were holes for the jump effect's plumes, so I just drybrushed them gently on the edges.

A chipping session

For the chips I used a piece of a plastic sponge and greyish white in various wearable-looking spots, mostly edges and other easily damaged areas. Into some of the larger or more noticeable chips I mixed my black grey with red for the deeper scratches. Basic stuff but more bothersome than on the 1:35 scale.

Replacement armour test

Foolishly I jumped into my silly idea of painting some fixed battle damage. I did that by painting some random panels and armour blocks in a grey I have always disliked a lot (VMA 71276 USAF Light Grey). As opposed to the novels, I didn't go for half-limbs or anything large like that even if it would've fit the theme pretty well.

The Warhammer had been shot here and there, no concentrated clusters of PPC damage.

Ostsol's Left Torso looked like it had gotten a healthy amount of damage right next to its head and I started thinking if I should also paint the left chest piece next to the Large Laser, it'd cover quite a bit of internal damage. As if it had taken a nickel-ferrous Gauss slug right next to the cockpit. That would've been an ear-ringer.

Shadow Hawk had also been just nibbled at.

Soot from the projectile weapons and more replacements

Getting back to the weapons, the foursome had three AutoCannons and a couple of Missile launchers. As they were they were quite clean so I drybrushed their firing ends and edges with black. Of course I could've used a black pigment but that was less easy to control than drybrush, and I didn't want to make them look like Soviet hardware either.

In my excitement of fine-tuning I also painted a few more panels as replacements. Especially Ostsol's left side called my attention.

To wrap this up for this week I had a photo of the Phoenix Hawk IIC's Jump Jet nozzles that I had completely forgotten to share earlier:

Project VI/26

Legionnaires of the Gray Death type

At some point in 1986 William H. Keith the younger pushed out his first part of a trilogy, and later on a larger saga about the first steps of young Grayson Death Carlyle in the world of mercenaries. Grayson spent much of his time after the very beginning piloting a glorious Marauder. I had already assigned my two Marauders elsewhere so this Lance couldn't have mr G Death himself in the ranks.

The idea for implementing the grey on grey pattern with stripes came to me when I flailed in vain with the Hummel's crew figures: if I set up the basecoat in Cold Grey with brighter highlights, and then painted the stripes with a heavily diluted dark grey? I wanted to give it a shot so I picked four miniatures as volunteers. It would've been way too simple to just take everything but the Kuritapult from the GDL ForcePack I recently bought, so I mixed and matched from four different sets.

Composition

The aforementioned Gray Death Legion Heavy Battle Lance gave this project a Shadow Hawk with the optional jump effect. Legendary MechWarriors III volunteered a Warhammer that I could've assigned elsewhere but I really like Warhammers too and therefore wanted to paint it now. From my BT:Mercs Salvage Boxes I got a Phoenix Hawk IIC. The last one to round the Lance was a bigger headscratcher and I half-blindly caught a Mercenaries-box's Ostsol in the BTTracker.

Warhammer WHM-6R

This was the one to start with, a fantastic design.

Phoenix Hawk IIC

On the opposite spectrum of 'Mech styles was the much more animelike unit, and maybe my eighties was seriously underfed with mecha, I just didn't like the smoother-shaped 'Mechs nearly as much as the clunky and angluar ones. That might not be a surprise to anyone who knew me as a fan of German Panzers.

Shadow Hawk SHD-7D

With the Shadow Hawk I was most excited about trying the flame colum effect again, for I had enjoyed playing with the two Elemental Jump Jet plumes some time ago. I'd try a different approach with this one, maybe I wouldn't even ruin anything.

Then I checked when did I actually paint the jumping Elementals. Almost exactly four years ago. Right. 

Ostsol OTL-4D

All these Ost* types of 'Mechs were known to my from some random Sarna articles, maybe a mention or two in novels at best. I knew that there were at least a handful of them from Ostscout to Ostroc and Ostsol, ending in Ostwar. Their names were supposedly describing what they were designed for.

 

Finished: Project V/26

Fiery monkeys in the Kerensky Cluster

Apparently I got excited about this stuff as the project practically flew from start to finish. This also happened with the recent Diamond Sharks so maybe new and different was a good motivator for me. Of course I was boosted by my decision of not attempting to do roundels or any such difficult things.

Point 5 - Fire Moth Prime

As we have seen these before, the somewhat speedy Fire Moth with its normal top speed of 160km/h, not to mention the MASCed 200+km/h rapidity was also the lightest of the lights with its mere twenty tons of mass. At least it had a bit more varied weapon than its Starmate Howler: two ERMLas in one arm, a SRM-6 in the other, and a SRM-4 on one shoulder. Being the Point number five it was the Star's commander and quite likely the MechWarrior in question was also ranked a Star Commander.

Point 4 - Howler

The only actual BattleMech of the Star was a totem 'Mech of the Fire Mandrills, or one of them at least. This twenty-tonner ran almost 120km/h on good terrain and as a stroke of genious had a triple of LRM-5 launchers installed on the right shoulder, along with three tons worth of long range missiles. Yes, the Howler sported fists, too, but Truborns abhorred barbaric melee fighting so they didn't count as actual weapons.

Kit Fox Prime

Each of the three Kit Foxes were super boringly configured the same exact way, so the only way the visually differed from each other was by their highlights. These three were both heavier and slower than the two more senior Points and they didn't quite reach three-digit speeds. In the Right Arm the Kit Fox had an LB-5X AutoCannon and a Streak SRM-4 launcher. The opposite arm had, in addition to a fist, an ER Large Laser right next to a Small Pulse Laser.

Of course I could claim, had I painted the lasers differently, that some of them were B configs where the LB-5X was actually an UAC/10 and the SSRM-4 an SRM-6, while the ERLLas was downgraded to ERMLas and the SPLas to an ERSLas. But I had not thought of this that far.

Point 3

Point 2

Point 1

The Star's Point 1 was the unit's lowest-ranking Warrior. Maybe this was also depicted with the Kit Fox looking like it was about to fall. Or maybe it was just taking a nickel-ferrous Gauss slug or a PPC blast into its front left corner. That could happen to anyone, regardless of rank and experience level.

Fire Mandrill jewels and oils

Project's second and last stage?

Having the viewports prepared in black the last time, it was a quick start this time. But. The IWM miniatures, especially the Kit Foxes had incredibly tiny lens spaces. I would be taking this jewel stuff much easier than earlier.

Jeweling effects

I decided to use only two layers on the energy weapons: first with the actual type colour, then a single white-grey dot for the effect itself.

The canopies I thought to paint in blue, as it would stand out nicely. This time I didn't start mixing shades myself but used two blues instead. Over the black I painted a layer of Magic Blue (VGA 72721), then a smaller more or less L or crescent-shaped effect on each panel with AMT-7 (VMA 71318 Greyish Blue AMT-7), and then in the inner and opposing corrners off-white (VMA 71119 White Grey) fake reflections, just like in the energy weapon lenses.

Howler was a piece of cake, it only had viewports and they were decently sized for my talents. I also prepared its hex base to be able to tell the toes and random paint smudges apart from each other.

Fire Moth had a tight viewport area, but I got some kind of an effect painted on with enough spinning around. Its Left Arm's ERMLas pair was tiny in diameter but at least you could see them. I spent a moment thinking of the SRM tips because I wanted to keep using my old idea of two-tone caps. First I painted the peeking missile tips greyish white, then I touched their very tips with some black grey. Even if these were of an acceptable size to paint, it was still a bit funky to paint them half-cross-eyed. 

Kit Foxes were each treated identically. Their viewports were even narrower than the Fire Moth's but I did my best. Those two lasers in the Left Arm were ridiculous to paint to say the least. Those shapes I declared the lenses of the Small Pulse Lasers I painted red, then the identical bits next to them, ER Large Lasers, I painted with Magic Blue. Finally I attempted to paint the even tinier grey white dots into them. On their foreheads they had those huge sensors, which I painted Fire Orange, again with the off-white reflection.

On the Right Arm's pod they had a Streak SRM-6 launcher riding next to an LB-5X, this version apparently blasted out the full set of one single tube. I painted them the same exact way I painted the Fire Moth's SRMs.

A group photo:

There was a detail I was thinking of was the pretty simple Point rank marking that the Fire Mandrills had. A red triangle standing on its tip with one to five golden semihorizontal lines behind it. I just couldn't paint them acceptably in this scale on those tiny armour plates, so I didn't do it.

Oil washing and cleaning

My usual approach to this was the familiar Abteilung's Sepia oil paint (ABT002 Sepia) thinned down to a wash. I let the wash settle in for about twenty minutes.

Then I cleaned up the excesses and let the minis to cure overnight.

Before going further I was thinking if I should highlight the upper red and yellow parts after the oil wash had toned them all down a bit. Of course this wasn't my own idea, I had seen it in a bunch of places already, so I gave it a shot and returned some brightness to the minis.

Howler's hex base

Being the only one with an unprepared the base, the Howler required some terrain for it. Maybe I'd use Vallejo's Mud goo and then apply some Woodland Scenics' Ballast and Foliage as the others had something similar?

When the glue holding the ballast was dry, I thinned down some Abteilung's Industrial Earth (ABT090) and used that on each of the five minis and feet. This unified them somewhat more, despite the age difference.

Now I only needed to remember to superglue some greenery in there...

Front edges

For the hex edges I thought I'd do them yellow the same way I painted the yellow parts of the 'Mechs. first the sand yellow, then lemon yellow. That then gave me the idea of making them somehow unique: I'd paint the Point marking in there, because the symbol was pretty simple. As the starting point I painted the down-facing triangles with hull red, and then added the 1-5 slashes as the space allowed.

I outsourced the Point ranking to Project Assistant II: Howler was #4, Fire Moth #5 and the Kit Foxes in order #1, #3, #2. You could tell that in this scale painting anything more than three tiny lines was overdifficult for me.

With the ranks decided I painted, just for the simple fun of it, the marks into the bottoms as well. It was a complete waste of time but I happened to have some idle time, I did it anyway. 

With these done I redid the rest of the hex edges with black grey, and started feeling like this pack of monkeys was ready. Except that I had forgotten to use the gloss varnish on the glossy bits. After a quick varnish-applying moment, and gluing that cursed tuft in place, I was actually done.