Thursday, March 11, 2010

Grundback Blasters

Fresh off the assembly line: 2 new Grundback Blasters! These nasty little buggers, often referred to as part of the "gun bunny" family, are a part of the Madhammer battlegroup I am currently working on. Although small in size and point cost, I've found them to be an amusing addition to my merc force. Sprays are very potent in MK2, particularly in clearing off infantry from an engaged heavy, and these little guys are champs at that job.

Before talking about painting these, I'd like to mention the assembly. They posed a bit of a challenge in a couple ways. First, their feet are not exactly basing friendly. Big wide flat feet are amusing, but hard to position reasonably, especially when I paint the model off of the based and attach him later. Second, the joints all required pinning as the joins are less than perfect. I ended up doing a combination of pinning and green stuff to get them all together.

As far as painting goes, I decided to go with a metal-and-red scheme, since Madhammer strikes me as a bold sort of fellow. Red is the color of fire, and blasts, and well... more fire! So that's what I decided to go with. Just like the Vanguard, I wanted some battle damage on them so that they appeared used, but not broken down. In order to do the battle damage, I used the same technique as before. Specifically I did all the metals first, with metal everywhere. Then I used the wet palette and added the reds afterwards by controlling the transparency and layering the red on. This gave it a look like the paint was partially worn/blasted off in places. I've become more and more fond of this technique as I use it.

What went well:
* These were fun to paint! Quick, easy, and not at all frustrating (except for the normal tedious nature of bronzes).
* The numbers for each of them, although not Rhulic characters, turned out good. I like the industrial formatting of them.
* The bases worked out great. I used a little red in the shading of the rocks to tie the whole scheme together. My wife even went out of her way to comment on the bases, so I take that as a good sign.

What could have been better:
* More time as usual.
* Better planning around the bases so that they positioned better.

1 comment:

Mike Howell said...

They're just so cute!