nothing borrowed, and fuck all blue!

Greetings Terrans, how goes it? I’ve got a bit of a mixed bag to share with you today – a bit of speed painted cannon-fodder, and a couple of intricate minis. First up, the speedy stuff.

I’ve mentioned the rpg/virtual tabletop/inq28/Frostgrave mashup thingy that I’m running with some of my hobby homies – well, a lot of the campaign ideas have been kicking around in my skull for a good few years. It is set on a world called Spero Secundus, and originally, it was going to be a sequence of linked tabletop battles with the outcome of one game influencing the next. Over the years I’ve collected some miniatures with this in mind, and playing through the campaign in virtual has given me the urge to dig them out and get some paint on them!

First up, we have some Rad Waste types – the backstory for these guys is that they are the survivors of Hive Terminus – the hive got nuked about a century ago, and so these guys are the ancestors of the survivors. They exist in the ruins of the hive, or in the surrounding wastes. The minis are Tallarn from GW, but I’ve removed any imperial iconography, and added face shrouds and goggles where practical… In my head they are a cross between Frank Herbert’s Fremen, and folks on Tatooine:

They were painted with mostly washes & contrast paints, and are deliberately drab and plain looking. I wanted them to be quick and easy to replicate, and I think I did a good job there, with the test model being completed in 32 minutes! I did add some bone & flame iconography here and there, with half an idea of having them as serfs to my Legion of the Danmed, but first and foremost, they are Rad Wasters from Spero Secundus.

Next up we have some guards for House Malocchio – the ruling house of Hive Sevelli, and governing family for the whole planet. I have already painted members of Hose Malocchio, and so the heraldic colours were already established – this made the design for the guard uniform pretty straight forward. I used GW Mordians for some proper officious pomposity:

Again, I wanted these to be quick and easy to paint, so all the main colours are blocked in with washes, and ‘regular’ paints are just used to tidy up at the end and add the odd quick highlight here and there. The Lt. model got a bit more attention with a spot of gold here and there.

So that’s it for the speedy stuff, now for the more intricate work. This next mini is my first ever Inquisitor – a character type that I have successfully avoided over the years! He has been created in response to a new invitational called ‘Daemon Ink’ that Mark @ Heresyofus is getting up and running. Set in a corrupted library world, the setting is dark, mysterious and very Inq28, so I wanted my warband to reflect that vibe to the best of my ability. Mark mentioned that Green is very much the thematic colour for Daemon Ink, so I plan to adopt it widely in my warband – starting with the leader:

He is based on the Deathwatch watch master figure from a few years ago. The character I have in mind is definitely on the radical end of the Inquisitorial spectrum (or ‘pragmatic’ as I prefer to call it), hence the Eldar weaponry. He also had a head swap for an AdMech helm – I really like the crusader vibe this gives him! I also jazzed up his backpack a bit, partly to bring in those candles to give him a more scholarly vibe, but also to change up the silhouette & take him away from the original figure.

Paint-wise, I used gold a lot on this guy – it seemed appropriate for someone of his rank and grandiosity. Most of the gold on the armour got a cool purple wash, but the odd detail & the eldar bits had a slightly warmer sepia wash to make them stand out a bit. The rest of the armour is a very deep green, (a pot of Black Templar contrast paint with a good splodge of Winsor & Newton green ink) – it looks almost black, but the edge highlights bring out the green again I think. The odd recessed area of the armour has been carefully picked out in pure black Indian ink from Winsor & Newton – this has a slight reflective quality which gives a lacquered effect that I really like (it isn’t robust enough for a raised area, but can survive in a recess).

The robe is painted with a different set of greens, so it is tonally different to the armour without moving away from the theme, and I repeated the same trick for the wreath decoration on the armour and the gems. I pushed the concept to the max for the crystalline blade – I’ve never painted one of these before, but I think I did ok, and it was that was a cool thing to research and practice. Finally, a splash of red and some neutral bone completes the palette.

I’m not ready to share the fluff for this guy, but rest assured, he will be suitably well storied 😊

Next we have this rather exotic member of his warband:

She is a conversion I did a few years ago, but never had the courage to paint – she’s a really complicated figure, and is intimidating as hell! She is based on the Mistweaver Saih from Warhammer Quest, but spliced with the Harlequin Shadowseer mini… yeah… two really detailed and tricky minis 😊

In terms of painting, I kept with the green and gold theme, but looked at the colour wheel to do some more fun stuff. I ended up with a Green/pink & yellow/purple thing going on, which works nicely I think – it’s tight, but allows for splashes of colour across the mini. I brought in a few more colour combos on the masks, but these are small enough to not confuse the overall scheme. I am particularly pleased with the smoke effect, given that it’s the first time I’ve tried to paint it.

the mirror mask was a bit of an experiment as well… I was trying for a ‘ghost in the shell’ type effect with multiple layers of tinted gloss… The skull is quite hard to make out, and I wish I had smoothed out the whole face of the helm rather than leave those metal spikes in place, but hey ho, it’s not too bad, and I like a mini that rewards a closer look 😊

Here’s the two of them together – colours close enough to belong, but without being too uniform I hope…

In other news, there’s a new version of some Games Workshop game or other – personally, I’m finding it hard to find any fucks to give about it, but some of the minis look nice… I’ll leave it to better bloggers than me to comment in detail, but so far I’m not planning on getting involved… (that said, I am a sucker for a collector’s edition…)

Otherwise, that’s it from me for this week! I’ll be doing more Spero Secundus mooks over the week & weekend, maybe a Space Marine or some more Inquisitorial henchmen… we’ll see how it goes, but I’ll be back in a week or so. Stay safe 😊