Solar powered

A weekend painting tiny tanks and tiny walkers makes for a happy me. And those are exactly my plans. Goal is to get the mandatory units for the Solar armoured formation complete, along with a couple of upgrade detachments. Namely some heavy sentinels and a pair of Valdor tank hunters. 

Both of the latter are already on the workbench early doors while I wait for the varnish on the Russ' to dry.


I know it's an appropriately blurry 'potato cam' image, but all I wanted to show is the base stage is nothing more than a pre-shade of greys and some blocked in contrast paints for the markings. Oh, and the tracks and exhausts picked out in Model Air armour brown (Thinned Games Workshop Rhinox Hide would be an equally great substitute). Next stage for these is to add some of the metal details, banding, pistons, frames and weapons. For that I have Scale series Victorian Brass and Metal series Exhaust Manifold in mind. Two of my favourite paints for legions.

After a couple more stages, I've something close to matching the stage the Leman Russ squadron is at. That's handy as it means I can do the oil weathering at same time for all the formations.

In total, that's eight Russ, two Valdor, one Baneblade and four Sentinels. Enough to start a sub-cohort or armoured formation. It would be with some infantry. So I'm doing some infantry. After the four test units I did above, plus some Ogryns I've clipped out another batch to fill out the core Rifle Tertio and a bit more.

Also, no, I'm not going to talk about how the Charonite Ogryns ended up looking a bit like Orks! Once you see it, you can't unsee it. I'm going to make it a deliberate part of their backstory.

On the infantry, I've come up with a middle ground that works for me, somewhere between clipping the minis fully off the frames and sticking them onto coffee stirrers and painting them on the frame. I basically 'dismantle' the frame into sub-length so they are only attached at the base and I can get easy access to paint them.

After the weekend they look like this:


Only a couple of finishing details to add like decals for the banner and some piping. Bases are also ready and the tanks glued onto the Sarissa Precision MDF bases. This isn't the final colour, just the colour of the texture paints I added. I'll go over these with colours to match the infantry bases. 

Infantry paints used:

I've dialed the palette down to the following steps which I can get through pretty quickly now. Seems to hit the right balance between being quick and simple, but still produce a decent level of detail to the eye.
  • Prime GW Grey Seer
  • Wash Contrast Basilicanum Grey
  • Dry Brush Leadbelcher
  • Wash thinned Drakenhof Nightshade
  • Highlight guns and helmets Stormhost Silver
  • Helmets: Contrast Warp Lightning
  • Boots and gloves: Contrast Garaghaks Sewer
  • Weapon and details: Runelord Brass
  • Great coats: Contrast Nazdreg Yellow
  • Shoulder armour: Scale Sherwood Green (Camo green or Elysium Green as good)
  • Piping: Incubi Darkness
That's it.

I feel like having a break for a bit and taking a chill night to chip away at the dread-pods. I'll finish off the Solar sub-cohort this week, but for now I fancy working on some scratches and details on the Blood Angels. I've also been slowly building up some metals on 'engine twenty' as it's a big boi. But that's a topic for another time.

Enjoy!




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