From here to Infinity

The Tiger Soldiers arrived on the enemy’s flank with the fire and fury one would expect from their namesake but on the other flank a different aspect of the creature was being exhibited. There a formless shade silently stalked from one bit of cover to the next. The only hint of its presence was a slight shifting of light and color during its movements. It was not to be enough to alert the two Fusiliers crouched behind a line of boulders to their impending doom however. The first was dead before either knew what had happened and the second barely had time to register the shifting form of his attacker before a razor sharp blade sent him into darkness.

With the immediate threat dispatched the ninja took a moment to scan the area for his true prey. There, a short way off he caught sight of the enemy hacker, his attention clearly in cyberspace. Turning his own focus inward the ninja launched his digital presence at the unsuspecting foe, slicing into his mind as cleanly as his blade had the soldiers at his feet. The result was just as fatal and before the Locusts body had collapsed to the ground the ninja was already gone to find his next target.

The ninja mini is a great looking sculpt that I was looking forward to painting. He also presented some challenges both based on what I wanted to do with the paint job and from the way the sculpt is itself. First I wanted to make sure he was recognizable as a ninja. This meant he should be differentiated from the rest of the force but I also needed to make sure and tie him in enough so that he fit with the overall force. I also wanted to display is mimitism/camo/hidden deployment aspect.

As far as the sculpt, a significant amount of the mini is the roof peak base he’s on so I needed to make sure that looked good. Additionally, as I realized as I was painting, having a sculpted base feature that’s supposed to be up in the air meant the sections of his base that weren’t covered by it couldn’t be done like the rest of the force (I suppose it could be a sunken or ruined temple roof but that wasn’t where I wanted to go).

So the first thing to do was to figure out the main colors. I considered following the same formula as the rest of the army and going for a Stormshadow look but though a break from all the white would be good. After some consideration I decided to go with a variation on the base blues I’d been using. So far I’ve been using Twilight Blue (mid-tone for the triad) with Snow Shadow (highlight of the triad) for the troops under armor so my thought was to go with a darker version by using Midnight Blue – 09019 (the shadow for the triad) for his under armor and Twilight Blue for his armored sections. This gave a nice dark tone without going black and also kept him in the same color range as the rest.

For my other troops I tried to include a fair amount of Yu Jing orange/yellow but given the nature of our stealthy friend that didn’t really fit well here. I initially planned on doing the center plate on his chest, “eyes” and the back plate of his helmet. After painting that I felt the back of the helmet just didn’t work so I ended up repainting it and just sticking with the chest plate and eyes. The limited color seemed to fit his theme better in the end.

Continuing that idea I painted most of the colors into the base. This keeps the model visible but also helps accentuate the shadowy nature of the character. The roof tiles are in Mahagony Brown – 09070, Chestnut Brown – 090071 and Rust Brown – 09072. For the decorative sections I envisioned them being made of gold, ivory and jade and so used Antique Gold – 09050 – 3/1 followed by a wash of Brown Liner – 09064 – 1/5 and then dry brushed with New Gold – 09051. The “ivory” sections were done using Aged Bone – 09059 – 3/1, Bone Shadow – 09058 – 1/2, a repeat of Aged Bone and then Polished Bone – 09060 – 2/1. The jade was Forest Green – 09013, Grass Green – 09014 and finally Jade Green – 09015. In all cases I did a much of coats of the mid and highlight colors to try and blend them well.

There’s not too much gear on the mini. Only his sidearm, bow and sword. The side arm and leather I did as with the prior minis. His sword was done with Blackened Steel and a highlight of Polished Silver – 09054. The bow is where I finally brought in a bit of black by using Faded Black – 09657 for the central portion and then Twilight Blue for the outer portions. I added some Midnight Blue to give it a camo effect and painted the cams in Ancient Bronze. I’d like to add a string to the bow, and still may, but unfortunately it lines up with the forearm so I’m not sure it would turn out well.

Oh that reminds me, we careful with the bow. It’s pretty thin in some sections and fiddling with it will lead to breaks. I broke off one of the cams while removing some extra bits and ended up having to glue it back on.

To represent the minis mimitism effect I used some diluted paint to add the roof colors to the legs. This is mainly seen on the right leg where it’s over the tiles and the left foot where it got a gold and green glaze. I’m pretty happy with the overall effect though it is somewhat subtle on the overall model.

The last bit was figuring out what to do with the base. Since I don’t think I can base in the same way as the rest of the force I decided to have some fun and extend the minis paint job onto the base itself. On the sides this was easy as I just continued with the various browns. In the front it was a bit trickier as I had to extend the detail (and the bull demon was a bit in the way). Again I’m fairly happy with the result though my attempt at some forced perspective is amateurish at best 😉

And that’s about that. Down to three more models to go (two are alternate forms of the same troop). Both are heavy infantry with tons of armor. My thought is to base the Su-Jian color scheme on a snow leopard though this will be interesting as they have a lot of grey and brown. The Mowang I haven’t really figured out yet. Given their size and the nature of their troop types they’re both going to draw a lot of attention on the battlefield so I want to make sure they look good. We’ll see how it goes 🙂