Monthly Archives: July 2018

Star Wars Imperial Assault: Gaarkhan the Wookiee (Jewel of July ’18)

by

30

Firstly, how is it that the spell-checker doesn’t automatically recognise the word “Wookiee”? Crazy, I tells ya!

Anyway, as I’ve noted in one or two of the last few posts, we started playing Imperial Assault last week, and so with that as motivation, I started painting a few of the models. The models I chose were the three player characters that we’re using as well as a few others that come from different campaign boxes – The Royal Guards and their Champion were actually painted before we knew we were going to play the game, and the Imperial Probe Droid was also selected as something to paint before then (though it was misplaced/lost at the time we played).

Naturally the best laid plans of Mice and Men went astray, and I haven’t had time to complete either of the other two player characters, so we’ll be using some WotC prepaints instead tonight (you know, I forgot that I had those as nearly perfect proxies for most of this unpainted stuff until after our friends had gone home last week.

Marouda will be playing the role of Gaarkhan, since for some reason she always wants to play as the Wookiee. Pyrowave is playing as Jyn Odan (aka Girl Solo) and I’m playing as Fenn Signis (aka boring soldier guy with a rifle). Hopefully they’ll both be completed this weekend for next week’s prospective session.

I’m also scheduling this post so that it goes up too late for either Orez, who will be the Overlord or Pyrowave who is playing as Jyn to see – so the first time they see this model will be in person.

A reenactment from last week’s game. And the intro game. And probably tonight’s game.

As far as painting and modelling goes, I gave the Vibro-Axe a few more colours than shown on the art to make it a little more interesting, and also rebased Gaarkhan onto a 32mm Sector Imperialis base that didn’t feature any aquilas or other distinct 40k iconography. I’ll probably rebase the player character heroes, but I won’t rebase every single model. I’m still in two minds still about whether to rebase “hero villain” models – not stormtrooper commanders, but “named” Imperials and Scum.

Sauron the Necromancer of Dol Guldur (Jewel of July ’18)

by

31

Sauron the Necromancer of Dol Guldur Citadel Miniatures

Like The Tainted and the other “Named” Nazgûl that Games Workshop created in the post-RotK space, this model of Sauron is aesthetically based on the look of the characters and villains from Peter Jackson’s LotR films as well as the snippets of information gleaned from The Hobbit.

As such, this figure was designed and released many years before The Hobbit Trilogy of films was fully conceived, so Games Workshop went with a mode spectral and – in a sense – Warhammer type of design for Sauron as opposed to the “skinny pupil” design that the films went in the end, which was much more reminiscent of the Last Alliance appearance of Sauron taken from the Beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring film.

Sauron the Necromancer of Dol Guldur Citadel Miniatures

Sauron the Necromancer of Dol Guldur Citadel Miniatures

I could certainly see using this model in a Nighthaunt army alongside the new Age of Sigmar stuff, as the “ghostly” design aesthetic is still actually pretty close between this model from the early 2000s and today’s newest 2018 releases. Some of the paint here is a little bit rough – I used drybrushing for the first couple of layers before blending the later ones. It just wasn’t going to be a model where the amount of that extra effort was going to especially pay off, at least in my opinion. As is often the case, though – larger photos serve to amplify less obvious flaws and rough spots.

Sauron the Necromancer of Dol Guldur Citadel Miniatures

Here’s this iteration of Sauron alongside his fellow speculative models. I do have another of this particular sculpt, so perhaps down the line I’ll paint the other in a black-to-red scheme. Lots of other stuff to get done before that’s an active consideration, though. So for now we have another July model done!