Category Archives: Board Games

Star Wars Imperial Assault: AT-ST (Jewel of July)

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A few days ago, Pandora’s Bitz Box painted up an AT-ST. Deciding immediately to rip him off, I quickly cleaned, assembled, sprayed and painted my own AT-ST.

Well, that’s not entirely true. In fact, it’s a load of bollocks. I cleaned up the sculpt over a couple of weeks at work during my breaks, assembled it a week or so ago. Attempted to murder my gaming group via poison gas (so I’m told) 2 weeks ago by spraying it in the yard while they were in The War Room, setting up an IA game, and then painted it over the course of the following 2 weeks, forcing myself to complete it last Saturday morning. With both Marouda’s model as well as my own for Morikun’s contest needing to go up before the end of July, and my own challenge being about completion rather than posting (and a rather well-received rant, inspired by IRO), the AT-ST got bumped – and then Pandora’s AT-ST appeared!

As with a lot of the Star Wars stuff I’ve been painting recently, I looked over Sorastro’s YouTube guide for ideas before getting fully stuck in. I’ve never met or interacted with the man, but he’s a talented painter and an amazing resource for anyone planning to paint Imperial Assault, or any of several other board games’ figures.

I kept my walker a bit lighter and not as heavily weathered as Sorastro, but there’s still a fair bit of weathering, muck and grime across the model, with more concentrated on the feet, legs and undercarriage as well as the back and underside of the “head”.

Now that I’ve finished this one, I need to paint up the General Weiss AT-ST, which I just finished cleaning at work a couple of days ago (somehow, I missed one of the legs!) And then get started on the AT-DP from Heart of the Empire..

As I haven’t yet started on a single Stormtrooper at this stage (WOTC Prepaints are doing the job nicely while I work through other models), it’s left to the Emperor’s Royal Guard to provide scale and ground-level security to the Empire’s Light Walker. I should paint some Adeptus Custodes next to a Sentinel and have them do a face-off!

Zombicide Survivor: Red Cap Ben (Jewel of July ’18)

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Zombicide Survivor: Red Cap Ben

Well, how do I followup yesterday’s post? With Zombicide, I guess. I finished this pair yesterday – Red Cap Ben in both his living and Zombvivor forms. Ben comes from the Zombicide Karl Kopinski Special Guest Box that also included Angry Mary, who got painted almost three years ago  …probably not far off when I started on Ben. It’s been awhile…

I wanted to try something a bit different for Ben’s pants. Going for both some splatter as well as bloodstaining. I think it turned out quite well, though the light colour of his trousers helped immeasurably. (If it were August, I could have counted that!)

Ben is… just some guy. We spent a bit of time when we first opened up that box speculating about if he was supposed to “be” somebody, or a reference to something, but nope. He appears to just be some guy who looks slightly backwoodsy and slightly homeless – but appears to be pretty well set for zombie survivalist expeditions. I might have gone for a machete rather than a hatchet (or better yet, both!) but I see the practicality of having an axe in a survivalist setting. Firewood doesn’t chop itself, after all.

Zombicide Survivor: Red Cap Ben

I need some new brush-on varnish, as his jacket and backpack have turned out a bit more shiny in the photos than IRL. I’ll probably need to bring him back in and do that as a touch-up. You know how this stuff really stands out in the photographs when the figure is blown up so much! You can kind of make out the blood trail and the smearing of blood on his base, though until I get a tripod for my phone (sadly, my new camera’s phone is now better than my Canon camera at miniatures photography!) – so I’m taking photos with the phone on the table (mostly) rather than elevated.

Zombicide Survivor: Red Cap Ben

Finally, I thought a comparison shot was in order, using a Space Marine – which is a handy guide for most people (yeah, not everyone!) to give a sense of scale and size for many of these boardgame figures I’ve been working on over the last month. Height-wise they’re much the same (taller even, once the bases are taken into account) but much more realistically proportioned, and what we call “truescale”. Which means annoyingly tiny heads when it comes to eyes and all those other small details. Oh, and I’ve heat-reset the Zombivor’s warped/bent shotgun several times. It just keeps going back…

If you’re planning on submitting a model for the Jewel of July Community Challenge, get them in ASAP – you’ve still got a couple of days to get the model done, and then a couple more to get them photographed and posted. Please ensure your model’s post(s) are linked to the comments in there so I can find them. Trust me, even if I’ve read and commented on your models, I’ll still bloody well forget when I’m sitting here assembling the post. Happened in the June Round-Up, it’s happened before then and it’ll happen again.

The next two days (June 30 and 31) should be Marouda’s and my own entries for the Painting Challenge/Contest of The 1,000,000 Visits to the Temple over at The Temple of Morikun. The deadline to which is the 31st of July.

Following that I have three more (so far) of my own July models to share, as I had a nice productive spurt yesterday morning after a couple of days off, and we’ll see if I can finish anything additional in the final two days. Then my own July Round-Up & my Jewel of July Round-Up, then the Jewel of July Community Round-Up.