“Of Sword and Javelin”

As some of you might have guessed I’m rather immersed in two types of games at the moment one being “Dystopian Wars Naval” and the other being “Superheroes” so after our little excursion to Salute the other weekend I came home with a rucksack full of goodies to go along with both of these addictions (and a sore shoulder from lugging them about all day, but I digress). Now as I did Dystopian Wars last week I thought I’d dig out the “Super’s” this week, sadly before I start I have to point out that though these are going to be on the table with my “heroes and Villains” there are no actual “spandex wearers” amongst this group. Instead what we have here are more of the “cannon fodder” brigade.

First up I decided that “Doctor Damocles’” a villain I’d bought from “Crossover miniatures” and painted up a while ago, needed some back up before he met the might of my heroes head on, so I decided on some mechanical minions, the “Steel warriors of robotic destruction” or “S.W.O.R.D’s of Damocles’” as he rather grandiosely calls them. My point of call for these was Doug at EM4 miniatures as just the chaps I was after were part of his “Steel Warriors” pack of plastic robots, you get two of this type out of the five in the pack, and though the others are better suited to more “epic” scaled games these chaps I think work really well as a 28mm scale “mecha” and at only £2.50 per pack this meant I could get the six I wanted plus nine more for the might come in useful someday pile for just £7.50, this struck me as a bit of a bargain! So after chopping them out of the sprue’s, cleaning away the mould lines, attaching the separate arms and cutting the “lugs” off of bottom of their feet (these allow them to be fitted to the included “slotta” bases) I set about basing them up on a couple of bits of card (to give them a little height), these were then in turn glued to my customary tuppence’ and after the bases were blended in with a little “Tetrion filler” they were undercoated with matt black. Now I didn’t want anything other than a simple paintjob on these guys (they are only cannon fodder after all), so after they were given a heavy dry-brushing of chainmail if was really just a case of picking out some details. This was done with either a combination of copper that was then dry-brushed with shinning gold or German field blue. I also painted a “lump” on their chests and a couple of pipes round the back in dark red highlighted with bright red, and they were pretty much done.

While I was putting together my order from EM4 (for me to pick up at Salute), I decided to add to my “Agents of Javelin” (Javelin stands for Justice And Verification Enforcement Law Investigation Network) as well, EM4 now produce the old “Grenadier” future warriors figures sculpted by the talented Mark Copplestone, so five of the chaps in suits were duly added to my collection order. Now these are a little smaller than the suit wearing agents I’ve got so far, these came from the original Heroscape boxgame, (see right) though looking at the picture the Quickshade doesn’t look to good on agent Collinson (middle) I think due to the soft detail on the figure (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!) , and the castings are not as crisp as the original Grenadiers (I think the moulds are getting a little tired to be honest), but at £1.50 each they still offer pretty good value for money, so no complaints here! Once again they were tidied up, remounted onto two pence pieces and then they also got a coat of matt black before the proper painting could begin. Now I thought long and hard (not easy for me I hasten to point out) as to whether to paint the suits on these chaps in different colours, but then I remembered a comment the character “Sky” had made in an early episode of “Agents of Shield” to whit’ “All you guys wear the same suit”. So as all my “Javelin” agents to date are dressed in the same dark blue suit and white shirt I decided these would follow suit (pardon the pun). So after touching up the black and dry-brushing in the guns with chainmail (then retouching up the black again over the bits I’d caught with the chainmail) I highlighted the suits in a mix of dark blue and black (to make an even darker blue, of course!). Next I added the shirts in coffee highlighted with cream and then I added the flesh, this was done in European flesh highlighted with the same but with a little pale flesh added, except for the black chap who was chocolate brown highlighted with the same but with a little leather brown added instead. It was nice to see that I only needed to add eyes to one figure as all the rest are wearing sunglasses (hooray!!), and after this I decided to add a little colour to the figures so each was given a different coloured tie. This just left the hair to be added (on the figures that had hair anyway), this was done in various shades and mixes of chocolate brown, chestnut brown, sand, lemon yellow and orange, the chap with the yellow tie just reminded me of the Marvel character “Henry Grynch” so much he just had to have red hair.

Finally these and the robots above were given a coat of Quickshade before having their bases painted in my usual fashion, and were then given a final coat of matt varnish. As promised last week I also dug out half of my twenty five millimetre cowboys, and gave these a coat of Quickshade as well, now I painted these up many a year ago, and though I was always rather happy with how they came out, it was only after looking them over again that I realized though the painting was neat and “between the lines” as it were I hadn’t really added any shading at all to them, their appointment with the “QS” has now changed all that. I then drybrushed the bases again with a slightly lighter shade of sand than was already applied and added a couple of “dot’s” of glue and static grass to each base. These too were then matt varnished, I’m rather pleased with the result. Only eight more to do next week.

Till then, Cheers Roger.