“Enforced Labour!”

I’m back “In the zone!” this week and it was time to set to work on the opponents to my “Forge Fathers”. In other words “The Enforcers” (sounds like a 70’s TV show!). truth be known I was somewhat less enamoured with these figures than my “Dee’worf’s”, and had hoped to palm these off to my youngest son to paint, but as he is STILL crawling his way through his Blood Bowl Orc (sorry Ork) team, I decided I would have to bite the bullet and paint them myself.

Anyway I had already assembled and undercoated these chaps at the same time I did my “Space Dwarves”, so it was just a case of deciding on what colour I was actually going to do them in! Now the “Official” figures in the rules (yes we’ve downloaded them!) and box art has them in either black or grey with while bits of armour, and the odd blue, red or yellow “go faster” stipe here and there. But I didn’t like this, I wanted a more “soldier” look to mine, but what to do….

I knew I wanted then to look completely different to the “Forge Fathers”, so I decided to leave some of the bodysuits black and highlighted these in dark grey, and then did the weapons with a dry-brush of chainmail. I then picked out some of the larger areas of their armour (and some of the smaller bits too) along with parts on their weapons and a couple of panels on the “DOG” (Deployable Offensive Gun) with some dark green. This looked OK but then it struck me “Camo!” I then searched about for two more contrasting colours for my “splotches”, stone green seemed like a good choice for the first lot, so a combination of zigzag lines and tiny stylized tree branches were added over the base of dark green. Now for the next contrasting colour and…

I stared blankly into my paint draw totally at a loss as to what would work with the two colours I had already used. I painted up a small piece of card in the colours above and working my way across the page tried different colours to use for the top splodges including chocolate brown, leather brown, dark red, sand and khaki, none of them looked right. I think I should have gone much darker for the base coat and worked up to a lighter shade, but now I was at stone green and needed to go lighter again really, so I turned to old faithful, coffee, I’d give that a go, not holding out much hope and about to settle on just the two colour camo, I dug out an old splayed brush (rather than having to wash out a good one I’d just throw it away after this experiment) and tried it… The colour worked pretty well but even better the “knackered” brush gave a nice delicate spidery effect that would look right on the figures. So straight over to the them I went, and this was how the top layer of the camo was added (I did have to go round and touch up the edges where it met the black afterwards), it gave (to my mind anyway) a rather “desert camouflage” look to them, and a totally different “vibe” to the “Fathers of the Forge”.

So now rather more invigorated about these figures it was time to add the finishing touches, first off I painted the small triangular area on their chest plates in pink burgundy highlighted with some bright red, then to distinguish the command figure I added a couple of white chevrons over the red on his triangle. A couple of the figures had satchels or holsters so these I added in dark grey highlighted with some (mixed by me, still need to buy some) light grey, and added the eye’s and the odd dot/light here and there with some orange, with highlights of more orange mixed with a little white. Then I did a couple of areas with a dry-brush of chainmail to vary up the armour a little.

As usual they were then given a brush coat of “Quickshade” (strong tone) and once dry had their bases painted to match the last lot of Dead Zone figures. I also added the blades to their funny energy knives, I started this by painting a line of chainmail down the centre of the blades (top and bottom), stippled orange around this trying to get a broken line to the chainmail (as if it was energy flowing), then with some more orange and white mix did the same again along the outer edges of the blades, how successful this was I’m not sure, but it’ll do. A final spray coat of matt varnish and I was calling them done. I’m reasonably happy with the result, they do indeed have a different look to the Forge Fathers, and in no way look like the walked out of the same amour factory.

We have now played our first game of Dead Zone, conclusions? Well it plays pretty well, is simple enough to learn and can be brutal if you’re caught in the open! There is however not enough scenery in the box if you want to go multi-layer (and you do!), so that will be the next job, and who won? I don’t think we really need to get into all that now do we? It’s not about the winning it’s about the taking part, after all. 🙄

Finally this week it’s T-shirt time again (well T-shirt and more, to be honest), I am a big “Star Wars” fan, in fact looking through my T-shirts I discovered that I have more Star Wars related “T’s” than almost any other subject (Alice Cooper is No.1), but this one is my favourite, Stormtroopers are sooo’ cool! (and yes I am breathing in Dave!!😛) I’ve also included a picture of my SW waistcoat that the brother in-law made for me in return for the “Game of Thrones” badge I made for his cosplay armour, I chose this material as I used to own all of the “Marvel Star Wars” comics it features.

So till next time, stay safe and cheers Roger.