Firing up the War Forge

Gates! Pretty happy with how these look on the table.

Lots of activity over the last little while planning for Adepticon. First off, I placed my order for my Dark Eldar for Epic. I'm stupid excited about receiving those!

While I wait for them to come in I settled into painting up my Shaltari, mostly focusing on the ground forces for Dropzone Commander. In the end I decided to stick with a Fall kind of burnt leaves look which was inspired from the Blue Table YouTube video that they posted a few years back. I modified the paint scheme a little bit to add just the tiniest bit of flair but wanted to ensure that I didn't totally lose myself in the details, which I have a habit of doing. Afterall, I do have 3 whole armies to paint up in just under 3 months!

So with that in mind, at the encouragement of my wife (who was likely sick of hearing me agonize over this or that list detail), I started in on the core of the Shaltari stuff that I have that I know that I will be using every game; the Gates.

They painted up quickly too! With just 8 colours and 1 wash, I use four of those colours with my airbrush, which, at a stage, also gives me the opportunity to base some Shaltari DFC ships while I'm waiting for my wash to dry on my ground forces.

4 Eden and 4 Spirit Gates

In the end, in just a few short hours I did manage to pump out 8 gates! 4 Eden and 4 Spirit gates.

I was pretty concerned about using the dullcoat on them. Historically I've had absolutely terrible luck using dullcoat, as I'd talked about in my post in the Spring. This time though I stuck with the tried and true Testors stuff. It's worked like a charm.

Typically I enjoy using the Testors glosscote, which I receive no end of teasing about, but I don't care. I really enjoy that candy gloss, especially on stuff that has a lot of panel lines like the PHR. This time, however, I wanted to really show up the gradients in the shading up from deep red-brown up to a sunny yellow... Like a leaf in the Fall.

Here is the paint scheme for those who are interested:

Paint Scheme:

Airbrush Model Air  71.039 Hull Red

Wash with Dark Wash

Airbrush edging with Model Air 71.038 Medium Brown

Lightly Airbrush edging with Model Air 71.032 Golden Brown

Even lighter airbrush edging with Model Air 71.078 Gold Yellow

Paint the gem and canopies Game Color Electric Blue 72.023

Mix 50/50 Game Color Electric Blue and Model Color 70.951 White Stripe gem

Use Model Color White with a small stripe

Game Color Silver Detail lining

Small gem details Model Color 70.967 Olive Green

Lightly varnish with Testors Clear Coat/Dullcote 1260C