C3 Strike troopers -BtGoA (Part 3)

I have completed the painting on these first 5 Concord miniatures. And here they are:

Ready to hunt more Ghar.

Continuing on from the last post on these guys, I decided to use a thinned wash of Agrax Earthshade over the English Uniform. I then layered the edges again with English Uniforms.

Agrax Earthshade and English Uniform layer.

It needed a bit more of a highlight so I mixed a bit of White Scar with English Uniform and applied it to the edges. I also turned my attention back to the bases. They too needed a color kick so I added a highlight of Blood Angel Orange (it's a very old color, from the '89 Space Marine paint set -and it still works great!). I thought this worked out nicely as well. Very "martian".

White/English Uniform highlights.

Next up I painted the guns and visors. The visors were painted simply with a Chaos Black base layered with Dark Reaper. It was then washed with Nuln Oil. I wanted more of a highlight though so I added a thin line of White Scar  and added an additional Nuln Oil wash over it all.

Visors and guns.

The guns were painted in a way that I thought would give them contrast from the uniform colors, yet somehow still manage to look 'right' with them. I painted them with Ushanti Bone, then washed them with Thraka Green and finished them with a highlight of Ushanti Bone. 

Guns finished.

The blue plasma colors were painted using Macrage Blue then Russ Grey with subtle highlights of White Scar. This was washed with Guilliman Blue.

View of the Plasma Lance's blue energy coil.

I thought I was done when I took the pics above but while I was writing this remembered a crucial detail I had overlooked: the red button! So I took a moment to quickly add these details to their weapons. The red button stands out particularly well on the Plasma Lance.

And that is a wrap!

Well, on these 5 guys anyway.

Got 15 more to do...plus their buddy drones...and support drones. But at least I now got a color scheme down that I like.

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C3 Strike Troopers - BtGoA (Part 2)

Hello. One of my December goals was to get my Concord guys assembled, which I was able to do, and you can read about that in part-1. Due to the wonky weather,  and no good ventilated areas in our humble little abode, I had to wait for the right opportunity to prime these miniatures. I decided to prime them with Testor's Red Brown spray paint.

One of the primed units.

I had been pondering a paint scheme for these guys for ages now and since these guys kind of remind me of the Spartans from Halo,  I was going to paint them based off of my old Halo 3 multiplayer character. But after seeing how nice The Bob's C3 Strike Team paint jobs turned out I was swinging back to just following the standard paint scheme that Warlord tends to go with.  We played our First Antares game recently and I got to see his models in person. I have ultimately caved-in and decided to proceed with that scheme. Well, sort of...

What follows will be my step-by-step, stage-by-stage process for painting these guys. Since I am making this up as I go I have found it prudent to record these steps for (my) future reference.

British Uniform painted on.

The 'green' areas were painted using Model Color English Uniform.

Country Tan

Apple Barrel Color Country Tan was painted on the 'white' areas.

Desert Sand

Americana Desert Sand was dry brushed over the Country Tan.

Black spots.

Black was used to pick out the joints and a few other areas.

White highlights.

White highlights were applied over the Desert Sand. This essentially could have finished these areas as this fits the Warlord color scheme rather well. But I have something else in mind...

Agrax Earthshade and Bloodletter.

I washed Agrax Earthshade over the white areas. This really picks out the details and kind of 'dirties' up the whole model. I worked on the base next. Painted Apple Barrel Indian Red over the brown base coat. I followed that up with a wash of Bloodletter Ink over this. I like how that turns out, as it reminds me of some of the Adeptus Mechanicus bases I have seen people do.

Sadly, something has come up in the real world and I have to stop here. What I plan to do next is to ink and highlight the 'green' area, paint the faces on the helmets and paint the guns. I have been thinking about making their guns a color similar to Zorn's guns from the 5th Element. Something about the plasma rifles design gestalt in the Antares game reminds me of that. 

Every gun will have to get a Red Button according to Cheef.

Something to ponder until I can work on them again.


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The First Antares Exploration.

Greetings.

The Bob and I got together to finally play through Beyond the Gates of Antares and it only took two years from when I got the starter set to get minis onto a table! We just basically ran with the stuff from the starter, no lists or anything pre-planned, and simply tried to kill each other. Seemed like a good enough reason if any to test out the mechanics of a game. We roped in Jim and Chyanne and got them to play a bit with some Concord units.

"I hear them coming!"

It has been a very long time since I played a unit-based 40k game with range modifiers and specific weapon settings. Probably not since 40k 2nd Edition ('97?) so I found this to be refreshingly old school. The weapon mecjanics are all very interesting and fairly easy to grasp. The d10 system works very well for this system and gives BtGoA a level of detail and weapon/armor diversity that 40k simply lacks these days.

Cover and high ground.

Close Combat was so incredibly easy that it took us a while to figure out if we were doing it right. In the end, we found it to be refreshingly simple and fun.

Especially for the Ghar.

I learned the hard way that close combat with the Ghar battlesuits is a situation best avoided. At the start of close combat both sides get to shoot each at each other Point Blank! An idea I wished 40k had embraced to better effect, especially in the editions without Overwatch. The Ghar disruptors are particularly brutal and we saw a few Concord models die in the Point Blank firefight. Those Ghar suits are tough, and their disruptors are nasty! The additional hits and armor modifiers are quite efficient at cutting down the Concord.

The final stand-off

 But the Concord have numeric superiority and already I see that the key to overcoming the tough Ghar armor is have lots of aimed shots. In the end we had only one Ghar left alive but it was more than capable of continuing to ruin Concord lives if we hadn't chose to stop at the end of Round 6. We all agreed that it was a fun game and quite easy once you figured out the mechanics. A bit of "unlearning what you know" in regards to other games like this helps; sort of like changing editions of a game in that sense.

So yeah, we had fun and we are looking forward to doing more!

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C3 Strike Troopers -BtGoA (Part 1)

After sitting on this set for a year and a half, it was time to get started on assembling these models. The inspiration (i.e. kick-in-the-rear) came from the Bob who got a set of his own and wasted no time putting it altogether and asked me if we could play through some of the starter scenarios. We haven't gotten to that point yet, so I thought it might be nice to double up everything when we do. So I have begun assembling my The Xilos Horizon minis, starting with the Concord guys.

The 1st three models.

More guys and some drones.

Unfortunately I found assembling these guys to be more of a chore than fun, so now it's been about 5 months since I wrote that top paragragh, and we are now approaching the 2 year mark since I bought the Xilos Horizon set. But I have pushed on and have assembled a lot more of these guys. Now, it should be obvious from the nature of this blog, that I like building models and assembling miniatures. But after putting together the first five or so guys, I found that these Concord models are bit boring to assemble. There are a lot of parts for guys with fairly limited poses.

A 5 man squad still on sprue.

These parts in the next pic are what is needed to assemble just one guy. This guy in particular is a squad leader.

To a degree, I can understand the basic troops having just one set of arm options. After all, they have a standard weapon (and function) but the squad leader should have more than one option! His arm options are a slack right arm and stiff left one. The slack arm is very well sculpted to give the appearance of a heavy gun, but that also limits how you can model it. In the next pic you can see that in an effort to break up the monotony I had this arm appear to be swaying either forward or back a bit depending on the over all stance of the figure. The left arm juts straight out and, depending on how you position it, the gesture can be interpretted as giving a direction or as if he is flailing.

Concord dance try-outs.

Much to my own, admittingly twisted, sense of humor, I could not help but imagine those squad leaders all saying different things. So, from left to right:
"I don't even know these assholes!"
"Hold that elevator!!!"
"Woe, hold on here guys..."
"SUPER-RUN-AWAY!!!"

Haha, anyway, persistence paid off and I got all the Concord plastics built. I like them, but damn were they a lot of work to assemble. My favorite models are the gun drones. I am considering magnetizing their weapon options but we'll see.

All put together. Mostly. 

After nearly two years I am still struggling to decide on a color scheme. They remind me of the Spartans from Halo so I am toying with painting them sort of like that. We'll see...

Beyond the Gates of Antares

Finally, I have the starter boxed set for Warlord Games Beyond the Gates of Antares game.  I have been following the development of this game for years, initially because Rick Priestley wrote and developed it, but even more so when I found out that the game mechanics would be based on Warlord's Bolt Action game. I don't do product reviews or unboxing videos but in this situation, I just can't help myself and I want to show people what a cool product this is.

The first thing that struck me was how much smaller the box is compared to a typical GW starter set. However, one needs to just pick up the box to quickly discern that this boxed set is packed from corner to corner with content. Opening the box up, one is immediately greeted by the hardcover rulebook, and I was pleased to discover that it is a full sized book like their Hail Caesar and Black Powder rules books and not small like the Bolt Action book.

After lifting that impressive tome from the box I discovered the Quick Start guide which also has assembly instructions for the models within. It's a great guide and it should be handy for helping me to teach others how to play this game.

After removing that from the box you find yourself admiring all the models that come with this boxed set. 20 Concord Strike Team figures, their support drones, and the 6 Ghar battlesuits. Great looking models, and a big improvement over Warlord's initial metal releases. I look forward to working on them!

The boxset comes with all the dice you could need to play, as well as some snazy, and unique templates and pin markers.

The templates remind me of the early days of 40k, when different weapons, psyker powers and vehicles required different templates to use them properly. I file this time of 40k in my memory under "fun".

So, with the box somewhat explored I took to the book, and it was difficult setting it down. The games has a 40k Rogue Trader feel to it, but with a cleaner presentation. It was very easy to dive into, and after skimming the rules I immersed myself in the background section of the book, which, like Rogue Trader, you get just enough info to get the ball rolling and know why it's rolling, with it clearly stated that future supplements, campaigns, etc with fluff it all out further. So far, I am digging it.

The art is mostly in color and pretty good. The cover art, reprinted as a nice spread within, has a layout that virtually mirrors the cover of Rogue Trader, and not only is that fine, I appreciate the gestalt and what it means. What it means is, Rick Priestley is back, and so is his ideal of a space age miniature game. And I am excited to play this game!