I would have liked to have had them finished two days ago, but I spent a lot of time waiting for paint to dry, for washes to dry, for glue to dry, for modeling paste to dry. I’ve now rebased all my old terminators on 40mm round bases and can move on to painting new models.
A lot of steps went into getting them to look like this, including many, many, many hours spent painting the miniatures themselves. The Right Hard Posse was never designed as one big squad, it consists of a lot of extra models and was actually painted as some HQ choices and a couple small squads. Having put all this work into it over the years, I’m going to give the ten man squad a run at this year’s Astronomi-con Vancouver.
In order to get yet more bits to choose from I busted open two boxes of plastic GW models I’ve owned for years. The Goblins weren’t any use, though I was surprised to find Wolf Rider parts and four banner bits in this box. The Flagellants were useful. This box is great for bits. You get two of everything and lots of spare parts such as heads or little bits of chains. The rest of the plastic, metal, and resin bits came from my bitz box and my mountain of sprue.
After gluing the bitz to the bases, I then busted out some modeling paste I had bought. This wasn’t in the original plan, but some people sware by products like this as a basing material. You can mix paint with it so it can be any colour. You can cut it after it dries, you can even add grit to it. It goes on like icing a cake. I used it to fill in the gaps between the big and small base, but perhaps I should have done this first and then stuck the plastic model bits into the paste, but it was a new product to me, and I never thought of that until it was too late.
After the paste dried, it looked a lot like snow bases, I’m sure some people have used it for that. One benefit of gluing the bitz to the base is you can then sink them into the ground with paste or just sand and glue. The white paste got a layer of watered down white glue then a dip into my box of beach sand and then another lengthy drying period.
Next came several coats of black paint. The first was regular consistency, the next two were watered down. I recommend gluing sand, and whatever else you plan to use as basing materials to the base during the model assembly phase. That way if you use spray primer you don’t have to go through the repeated coats of black paint that I did. Spray primer does a good job on sand. This is one advantage I have over those paint the model in pieces or mounted on a handle people.
Drybrushing was next, the usual three GW manufactured brown paints. I used a small drybrush, and was a bit heavy, but I’d never get every base to be perfectly the same or the sand to match that was old and with the new. Especially because the old sand was really fine. I like beach sand as it is irregular.
I started with the metallic bits. They got painted chainmail, followed by two washes, one of Badaab Black and one of Devlan Mud. I also painted some brass bits using Tin Bitz and Brazen Brass. I used a custom thinned Rust Brown Ink with some Plasma Red Ink for them. I also painted the skulls Snake Bite Leather then Bleached Bone. They two got the Rust Brown plus Plasma Red Ink wash.
After all that was dry the metal were done and the skulls looked pretty good, but I put a highlight of Vallejo Beige on them which looked two harsh so another custom wash was used, this time a darker brown mixed with red. That was it for the skulls. The various heads were painted Dhenab Stone then given a wash, of thinned down purple. Then a highlight of Dhenab Stone. Other bits were painted purple, or red, or brown. I even tried out my English Uniform Brown that I ordered from the Vallejo range.
When all this was done it was time for rust and blood. I did the rust first mixing up a custom wash consisting of water, rust brown ink, and Fiery Orange plus some left over half dried pigments that remain in my rust wash mixing spot… For the blood I used Tamiya Clear Red and the Lonewolf Blood and Gore method or my interpretation of it. This really gave the models I nice final touch and it was off to the photo booth.
The squad was pretty much too big to photograph at once. It worked better as a squad of five models. I also took some individual model shots all of which are up on Flickr.
Now I’m at a cafe as it is so cold in Vancouver. This weekend I’ll continue to look for a new job, but also start on some Lead Painters’ League entries. I hope to finish one or two weeks worth before returning to models for my armies.
Musk's Miniatures 
8 thoughts on “Rebased Terminators”