What, no undercoat?

At our local games club, the Brixham Berserkers, there is a campaign planned for In Her Majesty’s Name. Players are truly spoilt for choice when it comes to the variety of possible companies available for the game. Local players have been painting like mad to get their forces. (There is even a danger that Rossco will have his ready on time!)

Now I’ve been a little busy of late, what with Salute and getting WSS 73 underway. I’m also in the process of moving house, which is only adding to the burden. However I didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity of playing so I really wanted to paint up a company and join in the fun.

Now which company to have? Already we have the Servants of Ra, US Marines, the French Foreign Legion and the Society of Thule. I initially wanted to go for something exotic like Arab Raiders or Boxers but that would involve getting a lot of minis painted. In the end I went for what I had easily to hand in my miniature collection. So I opted to dig out some miniatures I’d bought from Ironclad, the Royal Navy Boarding Party. These heavily armoured men are perfect models for the Templars from the IHMN supplement Heroes, Villains and Fiends and as they are quite expensive, they’d be fewer of them to paint!

Every metal miniature I photograph for the magazine is typically given a wash of “Tamiya Smoke”. This slightly dulls up the miniature and shows off the detail. I noticed a while back that is also did a good job of covering armour very well, so well in fact that that the model didn’t really require any more painting on that area. So for these Templars, I decided to use the “Tamiya Smoke” for their armour.

Firstly, after cleaning up the miniature, I applied a layer of Tamiya smoke to the model where the armour was and on the metal parts of the rifle. Next I added a white undercoat (GW Skull White, as it was handy!) to the unarmoured parts of the model. OK, I used some undercoat!

For the tunic colour, I opted to keep the “naval” look of the original figures (dark blue tunic and white trousers). I figured that any Victorianesque Templars would have kept up with military fashion. I did consider other colours but thought they’d be too garish.

Vallejo Prussian Blue did for the tunic (some highlights were added later by adding a touch of white to the colour). The boots were painted with Vallejo Black Grey. Next I added a suitable earth colour for the base (GW Graveyard Earth). The flesh was added using the Foundry triad. A dark tone wash was added to the model before adding the last highlights.

I’m happy with the end results, not bad for a quick paintjob. As to how they play, we’ll see in a week’s time!