I bought about 8 assorted packs from Fighting 15's and their response was very quick - I had them in just a couple of days. I realised I hadn't ordered any SAW's so placed another order and bought the US Army Coat d'arms paint set at the same time, as I have both 15mm and 6mm US armies to paint as well and Fighting 15's had a minimum order value.
The figures are very nice close up. They had very little flash, but quite a few runners on the bases from vents in the mould, I assume. The metal they are made from is very hard, much harder than other miniatures, and these were quite sharp, as I found out to my cost (perforated thumb...).
As usual the figures were glued to lolly sticks with white glue and then undercoated, GW Chaos Black in this case. I then gave them a quick, light blast with Army Painter Army Green undercoat. I wanted this to just hit the highlights and leave some black in the hollows.
After letting this dry I started in using a mix of the new Coat d'Arms paints. I was aiming for a fairly straightforward WW2 US Army/Vietnam Marines/Aliens Colonial Marines look, so no fancy camo patterns but simple, basic colours. The Coat d'Arms paints were much more liquid than I was used to, as I've been using GW foundation paints a lot, and it took a little while to get a coverage I was happy with. I think over a white base coat they'd be fine, but the black kept showing through, so it's going to be a bit of a chore to paint all 60 of the buggers.
I also noticed whilst painting them that a good proportion of the figures are female, which was a nice surprise. Several of them are smaller than others and there are several with ponytails as well. There are satisyingly no figures with "fantasy cleavage" or boob-shaped armour sets in there (as an aside, AGG recently did a post on fantasy armour on her blog here).
Once the basic colours were on the figures got a generous wash of GW Devlan Mud and were superglued to 15mm round bases from Warbases. The bases got a coat of GW Bestial Brown, then a 50/50 PVA and water mix was brushed on and they were dipped in the medium brown Woodland Scenics ballast. The PVA mix was then dropped on again and they were dipped in flock.
I really like these guys. They are senisbly proportioned, sensibly armoured and the poses are all natural and have plenty of variety. I have some Old Crow 15mm (Sabre tank and Claymore APC) vehicles on order for them, and I think they will fill a nice niche for low/mid-tec troops to face off against all the high tech, grav armoured hardsuited troops.
2 comments:
Those look like they painted up nicely. You have a good point about the games these days requiring a good mix of mid-tech troopers.
I use Vallejo and Reaper paints and intentionally thin mine with Gunk (a mix of water, thinner and drying retarder), and have really taken to using white primer instead of black. Black is the more forgiving, but white is so satisfying when you are all done!
Do you think you could put up a post of the whole group?
As soon as I get them all painted, I will. I have 55 more to do yet.
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