Bot War – the war wages on (clearing the backlog)

In July I ran a demo day of Bot War at Entoyment in Poole as part of their store anniversary.

Painting wise I was able to complete Darkstone and his 3 Golem Lieutenants Magmoar Crystalor and Nucleor. These are the original metal releases so are quite hefty in weight, Darkstone needed some pinning and is quite fragile given the weight of the claws. I do have plastic versions of these minis as well now, and have plenty to be able to field 3 Golem platoons that make up the remainder of the faction options.

For Darkstone I went with a retro inspired paint scheme based upon the Black Zarak character from the Japanese Transformers cartoon series. The black and gold. Work really well together and give off an evil regal-Ness. Also the colours suit the sculpt which in my opinion gives more than a subtle nod to the same inspiration.

For the Golems I followed the original artwork, I want them to be obvious who they are on the battlefield as the sculpts are very similar.

Its now the end of April 2022 and my push to clear my backlog continues.

If you haven’t seen my April project please check out https://www.ontabletop.com/project/1726515/ and you will see that i have been busy painting up the Mercenaries faction and some of the Sell Sword characters who can fight for them.

So with this batch of bots completed i have updated my backlog spreadsheet to see how i have progressed

OK, i have bought more bots.

I can’t help it.

BUT, i have been busy and bots are getting crossed off the list.

What should i paint next though??

A couple of fridays back i wanted to paint something fun. So without holding back I built up one of the new Mercenaries, their leader in fact, called Blackwheel, and decided to go full 80s inspired cartoon throwback on him.

By painting up Blackwheel I triggered an urge to get stuck into my Mercenaries faction next, whilst digging through my backlog boxes to get them all out I unknowingly would set about a chain of events that will see April become another jam-packed Bot War painting challenge……

Follow along with that adventure https://www.ontabletop.com/project/1726515/  and I’ll see you in May to continue the backlog purge.

After a short break at the beginning of March, I continued to work through my backlog, but after a couple of months of just painting bots I wanted a change.

Bot War is a 10mm skirmish game, but it doesn’t just have bots and flying cars, oh no, there are also 10mm infantry, so I set about building up the infantry sections, squads, and platoons for my Democracy faction.

The infantry are also inspired by 80s cartoons, and are a real action force of army Joe’s on the table.

And so, after 28 days of solid painting, 48+ models painted for 3 factions, I had to get an action shot or 2

The 3rd and final part of my February painting challenge was the Infesters faction, and to be honest they were my primary goal to get completed during it.

The Infesters are a unique faction as its core is made up of 6 Infester warriors who can each take multiple Clones of themselves. These Clones are essentially zombie-like shades of the warriors Statline, and whisky the main faction is made of resin, the Clones are made of metal.  The Bot War models are shifting over to resin and plastic at the moment so when Clones become a bit cheaper and more available, I will probably look to pick up a few booster boxes to give me a proper horde army.

For now though I have the 6 main warriors and one of each of the 6 different Clone models…..

I also have the Maggot which is a tunnelling bit that can carry 4 Larvae symbiotes for some surprise attacks. There are also 3 Swarm bots but I have not painted these up yet. I have 9 in total and they will form part of a secondary faction that have rules currently in playtest.

And in true Bot War fashion there is of course a titanic centrepiece, and in keeping with the insectoid theme of the Infesters it could only be…..

During the February painting challenge I completed 2 factions, Democracy and Infesters, but the Democracy faction actually contained the 2 sub factions in the form of Eagles Veterans and Max Starr’s Special Branch.

Whilst I showed the competed Eagle’s Veterans as an army shot (after painting them in a weekend), I hadn’t shown the Special Branch since I completed them either, so I shall rectify that now….

I also took the time to take some individual shots of my Eagle’s Veterans whilst I had my camera out….

It’s been a very busy few months. Beachhead was a great success, I smashed out loads of models, got them on show, had some games, and have continued to push on through the backlog.

February was another annual Bot War painting challenge which saw the Facebook community paint an insane amount of bots over the 28 days. If you’re not aware what this is, it’s a challenge to paint for at least 30 minutes everyday for the duration of the month, you are allowed 2 pass days as life can get in the way, but you must post before and after photos of your session daily which means there’s a huge amount of content being posted. It’s a real highlight to see what everyone completes.

I managed to paint everyday, including the 2 days of Beachhead, and managed to complete 48 models from start to finish in February. I actually painted more but I started some of these before February 1st so I did not include them in my count and didn’t share any progress of them.

But, I will share those here.

The Trashers are a close attack focused faction, they love to get really stuck in and smash up the enemy with melee weapons.

Taking inspiration from junkyards, I painted up the bots with a rusty metal theme, using a tutorial from a great painter/teacher/YouTuber friend who also streams on Twitch, Reiner72, I applied a Necromunda underhive scheme as the basis for the Trashers armour. I won’t go into too much detail but his video is well worth a watch, it involves a TMM base that then has rust and grime applied to it.

Whilst it’s not a refined paintjob, as far as “tabletop” standards go this looks quality and I’m really happy. The Mig Ammo Lucky Ultra Matte did take some of the polish out and flatten the highlights, but I wasn’t too bothered as they are gaming pieces and still look great on the table.

As with most of the Bot War factions there is a centrepiece model, a titanic bot which looks insanely imposing on the table, for the Trashers this is Trashasaur, and if course I had to get mine painted up as well