Bot War – C.O.I.L.S Vengeance

Although still behind schedule I have decided to press on and use the airbrush to try and get back on track.

I used the last of my mixed brown and sprayed all of the bases for the remaining minis (excluding conspiracy) so they have their basecoat nicely applied. I did a couple of passes with the brown before adding a drybrushed on highlight with the Longbeard Grey.

Getting all of the minis’ bases to a good place like this will hopefully makes it easier to pick up all of the remaining models in the coming days and just start working straight away on the body basecoats then hit both the body and the base with the shade…. Hopefully this pays off in the long run.

I also painted up the ABM vehicle which is a log wheel base missile launcher.

This was painted up the same as other vehicles, but I found the glazed highlights weened to work better on the flat surfaces of the cab and chassis. Working through a couple of highlights in a glazed fashion added randomness which sort of looks like urban camouflage, an unexpected effect that I was quite happy with.

I didn’t go too fancy with the missile unit, once I paint up Slaughter I(the Bot form of the ABM) I may go back and add some more details, but I’m happy with the cab and main chassis.

Time to get the pair of Fortresses finished and Forktongue moved into the “done” pile.

The night started with the Fortresses getting a black lining around every panel and shadow with citadel contrast Black Legion. This is a great colour for black lining in my opinion as it isn’t fully opaque, so shades surrounding areas it makes contact with, whilst getting a deeper black at the deepest recess.

There were just sooo many panels to like on these fortresses it took a while to do them both. You can see the difference  though when you see in the following image comparing one that had been lined vs one that hadn’t.

With the panels lined I went in with some Monument Pro-acryl White to create a base for the window lights and spotlights. These were then coloured over with the Scale75 inks with magenta for the windows and turquoise for the spot lights.

With the fortresses done it was onto Forktongue.

Following the same method as all of the other bots I used the Turrets as a reference for parts to highlight and added a couple of turquoise spot colours to the shoulders and side of the head.

And that’s them done. A day behind schedule but I’m hoping I can catch up later in the week and use the airbrush to perhaps batch up a few models to speed things up.

Currently hitting one of my struggle points balancing this challenge and other commitments that I knew I’d be facing so running on only 3.5hrs sleep at the moment.

I wanted to get Forktongue and the COILS fortress both started and finished today, but I found my other Fortress in an old WIP pile, so decided that I’d get it painted up at the same time as my new Fortress.

Given the size of the fortress and in preparation for Conspiracy I went with the airbrush to paint the brown bases and also the Anthracite Armour panels. This worked well but when I went over with the Armour Wash shade, all of those flat panels were difficult to keep tidy. A minor set back but I adapted and instead of layering up new coats of Anthracite I stippled on some highlights with a really old frayed brush to create randomised interest on the flat panels. After 2 stages of highlights I glazed anthracite over to knock them back a bit. I’m happy with the result, it’s not perfect, but these are big pieces and I wanted to slightly weather the armour on the structures. They’ll get finished off tomorrow.

Forktongue also had his base and basecoats painted, and got its first shade applied. It doesn’t look too difficult to finish it and both Fortresses tomorrow, and then maybe start on Heavy Chopper depending on available time.

Short brief update. Only managed to get the Turrets finished. Forktongue will have to wait until tomorrow.

Sooo many turrets.

3 turrets is the normal amount that you get in the faction box for Bot War, but when you’re a crazy collector like me you end up with 11 of them.

I tried to be a bit ambitious today and get them all painted up but it wasn’t to be. They’re the last of the small units so I don’t mind spreading this batch over 2 days as long as I can get another model completed tomorrow.

To help get these turrets painted up I decided against hand painting the brown bases (needing 3 coats per base I didn’t fancy painting 33 layers of brown), so instead I made up a new batch of my Scale75 Gobi Brown + Citadel Baneblade Brown, loaded up and my Bartsharp airbrush and hit all 11 at once!

After each pass I hit the minis with a blast from my little hobby hairdryer before applying the next coat, and after about 10 minutes the brown was down!

With the bases basecoated I then set about drybrusbing then with citadel longbeard, and then blocked in all of the other base colours in the main turret assembly. Anthracite for the armour, Ironhull Grey for the joints, and Gunmetal for the vents and turrets.

Everything was then given a heavy P3 Armour Wash shade, including the bases and then hit with the hairdryer again.

The base rims were blocked in with brown to tidy them up, and armour panels were touched up with Anthracite were there had been some pooling/coffee staining of the shade.

2 hours in and the turrets are in a really good place to stop for tonight. The armour highlights will take some time tomorrow, but I will hopefully knock out Forktongue as well as finishing these defenses.

I sat down earlier and looked at everything I have left to paint, my calendar, and the deadline for this challenge…. And had a slight panic. I’d thought I’d gotten ahead to give myself some time, and if I was to use 2 passes I’m still having to complete at least one model a night to give me 5 days for Conspiracy. This is a lot of pressure so I’m hoping I don’t crack.

….anyway, with the new schedule firmly in my mind I had to group up the 3 Crawler bots and Mole together and smash them out tonight. It’s been a pretty full on week and my eyes are feeling it, so I rushed these a bit more than I’d have liked. But they’re still looking OK for the tabletop, and they are small. Plus with these I had the benefit of already painting the ROTD scale Crawler when I was working out my scheme color the COILS Vengeance force.

Short update as I’m off to Beachhead convention in Bournemouth in the morning, maybe one day there will be enough interest in Bot War for there to be a tournament there, or I get a chance to go back and demo it…. But sadly not this year.

Ghost is a relatively small Bot, based upon the AA Drone Choppers she has a very agile form with a sense of motion about her.

Her rotor blade is being used like a weapon so I used the Scale75 Cancer Turquoise ink from their Zodiac range to glaze over a light grey into white to give a “powered” up look to it.

8 days into my February painting challenge and I have 16 minis painted so far. 28 still to go in 21 days. I’m not quite sure if I’m on target yet as Conspiracy looms over my painting desk asking for probably 4-5 days I reckon.

Anyway, I thought I’d grab a group shot as just over a quarter of the way through.

Finished up the AA Drones tonight. They weren’t too difficult but being smaller models I may have been a bit too keen with my basecoats and wash yesterday as some of the detail was a bit soft so I had to guess in places where the panels separated. Still happy with the result and these are flying into the done pile.

I did break out my Black3.0 for the brass rod flying stands to keep them from catching any light and try and give that look of them flying above the ground. I prefer using brass rod instead of the clear plastic flying stems as I can cut that to varying lengths to have flying units at different heights, something that will be more obvious with the planes and Choppers.