Paint skulls on it?? Are we the baddies?

G’day and welcome to my first attempt at a hobby post! I’m kicking off with an Armada CIS fleet that I painted up in a matching scheme. But first, let me give you a quick run-down on the whole ‘Imperial Bosun’s Bargeworks’ thing… just hang on, bear with me…

Those who know Barry and I, are already very aware of our Naval background (and now you are too), but I thought I’d tie a bit of that into here as well, because… reasons. Anyway - quick version - the bosun (boatswain) is one of the oldest titles in a ship’s crew and is generally awarded to the most senior qualified member of the deck department that supervises the deck personnel (the boatswain’s mates), ensuring that their jobs are completed to the Captain’s satisfaction. As any sailor knows, one of the many unavoidable jobs onboard a ship, is ‘ship’s husbandry’, which is the term given to the cleaning, maintenance and general upkeep of a ship. This is just one of many jobs usually undertaken by the bosun and his mates. One aspect of that, is the beloved ‘chipping and painting’ - that is exactly what it sounds like - chipping away the rust on the deck or on fittings, then re-priming and painting it, good as new. Good times for all…

The Rebels pushing another hunk of junk into service for the Battle of Yavin

So that’s how I ended up with the Fondor Shipyard’s resident unit: Imperial Bosun’s Bargeworks - reporting for duty!

Closed up for chipping, painting, repairing and modifying various minis for our Star Wars (and other) wargaming tables.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

Ah yep, ok: on to the article now.

AdeptiCon Armada Worlds 24 INspo

After I came back from playing in the Armada Worlds Last Chance Qualifier (LCQ) at AdeptiCon this year, I was pretty chuffed even though I’d barely made the top half of the field. The reason being, that I received a lot of really positive comments about the paint jobs on my ships and squads in my squadron-heavy MSU Ozzel fleet. There were so many awesome custom paint jobs and modifications that people had added to their ships and squads there and it actually fed me a lot of inspiration to pull my finger out and start painting more minis!

Wat Tambor’s Techno Union

When I got home, I quicky decided to also really start putting some effort into playing Separatists for a change - I mean, it seemed only fair after almost 10 years of playing mostly Imperials, with the odd dabble in some Rebel fleets. Besides, the CIS seem to have much more interesting and different ships that would go very well with some modification. After some toying around on a fleet builder (links here), I settled on a Recusant, Munificent and Hardcell, supported by heavy squads (including Wat) and led by General Grevious. With that sorted, I started to look for themes that would fit in with the Seppies, which led me to Wat Tambor, the Techno Union and their heavily industrialised worlds like Utapau. That then made me think of a Steampunk theme - I do love the vibe of the whole Steampunk genre, so more Google and Pinterest seaches later, I landed on the royal purple and brass look… ‘noice’.

It’s ok if you don’t have a high-end spray booth like this one… /s

I started with giving the models a quick rinse off and dry, then base coated the ships (and their bases) with a spray of Army Painter (AP) Matte Black and the squads with AP Ash Grey. I use a paint stirrer with some blu-tack to keep the models on it, so it’s easier to turn around while spraying and don’t miss any bits without covering my fingers (also, please wear PPE like gloves and a mask/respirator, set up in a well-ventilated space, etc.).

After a couple of hours, they should be dry and, if you wish, you can give them a quick, very-light drybrush with a tiny amount of light grey to bring out any details before you get into colour. I wanted to keep the dark shadows in this instance, so left them black all over for that grungy, shadowy undertone before I started applying colour.

Next, I gathered up some colours and looked at the models to see where I’ll put what colours - It made sense to go with the purple on the main round armoured areas, brass on the highlights and systems, with grungy, greasy looking gunmetal inbetween, where all the machinery is. And droids, I guess.

Scheme

The paints that I used in this case were all GW Citadel paints, with the exception of the Two Thin Coats’ (TTC) White Star, which I used for mixing & lightening colours. The main paints used were:

Main:
- Hull & armour - Naggaroth Night, Genestealer Purple highlights
- Systems & weapons - Screaming Bell, Hashut Copper highlights
- Inner workings, engines and machinery - Leadbelcher, Ironbreaker highlights, Nuln Oil/Agrax Earthshade shade mix
Secondary (not pictured):
- Ship Engine glow - TTC White Star base, build up Jokearo Orange, blend/highlight Trollslayer Orange and then White Star centre again
- Squadron ‘eyes’ - Mephiston Red, Evil Suns Scarlet highlights
- Wat Tambor squad gold highlights - Retributor Armour
- DIS-T81 squad highlights - Macragge Blue

For the ships, I started stippling on the Naggaroth Night on the main hull areas with a large drybrush, slowly adding small amounts of White Star to lighten it slightly as I built up colour.

I then went and roughly coated the inner areas of the ship with Leadbelcher, where I thought the main machinery was, under all the hull, armour, sensors and weapons. Once that was dry, I mixed some Nuln Oil and Agrax to make a greasy looking wash and then applied that on all those dirty machinery areas inside and underneath the hull.

For the brassed areas, I took care to pick out areas that framed the deep royal purple of the hull and highlighted areas that stood out with Screaming Bell, such as engine covers, antennas, weapons emplacements and whatever looked like embellishments.

The engines were a bit of an experiment, but I went with an orange glow to match those seen in the Clone Wars animated series. I tried to replicate the hot white centre that shifts to bright orange as it opens out from the centre. This was done in reverse, starting with the whole area orange and then slowly blending lighter to the white from the Jokaero to Trollslayer to White Star,

Highlights were then applied around the ship, picking out key details for each of the main scheme colours and then applied some small CIS decals to replace the ones that I painted over on the hulls. Once they were dry, I went back and lightly stippled on some battle damage with a small piece of sponge held with tweezers, dipped in a tiny amount of Leadbelcher. It sort of worked.

For the squadrons, I used the same basic methodology and scheme, using the Naggaroth Night as a base and picking out details for the Screaming Bell sections to make it stand out and match the fleet. The red in the ‘eyes’ of the Hyenas and Vultures was a bit fiddly, but with some bracing of hands and a nice point on the brush, I managed to get some good colour in there, then tidied it up afterwards. The ‘Wat Squad’ in his Belbullab-22 got a similar treatment, but with gold trim highlights instead of brass or copper… because he fancy.

The specialist Vulture, DFS-311 (‘Doofus’), got a stripey paint job, using slightly lighter purple strokes down the hull, and DIS-T81 (‘Dr. DISrespect’), just got the normal tri-fighter livery, with some blue highlights so it can just sit on rocks and pew pew at things.

Once they were all done, I gave them all a quick clear-coat with some spray matte varnish.

That about sums it up - I promise I’ll get a little better at progress pics in some future posts, but for now I kinda just wanted to get this one out there so that it might inspire some others to get in and have a crack at ‘pimping their rides’, so to speak. Please enjoy a gallery of my finished products as one of the first productions of the Imperial Bosun’s Bargeworks!

Cheers team, no scotch tonight - It’s a school night. lol

- Rosco