My Completed Black 13th
It was with some trepidation that I approached the painting of the Black 13th Gun Mage Strike Team. There is no doubt that these three gun mages are a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield. There are few lists that don’t make use of this 4-point unit. Painting arguably the most elite unit in the Cygnaran army was a big deal for me. I wanted their models to look as awesome as they are on the battlefield. The sculpts themselves are finely detailed and they are the best posed unit I’ve seen. Unfortunately, the sculpts have one flaw: they are not to scale with the rest of the WARMACHINE models. They stand a full head shorter than Stryker and other similar human models. It’s not just their height, though, the entirety of their model is scaled down. I read somewhere that while most models are crafted to the “heroic scale” for proportions, they Black 13th were sculpted in a normal scale. All of these factors combined together lead to some additional pressure in getting a nice paint job.
Now that it’s completed I think painting the Black 13th was my favorite so far. While some of the minute details were difficult, overall they presented varied mini’s with some interesting features. I’m very pleased with how they came out. It’s still my hope that Privateer Press re-sculpts them to the appropriate scale and I will certainly buy and paint them all over again.
Let’s take a look at a picture of the finished group (click for a larger version):
Black 13th (right to left):Ryan, Lynch and Watts
This is the first time I went with non-standard bases. The biggest reason for using alternate bases was to raise the height of the models, to make them look less diminutive on the field due to their scaling issues I talked about above. Secondly it helps tie them together as a unit. Lastly they look really great don’t they?! The bases are from Scibor Miniatures, which I purchased from a reseller on eBay. I based them with Greatcoat Grey and then did a thorough drybrushing with Menoth White. I chose to keep them simple so as to not draw attention from the models themselves, as the Black 13th do not have a big color pallete. I think this simplicity was a mistake, and adding another color or two would have helped pop the models more.
I stuck very close the to standard color scheme, however I did deviate on the gold trim. If you look at the official paint job the buckles and such are only outlined, but that was beyond my skill and patience to pull off, so I chose to make them solid gold. I think they look just fine with this change. Another change is I used a gloss varnish for the boots, to make them look like shiny leather. I’m torn about this decision. It has a nice effect for sure, but I’m not positive it’s appropriate for these models. Certainly it is not too late, I can easily go back over them with a matte varnish, but I’m still deciding.
The one thing the picture does not relate is the true color of their coats. I started with a base coat of Thamar Black, did some Exile blue highlights but then did multiple washes of a blue and black ink mixture, so in direct light their coats appear to be a very dark blue, rather symbolic of the nature of the Black 13th.
Here’s a gallery of more pictures:
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