Sword Knights
Sword Knights – Max Unit
Still working on getting my eStryker list fully painted, here are the Sword Knights. After the pain of painting the full Long Gunners with UA, I tried to decide how best to tackle these. I decided to do the full unit without the UA, but it was still long and trying. Perhaps it would be best to just do the min unit, then the extra troopers separate. That probably ends up being less efficient, but perhaps less trying on my sanity.
Nevertheless, these guys turned out okay, but the loin cloths could have been cleaner. I think all in all for a full unit they are okay. I really like these models, especially the variety you get out of the similar sculpts by combining different arms and shields. I tried a couple different schemes, before returning to something very similar to the studio scheme. The studio painted models are not great, your eyes just kind of slide off them. I think because they lack any real contrast on the metallics. I think I got a better range on mine. I also went with the yellow Cygnus instead of gold for the shields, which also helped. And to incorporate the Jack Bone/MWH color, I applied it to their cloth, front and back. To break it up a bit and add some more blue I free-handed the blue stripes on the front and back of the cloths.
To help distinguish the leader I used a technique I learned at Lock & Load last year for making rocks. Whenever I’ve had leftover modelling putty I’ve been rolling it into little spheres, about 3/8-1/2″ in diameter. The you take your modelling knife and cut various side off the sphere until you get something that looks like a rock. Super glue the putty rock to the base and then paint, wash and drybrush. Then I did some long field grass behind the rock. It came out great and I look forward to trying this technique again. To further distinguish the leader I painted a yellow stripe down the blue pony tail from his helmet. This was pretty sharp-looking and I kind of wanted to do it to every model and then I could make the leader’s solid yellow, but I think the extra blue is good too.
My main list now only requires getting Runewood painted. I should probably tackle the Sword Knight UA as well…but maybe that can wait for now.