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DP9 is doing it again - another online Painting Contest!See - http://theminiaturespage.com/news/910790/ “Northern Squad Contest Show off your modelling and painting skills! Create, paint, and assemble a Northern Squad from DP9 miniatures, built to meet squad guidelines from Hammers of Faith. Include all information about which HoF army the squad is for and the swaps you used to outfit the squad. You may include a fluff background for the squad, and notes you feel are important (such as if you spent 15 hours building something to get an effect). Regiments of note are allowed!
So what to paint? I checked my Northern minis and stumbled over a blister I bought at ebay years ago: A Den Mother and a Bear. I wanted to paint these!
So I got my squad: A WFPA Veteran Strike Squad led by a Den Mother (instead of Thunder Grizzly – upgraded from Headhunter), a Bear replacing one Grizzly, a Grizzly with linked rocket pods and a medium Bazooka and two out of the box Hunters.
When assembling the models in March I noticed some minor miscastings at the back of the Den Mothers right knee. Time for some cutting and repositions… To give the Den Mother a more commanding look I placed the right leg on fallen tree stump. To achieve this look I had to cut the model at some places and reassemble it afterwards. I notice round missile pods on the Mother on some DP9 art, so I replaced the normal one with some of my Southern spare parts.
For the Grizzly I wanted also something special: I running pose and some reequipping. The right leg was cut at the knee and repositioned in a running pose. The two rockets pods were glued on top of each other to create the linked look.
The Bear and the 2 Hunters were just assembled, nothing fancy here. The Hunters, because I wanted them to stand them a bit back from the more exotic Gears and The Bear, because the Bear is exotic enough out of the blister…
All models are placed on sculpted bases to give them an outdoor wilderness look, so fallen trees and snow all around. So Mid March and the basic assembling was done. After that I painted one at a time over the next 7 weekends. I wanted the Gears on snowy bases, so I needed a fitting camouflage. Since I liked the brown colours of the Den Mother in the HG art book.
I thought that a mixture of brown and grey would look fine. I did not apply a too distracting camo pattern; it can look very easily bad on small scale minis. Most of the time I just altered the colours between a knee or a leg etc.
All the while between painting sessions I read the WFP Blood and Honour sourcebook to get a solid feel for this faction. I noticed the strong Spanish roots of the WFP, which gave me the idea for the red and yellow "Spanish" head of the Den Mother, just another detail to (hopefully) make this squad a nice one. Some transfers to make the Gear identification on the gaming table easier, some varnishing and some Vallejo snow on the bases and – whoops – we are done!
April 30th 2007” That was my text for the 1st deadline. After the announcement of the second deadline I decided to put even more effort into the squad. In the meantime I received a Blitz weapon pack which I put to good use on the Bear and Den Mother. The guns of the Hunters remained the old one to make the HACs look even bigger in comparison. I repainted some details and highlights (like the sattelite uplink on the Mother) and used some more of the new transfers. I even painted up a Ferret just to realize that it is not a valid option for the squad… Anyway here they are: My Western Frontier Protectorate Army Veteran Strike Squad I really hope you like them. |
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Next step: I checked out the Hammers of Faith book to make sure that it is a valid option to take a Den Mother or a Bear. I noticed that it is possible for a Western Frontier Protectorate Army to take Bears instead of Grizzlies. A Veteran Fire Support Squad could also take a Den Mother for a Thunder Grizzly!
