'Mech company, 14th Lyran Guards, c. 3025

[worktroll]

It's raining Steiners at the moment! I had to get in on the New Big Thing ;) Seriously, these have been ticking along for a while, and just got round to finishing them on the weekend.



First up is the Assault Lance:



Zeus 6T with the PPC, Stalker - meant to be the 3H with two LRM-20s, but you could posit someone dropping the SRMs as well to bring it up to four LRM-15s and 4 medium lasers (they were the best launchers I had to hand), Banshee 3S and Grasshopper 5N. The Banshee is a nu-plastic intro figure with a lead Warhammer PPC from the bitz box, and again (using the best SRMs to hand) the pilot dropped two MLs to upgrade to a pair of SRM-4s.



The command lance, led by Hauptmann Bertram "Junge" Steiner-Brewer in his Flashman 7K, Senior Warrant Officer Sven Schmitt in his Zeus 6S, a Trebuchet 5S, and a Hunchback 4H.



The Recon Lance - a Clint 2-3T (with AC-5 salvaged on the Combine border), two Commando 2Ds, and a Wasp 1S.

"Die Junge" is keen, loyal, and - frankly - not the sharpest Naglering sash around. Fortunately, between his bodyguard SWO Schmitt, and the Leutnant in charge of the Assault Lance, there's every chance he should last long enough to outgrow some of his ... enthusiams ... fighting against the Free Worlders.


The Flashman's the major mod work; replaced the inner arms and got a more dynamic pose with a torso twist and with reference to Scug's work in TRO:2750. The Stalker obviously got missile upgrades thanks to the DA JES III, and both Zeus' got the MW-4 style arm tuck, which IMHO improves the AC look enormously.

As mentioned, the Banshee 3S comes from the latest plastic version - here's a comparison with an old original lead 3S, the old 'Baron Samedi' from my 1980s campaigning.



Painting: Black basecoat, drybrushed the blue 2/3rds, drybrushed the white 1/3, back over the blue, back over the white, do the grilles & details, then fix up any glitches with a fine brush for both colours. FInally, a ghostbrush with GW's "thick as custard" white on the white parts, and a much thinner ghostbrush of white on the blue parts to emphasise details.

COmments/recommendations always gratefully accepted,

Cheers,

W.

[TheMaster1955]

well done  O0 O0

[Pooman]

I like the green gemming on the cockpits and the white seems fair.  O0

IMO your blue requires a little depth. A simple way if your stretched for time is black-lining. That's where you use an extremely fine brush to get thinned down black into the gaps of armour and so on.

Otherwise this can be achieved buy beginning with a watered down imperial blue (or equivalent) as a base. Next use a mix of said base blue and the next shade up - layer or heavy over-brush (time pending). You can then highlight with a medium blue and fine edge with a sky blue. Depending on uniformity, use a dark blue glaze (wash) - this may require matt varnish but is well worth it imo.

[ActionButler]

What shade of blue did you use?  The lighting in the first photo makes it look much darker than the other photos. 

They look great, though.  The green canopies are VERY nice against the blue/white.

How did you decide where to divide the blue and the white?  Did you use existing panel lines or did you just eyeball it?  Either way, the separation is very clean and crisp.  Well done  :)

(sorry for all the questions.  I plan on starting a Guard lance in the next few weeks, so I've been picking the brains of everyone who has posted recent examples.)

[Cidwm]

I love your canopy work, the jeweling looks great.  8)

I think the first picture shows the colors the best. The blue looks good in that picture.What ever happened with the other pics changed the blue to a lighter shade.

[jimdigris]

Very well done! O0

[worktroll]

I like the green gemming on the cockpits

I am not a skilled painter; I'm trying always to get good and reproducable effects within my capacities.

The cockpit gemming is very simple:

1) Black base
2) White curve along the left & bottom edges
3) hit with green ink
4) thin white line along bottom edge, and white dot

Things like blending, layering etc are alas closed books to me, so I just keep working on things to see what works.

Thanks for the comments - the first pic is indeed truer to the minis, too much light in the latter pics!

W.

[Wotan]

Nice Company. Looks very lyran. And good solution on missing parts. O0

[Fletch]

Flashy Flashman and STK looks sweet with those missile racks.  My Flashman is going to look like a standard 'Mr Potato Head' version compared to yours.

Good to see you painting targets for your FWL units.  O0

[worktroll]

Now I have to work on the armour & infantry companies so my Grapes of Wrath have someone to alpha-strike with O0

[ActionButler]

The cockpit gemming is very simple:

1) Black base
2) White curve along the left & bottom edges
3) hit with green ink
4) thin white line along bottom edge, and white dot

That is so diabolically clever that I had to read it twice just to make sure that I didn't miss something. 

I will definitely give that a try on some of my future projects. 

[Col.Hengist]

They look great! Always love seeing Steiner mechs.

 Steiner is the new big thing? Did I miss something? To me it's always been the best thing.

[worktroll]

Steiner's always been about big things ;) Just there's been a burst of Lyran Guards on the minis  subforum lately.

[Col.Hengist]

Gotcha... Well, that's as it should be  ;)

[worktroll]

How did you decide where to divide the blue and the white?  Did you use existing panel lines or did you just eyeball it?  Either way, the separation is very clean and crisp.  Well done  :)

Basically I just tried to take a line from the inside of the 'Mech's leg, and go up from there. The inner right leg is blue, the other 3 sides is white. If there was a useful panel line, I used it (eg. on the Stalker's back, or on the Grashopper's torso); otherwise eyeball.

Expect to do a good bit of back-and-forthing. I used a wide brush (eg. 1/2") to lay down the first layers of blue & white. Obviously, plenty of bleed. Each time I went back I used successively smaller brushes for the drybrusing. Finally I used my smallest brush lightly loaded with paint to get clean separation.

(Sounds hard, but it's straightfoward enough in practice).

I'd expect the (mainly rectangular) armour to be easier to work with in terms of track guards or hull panels ;)