Thrax Gaios, Command Squad Veteran

I've been on a bit of a painting tear over the holiday weekend. I managed to get time in on just about every day in the four-day weekend. As a result, I finished off the tank hunting veteran for my Command Squad, put a ton of paint on my Vindicator, and started working on the final member of the Command Squad.

Here is Thrax Gaios' back story:

Veteran Brother Thrax Gaios is the squad's demolitions expert. He carries a meltagun, his bolter, and a satchel of meltabombs and grenades. He can toss a krak grenade into the vision slit of a moving tank at a hundred meters. Where the other squad members wear armor featuring ornate designs and decoration to reflect their veteran status and membership in the Command Squad, Gaios wears bulky, reinforced armor with little adornment. Because his armor is so often dented and scraped when he stands in the blast wash of exploding enemy tanks and fortifications, he has opted to forego ostentation in favor of smooth lines and heavy plating.

And here are the pictures:

 

As you can see, he's pretty plain. I could probably drop him into a tactical squad and he'd blend right in. I had originally planned to put a brass etch aquila on his chest, but the damned things never lay flat and gluing them down is a major pain in the ass, as you either end up gluing it to your fingers or tools, or with a spread of lumpy superglue residue around the area. I tried briefly to add one freehand, but it looked terrible and I scrubbed it off. His Ultramarine symbol is also a tad crooked, though it doesn't look quite as severe in person. I might have to go back and redo that, if it starts to irk me.

Now that he's done, I've only got one squad member left. The Apothecary's bodyguard. He's largely bionic, so I used as many bionic bits as I could on the model. I forgot to take a picture of his body, but here is his head so far:

Pretty simple bionic head. The skin is done, but the metallics are not. The rest of him is made from GW parts with Kromlech legs. I'll get a shot up in the coming days.

While waiting for Dullcote to dry, I also started plugging along on my Vindicator. Here's a quick, largely uninteresting shot:

As of this morning, the blue is about 90% done. I decided to try a different technique for painting vehicles. Instead of painstakingly applying each layer, leaving careful shade lines as I go, I decided to paint each layer quickly and thoroughly, and then apply the shading with a wash of my darkest color. If it turns out right, it'll save me a TON of time when painting tanks and pods.

There is a bit of bad news to go along with all my painting progress. Yesterday afternoon, while scrubbing mold release off my Forgeworld Raven Guard Captain Korvydae model parts, I dropped one of the fuel lines for his jump pack down the sink drain. I soak my FW resin parts in Simple Green, which is a great degreaser and perfect for cleaning resin. Unfortunately, the dissolved mold release makes the parts VERY slippery. I thought to myself "I should probably close the drain plug for this." I decided that I was almost done, so didn't bother. Fate punished me by sending that little pipe part squirting out of my fingers and right down the drain. ARGH! If anyone knows where I can get another fuel line for that kit without buying the whole thing over again, or has an example of rebuilding the line from other parts, I'd appreciate it!

In general gaming news, it looks like GW is revamping the base sizes for models. 32mm bases are up for preorders, with all of the new Blood Angel reboxings and kits having new sizes. I do like the idea of added space for posing Marines, but not the idea of buying scads of new bases at fifty cents a pop. I'm not hurting for hobby funds, I just hate spending money on simple pieces. I'll wait to see what the reasoning behind the bases is before jumping in. The timing is fortunate for me though, as I'm just about to start assembling and posing Raven Guard models. Id 32mm is standard for Marine infantry, that gives my Scouts, Assault Marines, and Jump HQs a lot of space to work with. One of the basing ideas I had for them was a desert city ruin with small tumbles of bricks and broken walls, but that is largely lost on 25mm bases. 32mm would give me room to stack bricks, sculpt pavers, and add little windswept sand piles to the debris. I'd wanted to jump right in to the RG models, but new bases put a little delay in the process. I have plenty of Ultramarine tanks to paint while waiting though.