I've always loved the Book of the Astranomican for its flavour, army lists and a fantastically fun scenario; so when I saw some figures on the dreaded eBay for a decent price I splurged, some might say I went a little bit overboard but I ended up collecting 32 infantry representing approximately 1500 points that I could lay on the table, with absolutely no upgrades whatsoever which includes every character available with the exception of the cadre Pirate commander.
What really struck a chord with me though is a very dear friend of mine named Lightfoot died unexpectedly in a motorcycle accident and the name of the shadowlord model was named Lightfoot that pretty much sealed the deal for me and I jumped in with both feet.
So with my Skaven finally done (an army is never done I need a screaming bell and to paint up my greater daemon of the horned rat)
I'm just getting around to the Pirates now here's a photo of my progress so far on my test models:
it's taken me five days to get 32 guys cleaned, assembled and based, with a ton of pinning, then primed and the initial body suit/mash armor base coated with tamiya spray TS-70.
These guys went through the most intricate paint stripping I've done and they came out looking brand new, honestly. The bases are actually cool IMHO and will simulate the surface of Mars.
I was also sick and tired of doing bases the same way after doing my Skaven so this time I'll have virtually no vegetation whatsoever I might put some dead tufts in there just for some flavor but that's pretty much it.
I hope to have these initial 10 guys finished by the end of November that might be a bit of wishful thinking but I'm going to do my best. Id like to include some jet bikes and I would like to use a couple of the more modern viper jet bikes and use them as grav attack (hovererers) they fit the description to a T and are sculpted by Jes Goodwin who is my favourite sculptor of all time.
Here's a color swatch for the entire army
the top row is for power weapons it would start with tamiya paint olive drab followed by dark angels green from '95 followed by emerald green from '95 followed by scorpion green from '95 gonna try to do a lightning affect on all power swords and squad leader helmets in all my squads.
the second row is for the common ft trooper helmets; Japanese uniform Yellow followed by pale yellow both by Vallejo game color, I want to do tiger striping so if anyone has tips on a sound technique please comment below.
the third row although you can see it's blobbed together cause I'm a complete fucking idiot is Vallejo black or I should say matte black, the middle is black Gray and at the end is the wondrous beautiful army painter uniform grey that would be used for weapons/any kind of underlay.
the third tier is the actual armor color it started out with tamiya olive drab followed by Vallejo game color medium gray followed by Vallejo game color French MIN grey; that was the plan anyway but I'm so in love with the green now it's such a lovely colour; from far away it appears to be black at mid range appears to be green gray and up close it's blatantly obvious that it's green you really have to take a second look So I may stick with it and highlight it up just using greens.
the final row at the bottom is for any kind of metallics to use for chain blades any kind of hosing etc. On the left I used leadbelcher from modern GW ( boo hiss) then Vallejo gunmetal metal and on the far right citadel Mithral silver from an old bottle circa 1995.
I want for them to resemble the old Eldritch Raiders paint job but I want them to be their own thing, less neon and more militaristic. I also I cannot stand the name Eldritch Raiders so I'm going with void dragons.
I have a special surprise once the project is done... Nah I'll tell you right now it's going to be a prefect holding loft the pirate cadres official flag I got it from the high elves skycutter.
It is nicely molded front and back so no freehand (phew)
In the future I plan to do a full dreadnought host but I think I may alter the color schemes cause quite frankly they deserve to really stand out.
I got my mits on the assassin variant ghost warrior which I'm quite proud of.
I'm not using the dreadnoughts found in the pirate list I'll be using the ones found in the Redbook compilation I want a banshee and I want a war demon because quite frankly eldar dreadnoughts kick fucking ass they look cool and if your opponent doesn't make them a priority well then he could be up shit's creek.
I want to know what you guys think I don't know why I am doing a blog if I only get like a couple of comments am I doing something wrong? Not enough insight? I don't know.
So if you're bothering to read it shoot me some ideas, what you like or don't as this is my first rogue trader army list, and I'm open to comments,
thanks have a nice day.