Tuesday 29 August 2017

I've started another army for Alien Squad Leader

Yes, I have now embarked upon a third army for Alien Squad Leader. Once again, all of the figures (with one exception) are from the excellent Ground Zero Games 15mm Stargrunt range. I've been planning this one for a while now, but couldn't decide on some aspects of the army, which is an Alien Imperial one. I always knew that the main components of the force would be made up from the Crusties minis and models, but the issue I had was how to fill the ranks of the Primitives (who are a mandatory selection). Anyway, the Primitives will be the subject of a later post. At the moment I am going to show you my Imperial Elites, who are power-armoured infantry, and the Robotic element of the army, which consists of both light and heavy Droids.

First, here are four stands of Elite troopers. The one with a figure in red is a command stand.


And here are the Heavy Droids, accompanied by a character figure, a Champion of the Elect in red power armour.


I wanted this army to look completely unlike my two Human ones, both of which have a fairly sensible camouflage/military fatigues colour scheme. It occurred to me that alien lifeforms might have eyes that have evolved under completely different circumstances to our own, being attuned to different wavelengths of the spectrum. To try and get this idea across, I decided that this army's armoured troops would follow a rather bright, not to say garish colour scheme. After undercoating them in pale grey, I gave them a wash of Windsor and Newton purple drawing ink, which I drybrushed successively with Vallejo Brass and Silver, before adding in some other colours. I also decided that commanders in power armour would be given red as their command colour. 

Although the colour scheme is pretty bright, I am happy with the results.

My Robotic Infantry are the only non-GZG figures. They are "Taranis Repulsar Drones" from The Ion Age. I originally bought these for another purpose, but I really like their quirky appearance and I reckon that they make pretty good combat droids for my Alien Imperial army.


These have a simple metallic colour scheme, the idea being that they are churned out in huge numbers by colossal automated imperial manufactories as disposable combat units so therefore they don't get a top quality paint job.

Anyway, That's where I am so far. I've got other figures almost ready, but I am waiting on a delivery of more 5cm square bases to complete the Imperial troops, before moving on to the Primitives.

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