IMEF Troops

 As part of my sci-fi theme this year in anticipation of Stargrave, I dug through my previous Bones Chronoscope minis, looking for things that'll be useful. A lot of them aren't. There's probably not gonna be a lot of use for old west or modern minis, but I do have a bunch of IMEF and Nova Corps minis, as well as the Blackstar Corsairs. I long ago painted up bunch of Nova Corps, so decided to go with the IMEF troopers. They're very reminiscent of the marines from the Aliens movies. 

So the Corsairs and the Nova Corps went back into the box, and the IMEF soldiers got a hot soapy scrub down, and lined in Green Liner. 

I think I ended up with doubles of the heavy gunner, flamer, and the one trooper from the Box of Goodwill that goes around on the Reaper Forums, but they might also have been mispacks from the kickstarter. I don't remember at this point.

I would like to point out the difference in the bases between these guys and the Squigg Soldier behind them. While the Squigg is on a traditional 1" base, it's completely featureless, while the IMEF troopers all have vaguely sci-fi decking molded onto their much thinner bases. Given the choice, I'd much rather have the thinner sculpted bases. They're easier to cut from the base should I want something else, but also it's easy to just paint what's there. 

After the green liner I pulled out some other paints to try on these guys. I don't think I've ever painted green army men, so the whole camo type thing is new to me. Thankfully I've got good paints to work with. For this project I pulled out IMEF Olive, Camouflage Green, and Worn Olive for the greens, and Desert Stone and Desert Sand for the tan/khaki colors. I used Redstone for the flamers' padded armor.

But before I got to that I blocked in the weapons with Metal Tone, and the faces with Ruddy Flesh and Tanned Flesh.

I then blocked in the tan under suits and straps, added some colors and washes trying to figure out the best strategy to get the look I'm trying to achieve. I found the black wash over the guns was fantastic, but a little too dark on the outfits. A blend of dark sepia wash with a bit of black wash worked better. 

After washing, it was time to go back and bring the highlights back up. I painted some blue reflection onto the lenses

I decided to try a little OSL from the guns. It was... semi-successful. I also blue lined the bases, followed that up with a Scorched Metal over brush, and then dry brushed with Metal Tone.

Can't really see it here, but all the guns also got a dot of red above the barrel. The heavy gunners' bandanas were painted red and blue with pure white dots to suggest a pattern. 

I need to take some final shots of them, but until I do, this is where I'm gonna wrap up the post. 

Next up: Snakes!