Eisenkern Imperial Guard

Hi folks, today I'm showcasing some of Dreamforge game's relatively new Eisenkern figures press-ganged into Imperial Guard service with some judicious weapon swapping:

Dreamforge's weapons are nice enough but as these were part of the Inq28 commission my client wanted me to get some good solid Mechanicus approved firepower all up in their grill. I was happy to oblige. Most of the swaps were easy enough, you do need to shave down some of the stocks and sadly in a few cases remove them entirely for them to fit - the Eisenkern have some very tight poses in their arm pairs - but for the most part they posed no problems. The flamers (below) needed a bit of tweaking as the flamer tanks needed to be incorporated with the backpacks to look right. A length of ProCreate hose draped naturally around the model made for a decent enough rubber piping to carry promethium to the business end.

For the painting, the brief I had was "Like a TIE fighter pilot" so within the ability of a model to appear so, that's what I did! One of the difficulties is that you can't just paint them gloss black. Doesn't work. It'll look like you did no actual painting. Instead I painted the undersuit and gas mask in the AMMO Rubber & Tires paint - gave it that NBC-suit look - the armour in Val German Grey darkened with a little black. Painted the weapons and then hit the whole thing with a careful wash of Black Ink (with the usual Lahmian Medium and water added). After that it was a simple matter of picking out the details. Selectively gloss varnishing the armour plates, Brightening the metal where needed and basing. They look good and threatening and didn't take forever. Worth remembering.

apologies for the weird light levels on some of the colours, getting these things to resolve on camera is more difficult than vampires

While we're here, lets chat for a moment about the set itself because I've been watching Dreamforge with some interest. Its a kit that seems to straddle two eras of design. Like most modern kits there are a host of lovely, lovely extra parts on the sprues - like the nifty battlefield computer in the pic above - and the quality of the casting is superb. Then we go back in time with the cutting and spacing on the sprue, you have arms paired but in different places making you hunt for them, there are a lot of componants that could have been sculpted together to make it easier for assembly. The variety is nice but each trooper comes in at least 10 parts. That is with no optional extras attached. Like I say, two eras of design. I'm sure they'll get there though, this was their first infantry kit after all.

Something I will point to though is the posing. Like a couple of other companies, Dreamforge haven't quite nailed some of the organic details. They're great at the mechanical (the Mules are brilliant and coming soon) but the stances are often a little... off. It's tricky to see but the sgt above is a decent example. You see, when people move they go through a "controlled arrested fall" which involves pivoting the centre of mass of the body over the leading leg. In order to not fall over you need your weight centred over the foot on the floor or close to it, we also wobble from side to side to keep our weight over the foot on the ground. With the sergeant, he looks awkward because in that frozen moment that we see miniatures in he is falling over. His weight is way to the right and behind the leading foot and the rear one is a long way from coming through. Its subtle but you see it. Again, I expect this will improve in time and I can defiantly recommend their more mechanical offerings in the meantime.

That's all from me but I have two more items to share. Remember this fella? Well, a couple of days ago I got an email from the client who commissioned him. He'd finally managed to get Triarii Sinister to a gaming table after not quite a year! It was lovely to see some shots of ol' T. Sinister in the wild as it were and only lament that shiny model syndrome (and an eldar titan) kicked in and blew the poor fellow up:

And finally, I must direct you to Charlie at the Beard Bunker and a genuine labour of love. One of the nicest monster paint jobs I've seen in ages on a Banebeast Chimera. Lovely work.

Until next time folks.

TTFN