Steampunk Colonial Brits… for some reason…

Sometimes you don’t need a specific rule set in mind, or battle to aim towards, sometimes you can just build and army for the sake of it. To this end I put together some 1800s Sci-fi Brits. There may well be a future attempt at some rules writing, but for now, just seeing them sat on my shelf is enough.

All the figures came from Irregular Miniatures and as you probably guessed came from a few different ranges: Colonials, WW1 and Sci-Fi. They are on 40x30mm mdf bases.

I knew I wanted to add some additional details to the bases, and I settled on sandbags and craters.

Once the additional details had set I added my own texture paint to the bases and then spray primed everything black. From there everything got a heavy brown drybrush. I thought that brown would be a good base for most colours, it also meant that I had already painted the bases, boots and guns.

I picked out details in a very quick and dirty way. Almost treating the figures as if they were a smaller scale. I was thinking more about the impact of the army collectively rather than all the fine details.

Once everything had been basecoated I threw on a black oil wash. Oil washes are really great. Far cheaper than my usual GW washes, and they don’t stain either. What I mean is all the paint runs into the recesses and leaves most top surfaces alone, so you get a really good effect with basically no effort.

As you can see from the close ups below I’m not likely to win any painting awards. They do however look really good when they are all together.

It was interesting to see this project through from start to finish in a few hours actual painting time. Where I initially thought it would take far longer. My motivation was kept high because I knew then end was in sight from the beginning. The army was only ever going to be these thirteen bases. To contrast that with my spluttering World Eaters army for 40k, it’s difficult to maintain motivation since the end is nowhere near in sight with them, and with rules changes I’m going to likely need far more models to be anywhere near ‘competitive’.

So I guess if I ever get round to gaming with them I could bend the rules to make them work as an army rather than add more units, which is a nice thought.

There is a Japanese Army on my desk as opposition, mostly Samurai, Ninjas and a Sci-Fi APC, which I think might be a little too futuristic looking, but I’m not planning on painting them anytime soon.