Painting Dreadball - The Keldorian Krushers

When the flooding hit our city last summer, I was evacuated from my home. This meant I didn't have much of my hobby stuff with me while I was displaced. I did have enough time to pack up some clothes and my kitty and still have a few minutes to spare. I grabbed a few paints and my Orx team, knowing that I'd have a fair bit of time to fill while waiting for news about returning home.

Being without all of my regular equipment meant either suffering with bad lighting and crappy brushes, or finding some new materials. A trip to Wal-Mart yielded a $17 alternative to my Ott lamp. My two brushes didn't survive the escape from home intact, so a stop at the Michael's next to the Wal-Mart and a 40% off coupon got me a set of nice (albeit synthetic) brushes for $5. Finally the nearby dollar store provided me with the one colour I forgot to bring: black. Some excellent interlocking plastic cups and some small paint trays rounded out my materials. I was ready to go; for about $25 I basically had created an emergency painting setup.

I didn't get them all painted up during the evacuation; only finishing them recently. A year to paint 12 figures isn't so bad, right? Right? Actually all of the work I did last summer ended up getting painted over. I had primed those figures black, then painted the skin green and done some of the straps in brown. After looking back at my Skeletor model, I decided to paint the Orx with blue skin to match instead.

When my season 3 shipment arrived I got a few more figures to add to my team. In retrospect I'm actually glad that I hadn't painted them yet. Of the Orx figures I had, I selected 3 guards and 5 jacks, then added one more of each, as well as the keeper figure and prone goblin marker. I also decided to paint Slippery Joe up to fit in with the team, since he'll only play for Orx/Goblin teams anyway. That gave me a total of 13 figures to do.

I'm not sure when I actually primed the second batch of models, but for some reason they were done with white primer. That did make painting the blue skin (AP Crystal Blue) a lot easier. Painting over the green that I'd done originally took me three or four light coats to really get full coverage.

The purple is an approximate 2:3 mix of GW Liche Purple and GW Fortress Grey. The metals are GW Boltgun, and the dark grey is P3 Greatcoat Grey. I also used some GW Mechrite Red for the tongues, and some GW Bleached Bone for the teeth. The straps were done with GW Brown. The whole paint job was followed by a liberal wash of GW Badab Black.

After the wash had dried I did some highlighting. The skin got a layer of AP Crystal Blue, and then a highlight of AP Electric Blue. The purple also got a coat of the base colour over top, as did the leather strapping. The loin clothes I highlighted with P3 Ironhull Grey. Finally the numbers were painted on with red followed by white over top. This is the first team I've tried to freehand numbers on, and I think they turned out alright. I doubt I'd try it again when I have perfectly good number transfers to use however.

The Keldorian Krushers have already played one game (embarrassingly as a mix of white and black-primed models) in which they were able to score only a single strike. It happened to be in the 13th rush and was worth a game-winning 3 points so I guess I shan't complain too much just yet.

Coach Skeletor is pleased with his new minions...