The freezing Guardsman

I have finally been able to start work on my Imperial Guard! The first five models are almost finished. I made the decision to go for a classical Cadian Regiment in the typical green and khaki. However the army is going to be winter themed and I'm not quite sure how this will effect the models. At the moment I have two differnt types. The first is a normal Cadian with a snow base.

As you can see the decal is still drying as I am writing, but that is not the point. There are still some points that need to be cleaned up, but in general this would be one of the options to settle a model on a winter base and call it day. I'm happy with the model but I can't get over the feeling that something is missing. The test model I did has been weathered with brown on the boots and trousers to give him a muddy dirty look. These guys are frontline soldiers after all and I'm pretty sure that they'd get pretty dirty and grubby in the process of fighting the universal terrors of the fourty-fist millenium. Furthermore I have "frosted" the poor chap up a bit to give him a winter appearance. I basically did this by gently dry brushing the armour and the helmet in white. I also gently touched up his face and rife. I kind of like the look but I'm not sure if it looks "authentic" or if I might want to use a differnt technique to weather my Cadians. I'll still need to give weathering some thought and might check out the web for some more pics of weathered winter minis. Now I'll better get cracking on with a bit of Uni work!

Decals and Basing

Over the last two weeks I was able to find some time to try out my Decal Solutions and apply them to my models. Overall I must say that I was very impressed by the outcome as the decals really look fantastic. I would of never been able to get the insignia to look as good if I would of tryied to paint them on. I found a tutorial on miniwargaming.com that got me interessted in using these solutions. Here's a brief explanation of how they work: The System uses two solutions, one called micro set, the other called micro sol. I presume that Micro Set makes it easier to place the decal on the model, whereas Mirco Sol makes the decal soft and therefore it will adjust itself onto the model. So following the tutorial, the first thing I did was cut out the decal and place it in warm water, while it was soaking I applyied Micro Set quite thouroughly onto the area where the decal would be placed. As soon as this was done I retrieved the decal from my bowl of water and used the brush, that was still wet from the solution, to push the decal from the transfer sheet onto the model. It was pretty easy to bring the decal into place, after I was satisfied I used a paper towel to gently soak up the remaining solution from the model. After waiting for roughly a minute I then applyied a layer of Micro Sol onto the entire decal. The Decal started to wrinkle but as was said in the tutorial, this was supposed to happen. After letting the Solution dry I keept reapplying Micro Sol a couple of times. It took about a day to settle perfectly. I did however face some Issues when applying the insignia to the shoulderpads as these where round. The tutorial stated that if the decal won't fit propably the the edges needed to be cut with a sharp knife. I ran into some trouble doing this, after the decal was on the model. So I pre-cut the decals before soaking them which worked pretty good. So here are some of the results.

As you can see there is a slight shiny rim next to the decal, I might apply a matt varnish over the decals and see if this might help. I'm still looking for a good matt varnish however as GW's has caused me some trouble in the past.

Here's an image of the shoulderpad, in this case I slit my knife from the opening of the U into the middle, so the folds at the top and at the round part of the pad where able to overlap.

On this model one can see that there is a slight wrinkle in the insignia. This happens when the decal is not entirely flat when applying Micro Sol. So this one was my bad, and I'm pretty sure someone with more patients and calmer hands could do a better job of it.

Here you can get a ruff idea of how shiny the decals can get. Wrinkels and other issues concerning the adhesivnes of the decal seem to be shine brighter.

As you might have noticed I have also tryied something new in regards to basing. These are jsut some stones which I base coloured codex grey and then drybrushed in Astronomican grey. So a pretty straight forward method realy and I'm happy with the look. The bits and pieces ling around are from the GW basing kit and I will be using a lot of it for my Imperial Guard Army.

Here are some pics to show of my bases:

I have no idea who's heretical head may have been in this helmet, maybe its from GW Fantasy or something. Nothing I recognize anyway. It almost looks Lord of the Ringish. That will teach you Rhohanian Bastards to invade my Universe!

This clearly is an Eldar so everything is in the right place here. No Mordor Trolls and Santa Elves or whatever under my Flamer!