Funny story about my purchase of the Dawnguard Sentinels. See, I may have mentioned that years ago when Retribution first came out, I enjoyed the power progression article and decided to follow it. While at Adepticon last Sunday, I was in the dealer hall. One of the vendors was selling their Privateer Press stuff for 20% off. Well, most of the vendors were. I remembered I needed to pick up a unit and snagged these guys.
Oops! That should have been the Dawnguard Invictors. The armor is practically identical and the weapons are similar. The paint style is also very similar.
So I figured I'd make the best of it. First off, I hate figures with multiple parts. Every figure had to have their swords and one shoulder pad attached. After a while, I started using the two part spray where you put the spray on one side and the glue on the other. I was dead tired to gluing arms and hands to bodies. At least two of them had to have the torso attached. Ugh. The only good news in that vein is most of the fits were pretty good. In some instances I could have used some green stuff, maybe even liquid green stuff, to cover some potential gaps, but these are for table top play, not display so I said screw that.
They only have part of a tab, on one foot, so that was good news when I snipped them off to put them on the ruined bases. It was bad news when that one tab was too big to fit into the tabbed slot on the regular bases. See, I only had five of those ruins and figured I'd just use the regular bases for the rest. When I went to put my first figure in, well. suffice it to say it didn't fit. Highly annoying.
In addition, the mold lines on the shoulder plates are atrocious. I used a lot of sandpaper and after I sprayed them down, those lines were still visible.
So yeah, not my favorite unit. They would have to perform awesome for me to buy another one.
In terms of making the best of it, I decided to use some bases I had laying around. It's kind of a thing I'm doing with the Retribution where I'm trying to use at least some 'ruin' style bases on them to represent their fallen kingdom.
I also used my air brush for the main body of work. I used a few 'zenith' highlights by doing them all in a dark gray, then at a slight angle with a light gray, then from the top with white. All those primer by the way. Then doing the same thing with different shades of grey and white. I used my Badger and the new Minitaire paints. They worked very smooth. My biggest problem is that I probably needed to let them dry a little more. Didn't have the hair dryer out this time. See, when I finished, the topmost layer, which should have been white, still looked a little gray. Which it should have been pure white. Lesson learned.
I also busted out my Vallejo Liquid Gold set and used White Gold, which is a 'chainmail' color. Ugh. I don't know if it's because I haven't used them in a while but that experience sucked. The pigment was so faint that I had to go over and over and over and eventually wound up using an old brush to break up the bottom 'muck' and get the material flowing again.
So after some of this and some of that, I used a few washes on the blades to try and give them that 'glow' native to the Retribution and the darker metal on the handles.
I hate to say it, but even as I'm expanding my range in terms of the tools I use, my patience is diminishing. My... eyesight is starting to fade slightly. Not enough that I can't actually see the things, but enough that I realize I miss bits here and there. I still don't need glasses yet but... Well, the good news is they're done and I went out to Games Plus and bought the right ones. Now all I have to do is assemble them too.... but first the Mage Hunters and their commander! Who I've already finished... Initially bought him for RPG purposes. Dropped him once while painting and he did not break, but I flattened his nose. Ugh.
