Dawnguard Assemble!

So here we have some of the Dawnguard Invictors from Privateer Press for their Retribution faction. At this point I've got probably around 35-50 points of figures. Most of them actually painted and assembled even. I have more that need to be done including the colossus that I bought just because it looked like it would be a fantastic end game monster for RPG terms.

In terms of assembly, the Dawnguard Invictors were much easier to put together than the other Dawnguard with the big swords. No shoulder pads for one. Mold lines were still pretty bad in a few places and some of them were so subtle that I didn't notice them until I put down a layer of white at which point I was like.... uh, no, I'm not scrapping that off and ruining the job so far.

One of the things I always worry about with figures like this, that need two points of contact, is that the casting will be warped and not fit. That was thankfully not the case here. One of the models did have a miscast for a connection point. The ball point fitting was not clear. Thankfully I was able to use a knife and hand drill and take care of that problem.

Lot of smooth areas on these guys so if that's not your deal, you'll probably want to steer clear of them. Some nice details though like the pouches. The bases I think are from Micro Art Studio? Ruined temple maybe?

In terms of painting, I used my airbrush for the initial priming and layering of paint with a few touch ups after ward. I'm trying to minimize my time painting while still getting a figure I'm not trying to hide when it comes time to use. I'm happy enough with the figures that I don't think it'll be a problem. I finished basing them and putting some find touches on them.

When I painted them, I decided to move away from some of the advice in the Retribution book. The use of 'aqua' is way too high. When looking at the actual art of the Retribution, most of them have very shinny weapons as opposed to that aqua saturation that the studio models have on their metallic parts.

One of the things I like about these guys, is when I was painting them, they reminded me of Storm Troopers from Star Wars fame. Sure, they don't have a lot of actual physical similarities outside the color scheme but it made me think these guys would be perfect troops for science fiction table top as well. Their weaponry and armor is so different from the steam punk fashion of the Iron Kingdoms that they easily fit in multiple settings.  The one in the middle on the front line in particular, looks like a soldier on the march.  I keep wanting to play Bulkheads and Blasters and these guys would be a good army for that. Still, I'vet never find the time. Heck, I still haven't got a game of War Machine in yet.

And here's my second Dawnguard Scyir. I didn't know I had two. That's okay though as I originally bought it because it makes a fantastic character with a two handed sword. Here I used some of my old GW purple wash with some P3 armor wash to get that 'dark metallic' purple look and I'm pretty happy with it. I'll be using that more often in the future when painting more figures.

One interesting aspect to taking shots of the figures after you're done is seeing the mistakes. As I didn't hold the guy up, I would've never seen that dash of metallic paint under his visor. Think I'll be hitting that up next with a touch of white.

The base here was done with Happy Seppuku and green stuff. The other one I did I put onto a ruined style base and it added some height. With his huge sword, I decided that no more height was needed on this soldier.