My First Steps in the 15mm Universe

Though I haven’t planned starting a new army or collecting anything in 15 mm scale (all my minis are in 28mm), I knew there’s no turning back and decided to buy some minis from Ground Zero Games, after reading the Stargrunt II rules. The range is surprisingly huge, there are many factions with distinct appearances, units and equipment. After carefully considering, I chose the OutRim Coalition and ordered a starter pack and a few vehicles.

The figures are very neatly detailed, there is no real sign of mould lines and they are full of character. All the figures are in power armour (no skin to paint! 😊 ), and there are marine assault troops, command and comms squad, anti-armour and light anti-armour support squads, three different heavy weapon teams, a heavy power armour squad and grav bikes in the pack. That is almost 100 figures in total.

• 

• 

You need a simple colour scheme if you plan to paint such a huge amount of minis. White is not the easiest colour to work with, but I always imagined these figures in some kind of white or light grey armour. I have never used contrast paints before, but I saw many positive reviews about them, so I thought this was the right time to give this a try. If they work as they are supposed to, they could save a lot of time for me.
My very first attempt was with Mechanicus Standard Grey over a white base coat. It was easy to use, dried quickly and looked nice on the mini, but I wanted more contrast. I gave the mini a wash of Nuln Oil and drybrushed it with white. Now that was much closer to what I had imagined. I also tried layering on this mini, which worked well, but I concluded that this method was just too time-consuming for an army of this size

• 

• 

• 

After basecoating the next three minis, I used Basilicanum Grey, Gryph-Charger and Space Wolves contrast paints. I found Gryph-Charger too greenish and Space Wolves too blueish. Basilicanum Grey seemed to be the right choice, but I wanted the armour panels to be whiter, so I drybrushed them with white. The blue and green hues became less bold but they were still not what I was after. Basilicanum Grey remained almost black in the recesses, but left nice transitions on the armour panels, which was exactly what I was looking for.

I also tested some ways to paint the visors and the weapons. For the visor Vallejo’s Gunmetal blue was too dark, a silver layer with a blue wash was better but the combination I liked the most was gradually moving from Macarage Blue and Teclis Blue to Temple Guard Blue. I tried Black Templar contrast paint on a weapon and a helmet but it was just too dark, however, it improved a lot after adding a bit of a grey highlight). A combination of a steel basecoat and a black wash was the best for the weapons – it was not too shiny but all the details became clearly visible. I glued the minis to 0.8mm thick round bases and based them with Astrogranite. After using some light grey and white highlight it was just perfect.
I was curious about Walhallan Blizzard technical paint, a bit of snow could match the white armour well, but I wasn’t really happy with the tests and ditched this idea.

Now that I picked the colour scheme, it was time to paint the first batch.

Since the squad leader plays an important role in the game, I attached it to a thicker base and marked the small panel on the pauldron with blue. I decided to keep the very first test mini as a combat medic (yes, there is such an option in Stargunt II rules). To indicate its role, I painted the pouches and the previously mentioned panel on the pauldron red. I added a figure with squad automatic weapon (SAW), but I wanted its weapon to look different than the standard assault rifles, so I painted it grey and washed it with black.

Since these minis are made for a game, a protective layer was needed: I used Lahmian Medium for the armour and the weapons and gloss lacquer on the visors. Lacquers and varnishes have the bad habit of reducing the saturation and decreasing the contrast, previously it gave me some headaches but in this case, they made the colour transition much smoother and reduced the chalkiness of drybrushing.

With all these, I had my very first OutRim Coalition squad ready.

Within a short time, two more squads followed. The only difference is that one of the squad leaders will be used as a platoon leader and its pauldron is painted blue.

• 

• 

That’s three squads so far and the support weapon teams are on their way too (Update: the heavy weapon teams have been completed)

Tuffleyverse, here I come!

UPDATE: Downloadable Stargrunt II Data Cards