Monday 4 February 2013

Drop zone commander: Something very different

Hi all.

Today I've been playing with a model my boi, John from The Painting Bunker gave me after he won it in a charity auction for Legacy, a charity here in Australia that supports the widows and children of ADF service members who have tragically died.

It, for anyone who doesn't know, is a Sha'tari Jaguar, a faction in a 10mm Sci-fi game called Drop Zone Commander invented and produced last year by Hawk wargames. Initially I was really excited for this game and John and I had many discussions about it, and how cool the models were.

Unfortunately at release I wasn't able to get any, and my interest waned while I got into 30k.

When John showed me this model I was struck by the lines and the eldar-esqe design philosophy. Then he said I could have it as long as I painted it and blogged it. So here we are.




Much has been made by the creators of this game about their resin technology, and its superiority to any other resin on the market. Unfortunately I seem to have been given a dud. Whilst it wasn't as bad as the worst finecast I have ever seen, it would be about average for that troubled product.



There were several air bubbles, and miscast pieces, in one case along the back of the model I had to carve out the triangle depression that should have been there. This did however demonstrate to me the quality of the resin when cut, it cuts beautifully, again similarly to finecast. Where this is superior to finecast is in its elastic qualities, I've dropped this thing from considerable height and its bounced, without breaking a single leg or weapon.

It also drilled really well, taking magnets for the turret and the waist of the walker incredibly well.


To paint it, I tried a technique using masks. In this case a series of pieces of flyscreen, which is a plastic mesh put over windows to keep bug out.  

I primed the model with Tamiya grey surface primer, then laid the screen over the area I wanted colour and sprayed through the screen leaving the impression of grey lines. I did this with a Purple/pink, then enchanted blue, then yellow.

I then sprayed the bottom white, using the screen to leave the grey lines for interest. The rest was brush work, using golds and silvers from GW, before gloss varnishing and oils, then dullcote to protect the finish and stop the oils rubbing off.


































Finally just a shot to show the scale of the model.


Overall I would give this model a 3.5 out of 5, the detail is crisp and easy to paint, the design is cool and different, and the material is easy to work with.

Thanks for looking.

8 comments:

  1. Great paintwork. I like that you managed to create an alien non-human feel with that color choice.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you, if I did it again I think I'd replace the yellow with orange though.

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  2. Interesting to see your thoughts on the drop zone commander stuff, I was tempted to pick some up when I first saw them but the prices put me off. Do you have any more of their models or was this just a 1 off?

    great choice of colours for it too, as Engel says it has avery alien feel to it.

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    Replies
    1. It is a quality product, but suffers from the same bubble issues as resin. I have the PHR flyer as well, might try to paint it in a digital camo scheme.

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  3. Cool blog you have here.
    I could really learn from some of your awesome painting skills.
    I really need to get around to buying an airbrush/compressor...
    nonetheless thank you for following my blog!

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    Replies
    1. Hi mate, thankyou.

      Looking through your blog I actually thought you already used an airbrush on some of your stuff. Nice work.

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    2. Thank you!
      Very much appreciated.
      I saw a picture of your son's of horus on spikeybits.com.
      Its a shame they didn't link it back to here because to me your work deserves the publicity.
      Anyways thanks again for following!

      Delete
    3. Yeah, it sucks that someone like him/they would refuse to give credit. Looking through his older posts it is a common thing, he only gives credit to other BOLS writers.

      The worst part is I have contacted them on Diqus, and facebook, and have not recieved a reply or even an acknowledgement of a grevience.

      Delete