Weekly Waffle #335 – Water water everywhere
1st June 2024
This week’s Weekly Waffle keeps the mojo as well as the water flowing. Something of a cryptic start for an idea I got from ‘georgemac0098’ (on Instagram) for a Water Guild gang for Necromunda. I don’t know how to share a link to Instagram so I can only give you the user name. But I would highly recommend you check out the account if you can as there is some fantastic work there. His minis are made up using the legs from the Delaque gang. The bodies from the Genestealer cult and then finally some old school deep sea diver heads from Zinge industries. I really like the idea here because it fits in well with the narrative theme of Necromunda. So I decided to appropriate it and have a go at my own gang.
I did think about not using the Genestealer cult bodies but changed my mind after looking at the Forge World minis for said guild. One of the things I want to be able to do with these minis is to actually use them in game. That means they need to have some way of fitting in with the existing rules but also fitting in with the information that is available for the Guild. To me that means that the normal gangers would be some sort of light weight Subnauticans, without the heavy armour, who are divers that keep the cisterns and reservoirs of Hive Primus functioning. But also double as bodyguards for the Master Nautican or other guild representatives, should the need arise. So in game terms the Nautical would be the gang leader, the Syphonites the champions and the Subnauticans the gangers. But I felt if I just used the Delaque bodies with head swaps they wouldn’t look like divers. Which got me back on track with using the Genestealer cult bodies.
So I idid a bit of internet trawling of bits sites and managed to scrape together some Genesteeler bodies, with the light mounts which I think is very fitting, and some of the drums and back packs from the Ash Waists gang. I was looking for something to add a little bit more interest which is why I went for these. Along with the Delaque legs and arms that will form the core of my version of a water guild design.
Even with all of that decided the heads were still causing me a real dilemma. I have some of the diver heads from Zinge but I just couldn’t decide if they looked right. So I also picked up some alternative AI heads for the League’s of Votann. Because I wasn’t sure the Zinge ones were Necromunda enough. The plan was then to paint up both options before deciding which one to go with. My thinking was that the AI heads would be a bit more Sci Fi but the more I looked at the Zinge heads the more I thought they had the right feel for Necromunda. But I do have some Leagues of Votann in the pile of shame so the AI heads won’t go to waist.
When it came to a colour scheme blue was always going to be the primary colour. After all they are the water guild. Then I had a look at my colour wheel and decided that orange would be the accent colour. Now I am being really honest here that I picked these colours before I looked at the painted Forge World models which use a blue and orange scheme. Or more accurately I’d seen the models before but didn’t really have any interest in them at that point so hadn’t paid any attention to the colour scheme. But I also decided to mix things up a little and go with copper for the metallic areas like the helmets. It’s the most orange of the metallic colours and I think it will look good aged down with some verdigris.
I tried something a bit different with my painting this time round and whilst I think the end result looks ok and works for these as table top miniatures it still needs more work. So that was to try and ‘sketch’ out the highlights and shadows before going back and trying to smooth out the transitions. It’s something I’ve seen others do and something that was talked about a lot in the classes I took at Adeptticon. I get the general idea but just think I need a lot more practice to smooth out the transitions a lot more. As I’ve said for these as table top minis it looks ok and is something that I will hopefully get better at with practice. Because I can really see how this can save a lot of time in the painting process and still give very good results. Assuming you can get the transitions right in a reasonable amount of time.
The painting went quite quickly which I think is just down to the fact that I had already picked out the colour scheme and knew where I wanted the colour to go. That is with the exception of the arm guards. I really couldn’t decide whether they would be blue or orange. I did the first one in orange and really wasn’t sure about how it looked. So adopting the age old British solution I left it and went to get a brew. When I came back and saw the miniature sitting there on the table the orange just gave it that extra bit of pop that I wasn’t getting when looking at it close up. Just goes to show that some times you need to put something down and literally step away to get a better perspective.
Everything else was really pretty simple and the end result looked quite good. If a little bright for Necromunda. But once I had given them a bit of watering in the form of some rust coloured weathering powder, which is what I use on all my Necromunda minis, I thought they were looking quite nice. Certainly something that I would be happy to field on the table top. And given that they are using Deleaqu rules there is plenty of scope to expand them in the future.
But enough of me going on about them what do you think of them.
You can find more Necromunda mins from a few faction on my Necromunda Gallery here.
Since taking the pictures and getting the post ready I have been toying with the idea of making a couple of changes. Which goes back to the limitless painting principles I learned at Adoption, in that a miniature isn’t finished until you are finished with it. Which means you can always come back to it at a later date and make changes. The changes I’m thinking about are giving all of the orange areas a wash to darken them down a bit and add some contrast. A simple wash with something like Citadel Fuegan Orange should do the trick. The other change I’m contemplating is to change the colour of the weapons from red to black. I don’t really know why with this one there is just something niggling away at the back of mind saying they would look better. Maybe I will try it with one and see what I think before committing.
That’s it for this week and I hope you have enjoyed having look at my Water Guild. I have a few more minis lined up for them over the next few weeks along with quite a few other Necromunda projects. So much so that I’m feeling like the whole site is becoming about Necromunda. Al though I do have other projects in mind. It’s just that at the moment I’m finding my mojo with Necromunda so as long as that keeps going I will keep painting what I’m enjoying. Then when I run out of steam, which I will do at some point, I have other things lined up to keep me going. So for next week week the plan will be an addition to the Water Guild. Then I’m thinking of mixing it up by going up town a little before bringing back down with some more hired guns and gangers.
So until next week I hope you all keep your selves safe. Enjoy whatever you have planned for the week and I will be back here next week with another Weekly Waffle for you.
