Weekly Waffle #371 – Baba Yaga
22nd March 2025
For this week’s Weekly Waffle I have gone a little bit left field. Work is starting to pick up and I’m now in the office more often but I’m still getting my hobby fix in. I’ve got lots of orange to be working on but I’ve done something a little bit left field for you this week.
As I said at the start of the year one of my main aims for the year was to try and keep my mojo flowing all year. To do this I’m always trying to red the line between getting projects finished and painting things that I think look cool.
I wanted to do something a little bit different this week and do a very short book recommendation. February saw the release of Dan Abnett’s follow up to Double Eagle, Interceptor City. Its fare to say that I am a Dan Abnett fan and Double Eagle was on of my favourites. And it’s been a bit of wait for this. But what really shocked me was realising that the wait has actually been over twenty years.
Double Eagle was released back in 2004 and now we finally have the follow up in the form of Interceptor City. Dans writing really grabs you and makes you feel like you are there. No space marines here. Just normal people fighting in there tiny part of a much bigger war. But he draws you in and you just have to know what is on the next page.
If you haven’t read anything by Dan then I would certainly recommend Double Eagle as a starting point. And if you do get hooked then Gaunts Ghosts will keep you busy. Anyway Interceptor City is a fantastic read and I highly recommend it.
On the hobby front I’ve done something a little bit different this week just to mix things up a little bit. I’d been looking at the minis available on We Print Miniatures but had never found anything I needed. But I have always been drawn to what look like Colonial Marines. They have a few different names which makes it a little bit difficult to find things.
But after a bit of pondering I decided to pick up a couple just to paint something a bit different. The minis themselves are absolutely fantastic and I’m really glad I decided to get them. They are a little on the expensive side, especially if you are looking to make a full squad. But from what I have seen so far they are well worth the price.
My idea for using these minis was to try and find a way to shoe horn them in as enforcers. I think they have enough of a sci-fi feel to work in the under hive. Whilst at the same time being much less sci-fi than a full on Adeptus Arbites squad. The only real draw back that I can see with them is that they don’t have a lot of weapon options available to them. But I do have a little bit of plan to get round that which should work well in friendly games. That would give me access to minis with Pistols, Stub Guns, Shot Guns and Sniper Rifle. So not a full set of options but enough to be usable in friendly games and campaigns.
The minis look very nice and if you are planning on using them on the table top they don’t need a lot of clean up. If you were thinking of using them as display pieces things might be more tricky. They have a what I can only call ‘contour lines’ on them where you can step of the printer. You don’t really see them until you look up close but they are there. I’m assuming it’s just the product of them be being printed and isn’t in any way an issue for me. But just something to be aware of depending on what you want to use them for.
My idea to use them as Enforcers has very much influenced they colour scheme I decided to use. My GW Enforcers were painted up in blue and red but I really wasn’t happy with how they turned out. So for these I decided to go back to the out of the box colours and go with a dark grey and yellow scheme. Although there is some torques mixed in to give a bit of distinction between clothing and armour. But I’m hoping the overall feel is that of a standard enforcer squad.
As I mentioned above I needed some way to distinguish between weapon loadouts when they are all carrying pulse rifles. So I’ve hit on the idea of saying that any mini with helmet is carrying a stub gun and any without is carrying a shot gun. A nice simple house rule that allows the minis to be quickly identified and shouldn’t cause any issues if they do make it as far as the table top. In a similar vein I was planning on using the smart gun as a sniper rifle. It is easy to identify and as they don’t have machine gun options I think it works well. I can see a stabilised weapon working in this way. Then a pistol is a pistol and if I want anyone to have a shock maul I will need to do some conversion work. But all in all I think that format would work for the sorts of games these guys could find themselves in.
On the painting front I’ve kept things very simple and gone with a slap chop approach. The minis were primed in black and then given an all over dry brush of dark grey before a lighter directional dry brush of light grey on the upper body and the front of the trousers. All of the cloth areas were then given a coat of Basillcanum Grey and the for all of the armoured areas I added some Terradon Turquoise just so there was some distinction between the different elements. Then to give those little elements of colour pop I’ve used a nice bright yellow which just works really well as a counterpoint to the grey.
The weapons and equipment pouches were all in done in black. Just because I thought it gave that last little bit of contrast. Although to be fair you can only really notice if you get up close to the mine. I didn’t want to add any extra colour because I really wanted to the yellow to stand out and I also knew the skin tones would help out with the overall feel of the mini.
Because of the number of dark colours I’ve tried to push the highlights more than I would normally do. It feels very weird when you are close up and doing the work. But when you look at them from a distance, as you will on the table top, I think it works nicely. I do think that I have an issue with my highlights and shadows in that I don’t push them far enough. I really need to remember that most people will be looking at them from a few feet away and not a couple of inches. As you do when you are painting them.
I have two guys painted so far. But to be fair Colonial Marine John Winters, who bares more than a passing resemblance to old earth legend that was Mr John Wick. Could probably deal with any trouble the under hive could through at him. But just to make all of those gangers feel a little bit better about themselves he is joined by Marine M Greenscout. But that is enough of me waffling on at about them, what do you think.
That’s it for this week. I have plenty to be working on for next week and the mojo is still flowing so I’m not expecting any hiccups, famous last words. I haven’t decided what I’m going to work on for next week but I will have something painted up for your perusal. So until then I hope you have a great week, whatever you have planned. I hope the hobby mojo continues to flow and that I can catch up with you all back here at the same time next week.
