Merry Christmas from Ironmitten.

 Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you all get some quality painting time in over the holidays.

Astrotrain

This large Deception is actually an action figure, but does fit nicely with the others.

The figure had very simple detail, so I made up for this by painting some in. 

I also painted on quite a lot dirt and grim, I think it really gave him more character. I used some weathering powders to add the soot and carbon scoring.

Here we can see Slipstream, she is the first female Deception Seeker. I just loved her colour combo of teal and purple, I had to paint her up.

A midsized Autobot has run into real trouble. He is dwarfed by the Seekers, let alone Astrotrain.

Prowl is about to get a nasty shock. Astrotrain is a massive Bot and one that should be hard to bring down.

Slipstream gets her alternative mode. I can use these markers to show if a unit is transformed or not.

I also finally got around to spraying some of the terrain for Cybertron. This was easily done using purples, with a lighter zenith highlight from above.I will give these some weathering and washes to shade them. 

I did have a terrible cake topper decoration that was meant to be Rachet. It's a knock off and so only bares a faint resemblance. Not wanting to paint him up as a playing piece, he got imorterlised forever as a statue. Perhaps a famous scientist from the Golden age of Cybertron...before the war.

These pipes came in useful too, they were picked up at Warfare wargames show last year. 

Let the Energon flow! Energon, the key to all Cybertronic life is captured and stored in huge underground reservoirs.

Energon pipelines.

This life blood is worth fighting for. The Decpticons may have won Cybertron, but the Autobots mount lightning raids to collect as much as they can of this priceless resource.

I found these on eBay, Energon cubes. These will make great little objective markers to fight over.

Barrage

Here is a converted toy that after some paint and plasticard, makes for a great figure. I also added some missile launchers from a Gaslands sprue, this helped in choosing his name. He can lay down a devastating barrage, clearing the way for a counter attack.

I chose tertiary colours as these work best for Decpticons, teal being a favourite.

I quite like the fact that he is a mid sized Bot as this adds more variety to the collection. He is a strike plane so still dwarfs the Autobot.

'Bring the rain!"

 Skywarp takes Barrage under his wing.

Autobot Prowl

This model is a diecast figure from a collectors set. The models come coated in thick enamel paint, however once stripped, there is quite good detail underneath.

The real bonus for me though, is a lot of the Autobots scale perfectly with my other models. Here we can see Skywarp in the background.

Prowl is the man with the plan when it comes to tactics. Prowl is a classic and the Autobot symbol was based on his face too. 

This colour scheme is based on Prowl from the Netflix series, with his Cybertronic writing on his doors.

UPDATE: After some thought I couldn't resist painting him in his original Generation one colour scheme. It just made more sense as the model depicts him from this era.

I used a fine point pen to add detail. Also I played around with varnishes, gloss for the metal and Matt for the tires and the back of the doors.

These diecast figures tie in lovely with the pvc keyrings I found to create the Autobot forces.

The Terrifying Huron take the dip.

My first batch of Woodland Indians, the Huron. These lovely minis are from Galloping Major and are beautiful. It almost seems a shame to use the Army Painter stain on them, but it will keep them damage free when gaming.

I think my blue warpaint may be a little on the light side but who's to say. At least it will make them pop on the table.

I ended up using the box art from the Warlord Games plastic set as reference for the warpaint. I really enjoyed adding the details on the belts and equipment, My 0.05 permanent pens proved very useful again.

I made sure to add some skin colour on his hands to show the warpaint rubbing off.

I used Black Templar contrast paint watered down to create the charcoal warpaint. I think it worked okay as the skin beneath comes through.

 As for skin colour I used a range of paints. Bugman's glow from GW, get used a lot by painters, so I used this as well as the Foundry Native American paints. Once an ink was added to shade the skin, I highlighted the skin back with Bugman's glow.

The Dark tone dip hasn't darkened the colours too much. Once Matt varnished they should look okay.

UPDATE: I decided to tweak these guys a bit as I'm not convinced with the blue. In all my references for Woodland Indians, I can't find any blue warpaint.

I think the way to use the reference on the warlord games box, is to swop out the blue for black paint. Use the box to copy the patterns but not the colours. Black and red are the way to go.