Painting the Enemy 

Nation of Hastur ON1-K Orion

I recently picked up an Orion as part of a lot on ebay.  I wasn't quite sure what to do with it when I got it.  I don't have an Orion in the Star Adder's Touman, and I don't remember having ever played with one either.  Alexander Kerensky piloted one, but I'm not a terribly big fan of the base olive green that the SLDF uses.  I was scanning through the how-to tutorials on Camo Specs Online when I came across Psycho's step-by-step tutorial for doing a Nation of Hastur unit.  I figured it wouldn't hurt to have a Hasturian unit to play opposite Bruce, and the paint scheme is fairly simple.

For as little time as it took, I'm quite pleased out how this one turned out.  I wish I had done step by step-by-pictures.  I did do that to a small degree on the next mini; I think it's something I will make more of an effot to do in the future.

My next unit is an EGL-R6 Eagle Aerospace Fighter.  According to the fluff, this was not actually a SLDF craft, but was adopted for use by the Royal Divisions of the SLDF.  Since I had just finished the Orion of the Nation of Hastur, I decided that Ilkusar Shogunate should also have a painted representative.  My next mission against the Shogunate is going to be a battle for air superiority and will feature the Air Group Commander (CAG) for the Shogunate, I thought this would be an appropriate time and figure.

The assembly reqired a fair amount of work because the engine assembly did not line up well.  After about 30 minutes of filing and scraping, I finally gave up and filled in the last of the gaps with a bit of Citadel's Liquid Green Stuff.  After using it for this and a couple of basing projects, I like it.  Like most GW stuff, it's expensive but I will continue to use it.  I also decided that since I was going to need to file out the hole for the mounting pin that I would make my first ever modification to a Battletech figurine- I changed the angle of the mounting hole so that when I finished the project it would have a more dynamic pose.

After giving the primed unit enough time to cure, I set about the process of laying out the paint scheme.  Again, Psycho at CamoSpecs had done a how-to for the Ilkusar Shogunate since the book didn't have a definitive answer on the what the paint scheme should look like.  I laid out the general blocking to look something like this:

After that was done it was time to fill in details, cover up mistakes, and decide what needed to to be lined and what didn't. 

I think I should have skipped the inking on the underside white panels and done the lines in gray for a little shading as opposed to the harsher black lines.



Next painting installment: Cleaning Up Old Messes