Kill Team - Volkus terrain & Universal Equipment
And here I was thinking I was done with big projects. The Hivestorm box comes with a ton of terrain, which makes sense as getting caught out in the open in Kill Team can be deadly. So you need a fairly decent amount of cover to hide behind.
As this is such a big project, both in terms of the number of pieces I need to paint and also the size of some of the buildings, I decided to break things down into smaller chunks. For example the terrain and universal equipment would need similar although not identical painting methods. I could then further break the terrain down into buildings and scatter terrain, and the universal equipment into barricades and tokens. So with a plan in mind I got everything clipped off the sprues, cleaned up and assembled.
Terrain
Buildings
It’s been a few years since I painted any buildings, and those ones were for Age of Sigmar. They ended up taking a lot of brush work and while they do look good, the Kill Team terrain is a bigger project so I needed a quicker method.
To get things started I primed the buildings with Rust-Oleum Espresso Brown Gloss Universal Spray. This is a paint formulated for real world application rather than fancy plastic soldiers so I had to be a little careful not to put down too much of a heavy layer and clog up details. A fact not helped with the bottle design, it uses a “trigger” to activate the spray rather than pressing down on the top of the nozzle like most other spray cans, which I was not a fan of. Regardless I got everything primed and left them to dry overnight as they were oddly tacky to the touch. It also has a gloss finish, but both issues would be solved in the next few steps.
Speaking of, the next step was to give the buildings a heavy zenithal with Colour Forge Standard Grey. The idea is to mostly cover up the brown but still leave it in the shadows and recesses. I have done a ton of zenithal highlights with my airbrush but never with a rattle can so it was a little nerve wracking, but it turned out pretty good. Before going any further I gave the models an all over coat of AK Interactive Ultra Matt Varnish, for two reasons. Firstly, to take the shine off the gloss finish of the Espresso Brown. And secondly, I have learned from previous projects that homebrew washes (spoiler) have a hard time adhering primed surfaces. Put them over a basecoat and you’re fine but straight onto the primer they tend to bead up. I finished up the preliminary work by giving each of the buildings a light zenithal highlight with Vallejo Game Air Cold Grey.
Now that each building had a gradient from a light grey to a dark brown I could begin on the detail work. I started by painting the metallic details with the Army Painter Speedpaint Broadsword Silver. As I believe, the larger buildings at least, are repurposed Sector Mechanicus or Sector Manufactorum terrain so painting all these details took a while. With that done I could then start blocking in the main colours. To keep things quick and simple, I stuck to contrast paints. I initially started with Black Templar and Blood Angels Red using them to pick out the window bars and tanks/vats respectively. I also used these colours to pick out a few of the pipes and wires on the exterior of the buildings. I was tempted to leave them there but I felt they needed a bit more colour on them. One of the buildings has some eagle motifs on the columns which I painted with Snakebite Leather to give them the look of faded gold or brass. Lastly, I painted the doors with Army Painter Speedpaint Raging Sea. I was worried that the bright turquoise would look out of place but the grey-brown undercoat did a good job of muting it down to match the rest of the colours.
For the floors and grates, I used a large flat brush to give them a coat of Scale75 Thrash Metal. Using the flat brush meant that I only painted the tops of the grate leaving the recesses in the brown-grey of the undercoat. If anything it was more like an overly enthusiastic drybrush.
To tie everything together and to bring out the texture of the buildings they needed a wash and a drybrush. But washing all these buildings and the subsequent terrain would take around a gallon of Nuln Oil or Army Painter Dark Tone. I therefore decided to make my own wash, that way I could make as much as I wanted. To make my wash I mixed some Liquitex Carbon Black acrylic ink with some Winsor & Newton Galeria Matt Medium. I used plenty of both as I wanted my wash to be thick and strong. I then diluted it to the consistency that I wanted and added a drop of Flow Improver, this helps to break the surface tension of the wash so that, well, it flows into the recesses better. Do be careful with the dilution and Flow Improver as it’s easier that you might think to accidentally make a wash that flows right off the model and onto the base. Once I had the mix right I grabbed my biggest brush and slathered the buildings in it. I then left them to dry for about a day. I needed them to be completely dry as the next step was to give them a drybrush with Two Thin Coats Carcharodon Grey and I didn’t want to inadvertently reactivate the wash. To speed things along I used a big ol’ makeup brush to drybrush the interior and exterior of the buildings.
To finish the buildings off, I painted the few broken screens they have dotted about with Army Painter Matt White before giving them a coat of Militarum Green.
Scatter Terrain
I started the scatter terrain by priming most of them with Colour Forge Standard Grey. There is one piece that has a lot of metal details that I primed in the same way as the barricades below, but otherwise is the same as the rest of the scatter terrain.
To get things started I painted in all the dirt with Two Thin Coats Scorched Earth. The ammo boxes I painted with Kantor Blue and Vallejo Scarlet Red to match the Munitorum Armoured Containers I painted years ago. Naturally any skulls and bones I painted with Army Painter Skeleton Bone. The casing for the lasgun I painted with Vulkan Green. The gas canisters meanwhile I painted with Blood Angels Red.
For the metallic details I overbrushed the grate with Scale75 Thrash Metal in the same way I did for the floors on the buildings. While I had it out I painted any magazines and clips with Scale75 Thrash Metal. Any bullet or shell casings I painted with Scale75 Dwarven Gold. Lastly for the metallics, I picked out a few of the silver details with Vallejo Hammer Copper.
From there I gave everything a wash with the same black wash I used for the buildings above, followed by drybrush of Two Thin Coats Carcharodon Grey, which tied them together with the buildings.
As a final detail to tie the boxes back to the containers I painted way back when, I sponge chipped the red boxes with Evil Sunz Scarlet and the blue boxes with Two Thin Coats Celestial Blue.
Universal Equipment
Barricades and Razor Wire
Not so long ago I was making some trees and figured that instead of priming them grey or black then painting the trees and ground brown I could instead prime them brown. So I popped down to my local hardware store and picked up a can of Rust-Oleum with a brown cap. Well what came out of the can was definitely red. Admittedly a reddish brown, but a red nonetheless. So I went back and grabbed something that was definitely one hundred percent brown, which is how I ended up with Rust-Oleum Espresso Brown Gloss Universal Spray. However, I realised that the first can of “brown” I bought was a pretty decent rust colour. Or at least the basis for one. A few quick tests on some old bulkheads I had lying around and I was sure I could make something of this.
With that in mind I primed all the barricades, razor wire and the one bit of scatter terrain from the last section with my Rust-Oleum red-brown. I then sprayed them from above with Vallejo Metal Colours Magnesium, in kind of a zenithal type fashion. This left them mostly silver with red-brown shadows, perfect for rusted metal.
From there it was pretty much the same at the scatter terrain, picking out the dirt with Two Thin Coats Scorched Earth and rocks with Dungeon Stone. Any skulls were painted with Army Painter Skeleton Bone. The sandbags on the heavy barricade I painted with Vallejo Khaki while the severed hand caught in the razor wire I painted with Two Thin Coats Griffon Claw. The canisters on the ladders I painted with Blood Angels Red, to keep them consistent with the other terrain bits.
To finish things off everything was given a wash of my Homebrew Black Wash followed by a drybrush of Necron Compound on the metallic details.
Tokens
All of the above, the buildings, scatter terrain and universal equipment, I painted altogether in one big batch. The tokens however had to wait a little as I needed to get some additional materials. The cardboard tokens are 20mm across and distances are measured from the edges of the token. So to make things easier, as well as make it slightly less likely that I’ll lose them, I decided to mount the plastic tokens on 20mm bases. Well, most of them. I didn’t mount the ladders or the deployed smoke grenades to bases. The mines looked a little goofy being mounted on such small bases but rules are rules.
Once I got them stuck down to the bases, everything was primed with Colour Forge Matt Black. Then everything except the smoke and mine tokens are given a basecoat of Vallejo Metal Colours Magnesium.
Moving onto the detailing I decided on a completely arbitrary colour scheme for the various types of grenades:
Smoke grenades are painted with Macragge Blue
Fragmentation grenades are painted with Militarum Green
The band on the Stun grenades are painted with Blood Angels Red
Krak grenades are left silver.
For the remaining details I painted the smoke with Two Thin Coats Dungeon Stone. The mines and the batteries for the comms units were painted with a couple coats of Vulkan Green. The buttons and wires on the comms units I painted with Vallejo Scarlet Red. The wires on the mines meanwhile I painted with Scale75 Thrash Metal. The bullets on the ammo piles I painted with Scale75 Dwarven Gold. With all the basecoats done, I whipped up a new batch of my Homebrew Black Wash and gave everything a wash. I then gave the smoke a drybrush of Dawnstone to further bring out the texture.
To finish things off, I dabbed on some Stirland Mud texture paint onto the exposed areas of the base as well as up and around the mines. I then gave the mud a coat of Army Painter Strong Tone and tidied up the rims of the bases with a matt black. And with that, I was done.