Making USAriadna Great Again

Having finished my first USAriadna box set I did what any self respecting player would do and immediately bought a second one - all for the princely sum of £35 (thanks Simple Miniature Games!)

I just couldn't resist given that it's currently the only source of many USAriadna units although this does mean that my painting queue has become rather full once again...

The new recruits

Buying another box of the same models inevitably left me with many duplicates all armed near-exclusively with just rifles. So it was time to get out a craft knife and start chopping up guns. Fortunately I have a fair selection of the old weapon sprues that came with Spec Ops models and tournament packs that I could re-purpose as needed.

My first painted miniatures from this second batch are alternate weapons for two of the grunts.

Sniper rifle conversion on the left.

The sniper rifle is converted using a Nomad barrel and an Aleph sight that I cut off the original weapons. I wasn't working towards a particular template or plan, I just wanted to make sure that the gun would be recognisable at a glance

Sniper Rifles seem like a really cheap, effective weapon to try and control the board with so I definitely won't mind owning two if/when I get round to picking up the Grunt SWC box.

Light shotgun conversion on the left.

The Light Shotgun is from Maxmini and was attached to the stock of her rifle which was otherwise clipped off. The casting quality of their weapons isn't great, certainly not by Infinity standards, but some of them were still usable with minimal fixing. I do realise that she's still holding a rifle magazine, but shotguns with magazines do exist already so I took some solace in that.

In some ways I wish I'd been a bit more daring with arm swaps and the like but most of the models fit together so perfectly that it seems like a lot of effort to rearrange them more than necessary.

This may mean that I'll end up with 'duplicate' models in my army, albeit sporting different guns, and I'm hoping this won't cause too much confusion. I may go back and re-colour some helmets or apply some transfers if it turns out to be an issue.

Dismounted Maverick

It also gave me a second dismounted Maverick. I like to keep a single copy of each limited edition model pristine and unassembled, we all have our foibles, so having a second copy meant I felt happy to paint one up.

I'm not too happy with the way she came out as it's one of my scratchiest recent paint-jobs and I'm disappointed that I jacked up the face quite badly. You'd have thought that I'd have worked out how to do this by now? She's may be a candidate for stripping and repainting at some point in the future.

I'm not sure what she'll end up being used as for the moment. Probably just standing in for a Foxtrot or Grunt as necessary as I can't imagine I'll actually be dismounting my Mavericks any time soon.

K-9 Antipode

You may already have seen these last two elsewhere, but I'm particularly pleased with how the K9 team came out.

I wanted the antipode in very wolf-y colours and was aiming for a wild and natural scheme bereft of the blues used elsewhere. I like that the arm holding onto the rock almost seems to meld into it, making the creature look like he's able to blend into his surroundings.

The model was painted almost exclusively with a big no.2 brush as befitted it's size and I wasn't too worried about the painting being clean.

The base had a lip of greenstuff moulded around the outside and was then filled with Realistic Water in two layers. A water-filled base was something I'd wanted to try on a model for a while but needed a base at least this big to make it work. Ideally I'd have liked to make the lip clear, but couldn't think if a good way of doing that in practice.

Overall, it came out better than my first attempt with the Maverick as with two thinner layers applied I didn't get any cracking of the surface. I'm doubly pleased because I think the blue of the water nicely ties into the colour scheme of the rest of the army as well.

Devil Dog

The Devil Dog was painted with a standard uniform for my army and had a more 'domestic' brown fur colour to differentiate him from his wild counterpart. I wanted the model to appear more civilized and tame (at least relatively speaking) which I reckon came across fairly well.

I actually really enjoyed painting him as his armour and clothing was just a scaled up version of what the other units are wearing. This allowed me to notice and appreciate a lot of small details that I wasn't aware of on the grunts such as the detailing on the elbow pads.



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