February is off to bit of a flier, for the first entry of the month I have four members of a block Citi-Def Squad. The Citizens Defence are generally volunteers from the block and supposed to be mobilised during emergencies. Only very occasionally fulfilling this role, I can only remember them appearing as competent during the Apocalypse War, they are instead more prone to turf wars with local gangs, rivalries with the Citi-Def units of other blocks and various random acts of incompetence and general nuisance making.
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| Gillian Anderson Blocks Citi-Def |
The colour scheme is perhaps a bit of a Christmas hangover but I also had an unused can of Citadel Mephiston red to hand and didn't want to use a more traditional military fatigue, black helmets and padding adds a nice contrast and I think stops them from appearing to gaudy. For the first four Squad members I've kept a very limited palette and stuck rigidly to using the citadel paints as they come straight of the pot, base, shade and two highlights, this should make the scheme easily repeatable when I add more squad members and allowed me to paint them relatively quickly. With a good solid scheme in place I think future squad additions can have a bit more variance without breaking the coherency of the unit.
It turns out that the spray can Mephiston red is a different shade than the paint from the pot, it's a bit more muted with a less glossy finish. I'm not sure whether there is a genuine difference in the paint formula to make it more suited for spraying or if it's just a result of being sprayed. As an experiment, one of the miniatures was base coated from the pot to see whether the difference was still noticeable at the end and I'm not sure that is.
What I'm still finding is that I'm not thinning the paint enough, the black in particular does not have the most even of finishes. I could probably add less highlighting too, picking out all of the folds in the uniform is perhaps a bit much.
The bases came from
Tiny Worlds, the casting quality was good and they needed very little cleaning up.
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| Captain Mainwaring |
First up is the leader, in 2000AD the Citi-Def often remind me of Dads army, I think this Captain Mainwaring has by hook or by crook taken command of the unit to improve his social standing in the block. He's a little bit podgy, a little bit pompous and probably keeps notes on his neighbours so that he can quietly inform on them to the judges. Despite tales of his time in the resistance he most likely spent the entirety of it holed up in his closet with a stash of canned goods and bottled water.
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| Sergeant Wilson |
Every Captain Mainwaring needs a Sergeant Wilson to act as a foil. No doubt he's the real brains of the unit, well regarded by the men and the only member of the unit to have ever had a job, mopping the floor of the local Hottie House before a local Juve gang fire bombed it. Here he is striking his most dashing target practise pose.
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| Corporal Jones |
Of the four figures this one strikes a pose that looks like he knows what he's doing. Corporal Jones has seen action and has the stubble to prove it.
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| Private Frazer |
Of the four this one had so many mishaps while being painted, the arm falling off a couple of times, splashes of paint appearing and needing patching up, she is clearly doomed.
As a unit I think they are ready to take on their arch rivals, the Citi-Def from David Duchovny block, I'm sure they'll stick to non-lethal ammo.
