The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

- by Iain Wilson

I received a grab bag of all sorts of awesome resin parts from Victoria Miniatures this week, so decided it was time to take a break from terrain building and have a bit of a tinker with some infantry. I had thought a while back that Epirian Contractors were just crying out for shotguns, and so with some handy resin additions, I created a new unit of scouty Contractors, which I'm calling 'Pathfinders'.




There's very little converting required here - I just assembled the Contractors without arms. Although I couldn't resist a little bit of cutting things up, so I gave the squad leader a cap on his belt, by cutting off the top of a spare Contractor head.



Victoria's resin cloaks are designed to slot over the shoulders, and fit snugly around the Contractors' collars. These were glued in place with superglue. The shotgun arms needed just a little trimming at the shoulders to fit neatly, as the Victoria Miniatures torsos are slightly narrower than those of the Contractors.





Painting was a quick and easy 'paint in base colours and then give it a wash' job. It's not the prettiest, but it gets a unit on the table quickly. The green areas were painted with Army Painter Army Green, and Vallejo Yellow Green, and washed with Army Painter Military Shader. The metal parts were base coated with Vallejo Heavy Charcoal, given a light drybrush of P3 Pig Iron and washed with Dark Tone. For the shirt, I used Army Painter Barbarian Flesh, Vallejo Heavy Brown for the leather parts, and Coat D'Arms Bone for the shirt. These were washed with Army Painter Strong Tone - This is a fairly heavy contrast with the bone, so creates a bit of a dirty, muddy look. If you are looking for a softer shading effect, you could use Mid Brown or Soft Tone instead of the Strong Tone.



To finish things up, I highlighted the green areas with Coat D'Arms Putrid Green, gave the skin, shirt and leather a highlight of bone, and painted the eyeshades with Heavy Brown, P3 Cygnus Yellow and some white highlights. The bases were basecoated with AK Red Brown Leather and washed with Army Painter Mid Brown.





To build your own Pathfinder unit, you can pick up the plastic Contractor kit, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge range, from the Maelstrom's Edge webstore.

As always, feel free to share your models and terrain, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.