The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

- by Iain Wilson

If you've been following this blog with even passing attention, you might have noticed that I've been on a bit of a Militus spree. In between the assorted conversions and random paint schemes that I've been trying out, I shared a suit in a dark gold scheme way back when the kit was released, and then revisited that colour scheme with the recent Dominator conversion article. With two suits now matching, it seemed like a good idea to keep going, so right now I'm putting together a 120-point force, which will feature in an upcoming article. In the meantime, I thought I would share the method I came up with for painting the gold, using Army Painter Warpaints and Quickshade.





I'm using a Militus suit here, but obviously this technique can be applied to whatever you want to put it on. I start out by spraying the suit with Army Painter Plate Armour. That's specifically for the Militus, as it lets me run Dark Tone wash over the mechanical underlayer and then move on to the armour. You could also use a grey basecoat for a similar effect, or use white or beige if you would like a slightly brighter end result.



Over the Plate Metal, I paint a coat of Wasteland Soil. This goes on horribly over the plate metal, and looks a bit streaky and patchy, but that's absolutely fine for this effect. If it bothers you, you can give it a second coat to smooth it out, but there's really no need - the purple is just there to give the gold some depth, and you won't see it in the end.

You could use a medium-tone brown instead, but I find that tends to give a more muddy-looking result.



Next up, I paint on two coats of Bright Gold over the purple. This results in a rather strange look - from some angles, the gold will look smooth, and from other angles the purple will show through. As with the previous step - don't worry, magic happens in a minute!



Over the gold, I lightly drybrush with Shining Silver to pick up the raised edges.



And finally, I apply a liberal coat of Mid Brown Quickshade wash. This does a couple of things - it deepens up the colour of the gold, and it adds a brown tint over the purple, turning it into shadow. It's a fairly common technique when wet blending or glazing to add purple into the colour you're shading as you work into the deeper creases. This is sort of the same thing, but in reverse.



After leaving the wash to dry, the model is ready to move on to detailing. If you think it needs it, you can accentuate the highlights with some more gold or silver on raised edges, but I like it as is.

The finished model:





Want to give it a go? You can pick up the Militus battlesuit, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range in the webstore here.

As always, feel free to pop along and share your creations, 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.