MarikIntrobox

Hey guys. Painting has continued in Japan.

With the most recent incarnation of the intro box, and with some spare time during the various vacation times that I had to spend in "The Office", I decided to keep my hands busy and make three more 8-mech sets using the intro box for demo games. These recent three sets were painted with all new paints (Primarily Tamiya acrylics), and I also experimented with the use of Pigments in order to give weathering effects.

This Free Worlds League / Marik force was actually breaking the mold, and instead, I tried breaking one of the cardinal rules for painting tabletop minis: I used enamel paints. "What is this heresy", you might say. However, I recently found out that one of my most cherished game series, "Virtual On", actually has their own line of paints for use with their plastic model kits　( www.gaianotes.com/products/vir… ). I couldn't resist the opportunity to paint my mechs up in a Virtual ON palette. I opted to continue using the purple/white/black paint scheme of the Free Worlds Guards, as my existing lance can be used as a 3025 force should the need arise... I'm going to have to swap out the Shadowhawk and Goliath before I can use it, though.

Almost all the colors were done using the Virtual ON paints, but some colors simply aren't in the selection, such as black, in which case I had to resort to using other brands, like Tamiya Enamels. Colors that got used heavily were Cold White, Freshmint Green, Myzr Purple, Frame Metallic, Shadow Grey, and Marz Light Grey. They were lined using Tamiya's enamel liner, rust effects were painted on in order to match with my existing Marik lance, and then a thick layer of dark brown "Mud" pigments were added to the legs and lower halves of the mechs in order to show all the mud kicked up from the jungle/rainforest floor. In order to try to give it an "Alien" feel, I tried adding blue paint to the flocking, but unfortunately, the end result felt cartoony and unrealistic rather than alien. Other issues, like enamels being more opaque than I expected, made the blending between the highlights and base color not turn out as nice, but once the weathering was applied, it became less noticeable. 

Mechs are (From left to right): Spider, Quickdraw, Hunchback, Awesome, Hermes II, Assassin, Trebuchet, Dervish. Luckily, the intro box is filled with Marik Options, so even when I had to make hard decisions for the other forces, it was often an issue of "Which is slightly less Free Worlds League exclusive". I noticed that this force feels considerably light in comparison to the other forces, but it gains the advantage of long range weapons and surprising mobility. Again, when in doubt, just play with Piloting and Gunnery to balance things as much as possible.