Kill Team: Adeptus Mechanicus

Despite this being the first blog post here in about 6 months, there's been a flurry of painting activity in that span. Trying to keep up with Games Workshop's pace of quality releases is a daunting task! Between trying to finish the Death Guard horde and going all-in on Adeptus Titanicus, the GW release that has me most excited recently is Kill Team - if for no other reason than it has gotten me to paint a variety of different troops and factions. If you're like me, you have quite a few infantry that have been sitting on the shelf, waiting their turn to go under the brush. Well, Kill Team means their turn has finally come!

First up was the Adeptus Mechanicus. Adding a box of Sicarians and a Tech Priest to the Skitarii that came in the Kill Team boxed set gave me enough for a "full" team to paint at once. I prefer to paint full teams at once, or large batches at one time, to keep consistency of appearance.

The Ad Mech's unique weaponry gave the opportunity to add some custom paint jobs you won't find anywhere else in the 40K universe. The taser goads and trans-sonic blades offered some fun choices that appear to be crackling with energy.

Late in the process of finishing these guys, I realized that their burnt-orange robes looked a little dull. One of the most iconic looks for the Adeptus Mechanicus is the block pattern that line the edges of their cloaks. Given the rounded flow and angles of the miniatures, there was no practical way this could be done with transfers, so the patterns need to be hand painted. I decided rather than mask off the areas on all the figures for precise angles (which would take hours to do), I'd free hand the designs. The result turned out surprisingly easy to do, and well worth the time savings! Even if you are not confident with your free hand skills, I'd highly recommend adding a pattern to your Ad Mech cloaks - even a straight line will make them look so much more visually interesting.

Everyone has their favorite colors to represent power weapons and plasma light sources; mine is blue. However a splash of green contrasts so well against the burnt orange that it really makes the eyes and backpacks stick out. I will be experimenting more with OSL lighting techniques in the future, but for now it's enough to make lights sources 'pop' via the contrasting sides of your color wheel choices. 

Hey - Tech Priests don't belong in Kill team! Yes, but you've been staring at me from my shelf forever. 

I also chose to experiment with different basing; the Martian landscapes of the Ad Mech forge worlds are well represented from Citadel's line of textured paints, such as Agrellan Earth and Martian Ironearth. Though you could leave them as-is and unpainted, I chose to add some highlights as well and some burnt sienna/rust weathering pigments. I'm mostly satisfied with the results, but will do some further experiments with these textured paints and other crackle mediums. Just remember when applying, the bigger the blobs, the bigger the cracks.