Painting Genestealers (GW Space Crusade)

Back in 1990, Games Workshop got together with Milton Bradley and released ‘Space Crusade’: a Warhammer 40K inspired board game for 2-4 players. While it’s possible that I bought it myself, I think it’s more likely that it was a birthday or christmas gift. I have played it quite a bit, and enjoyed it, and often thought about painting the space marines. It has mostly been collecting dust most of the last decade until I started raiding the box for various figures to use in my Gamma World game.

Both the Dreadnought and androids (Necrons) have been painted and appeared on my blog in the past. Recently Dave brought a You-tube video to his readers attention that involved painting genestealers in five different styles. This promptly got my genestealers located and put on my desk to paint. I was disappointed to find I only had three! (I haven’t lost any pieces; the game only comes with three.) I had hoped for five or six so I could follow two of the paint schemes.

 

I started with a basic ultramarine blue as a base coat, and then mixed a purple into that and went back over most of the model. A mix of flesh & purple on the head, hands, feet, and the ribbed bits on back, legs, arms, etc. Still following the video, a lightly watered down light tone (Army Painter ink), some (slightly lighter) blue highlighting, and gun-metal on the claws instead of a dark grey. Fushia for the tongue and head detail, white teeth and eyes, followed by a spot of red. I did highlight most of the claws with a bit of mid-grey (which is visible, though not obvious from the photo), and a lighter pink on the top of the fingers – which appears after drying not to have been light enough to actually stand out. Some of the blue highlighting isn’t particularly noticable either, so next time I try this I need to go even lighter, or simply do a second round with more white mixed in. I’m very happy with the final look in any case.

I’ve got the chaos marines from the set on my desk now too. A few of the people (thanks again Dave!) I follow have been using “the Tray” as a way of storing works-in-progress and a visible plan of what they want to paint in the “near” future. The figures I plan to paint, normally just sit on my desk. I’m thinking a tray of some sort will both encourage me to complete some figures, and stop me having to move the figures on my desk around when I need to take photographs, have books on the desk as I look up rules, or write adventures, etc, or my wife wants to take over part of the desk. A tray can be picked up entire and moved out of the way more easily than individual figures.

So here’s the tray – or what will be the tray once I actually find or make one: