WIP: Clanrats

Still cracking away at the clan rats. Doing a couple ranks this time. My intent is use every brown and most of the grays I have on these rats. I am just kind of grabbing handfuls and laying down the fur tone I want to work with at the moment. I didn't get as far as I would like with these guys by today, but some of that is because I used some of my painting time for Dust Warfare.

In trying to lay down the base for these rats I have found that, because I am using snow flock, if I go too light on the dry brushing of the sand, it tends to not add enough contrast. Everything kind of blurs together is a mass of dull light-color and am white. That being said, I am not sure I am bringing the color up high enough, and struggling to find the happy medium. Until I get something I like better, I am basing the sand with VGC Charred Brown, followed by a dry-brush of VGC Earth, and finally another dry-brush of VGC Cobra Leather. This color progression is illustrated in the photo below, going from right to left.

While I was waiting for the initial coat of Charred Brown to dry before dry-brushing I went ahead and started blocking in the base color for this grip of rats fur. I also started laying down the flesh-colored parts on a few of the rats before I ran out of time.

The running out of time part is tied into me taking my usual painting time to get my second game of Dust Warfare in. I wasn't in a huge hurry so we played a big 300 point game, wherein I am sure rules were butchered, misread, or ignored out right. I really like the Dust rules set, and the models remind me of playing with the plastic army men I got in a bag when I was younger. I am extremely enamored of the SSU, as I have always been a huge fan of heliocopters, probably based on the countless hours of Airwolf my older brother subjected me to.

Which leads me to my only point of contention with Dust. I need more stuff from them, specifically the rule book to play the faction I want to play. It is almost like the reverse of GW, where they have given models for the game but not rules. I can't decide which is more consternating. I fear that for Dust to really get legs with my local play group there needs to be more options than "either or", and really the only games I have seen do well with the folks I play with had at least four factions.

In the meantime, David Morris has been nice enough to let me use his models, and has been an excellent teacher. My SSU guys sit ideally by until they have rules and I can start zooming over the table with my choppers, Airwolf theme blaring in my head. Oh, and after grabbing this bad boy I will at least know the basics for when it is that glorious time:

Thanks for reading,
T