I’m mkaing good progress on my 6mm figures as I have a few batches worth of figures that i have just finished decalling and varnishing, including these Sci-fi vehicles.

Last year I blogged about getting back into Sci-fi gaming after rediscovering the Hellfire and Iron Cow 2103 rules. At the beginning of this year I ordered a bunch of models from Brigade Model in the UK. I was pleasantly surprised how much their sculpting has improved since my earlier PacFed models I own, and the details on these new models were fantastic. The models themselves were a mix across their 6mm Scifi ranges and Hammers Slammers and I roughly brought enough to create a couple of different company sized forces. I went through the Hellfire scenarios and picked up enough to cover most of the requirements for the Dodgsons World campaign and enough to create 3 vehicle platoons, with 3 platoons to a company style of organisation. This is the first faction finished.

I was inspired to paint them along the line of some of the classic Sci-fi spacecraft and vehicle pictures by Stewart Cowley, who was the artist and author of the Spacecraft series of books on the fictional Terran Trade Authority. I liked the bright colours with contrasting markers, symbols and numbers and I tried to emulate it on these. But there wasn’t really the right details to pick out so I decided to paint the panels in different shades of light colours and apply lots of decals. I think they ended up looking more like Chinese vehicles from the computer game “Command and Conquer Generals” than I planned, but I am very pleased with the finished models.

Painting Details

They were airbrushed with a Tamiya Buff colour and then I painted each panel with Vallejo Bone. A few panels were given different shades such as Iraqi sand and light grey colour. Then they were given a drybrush with light Vallejo Ivory. Next the doors and hatches were painted red with a subtle highlight. They onto a gloss varnish followed by a Agrax Earthshade GW wash and this is where the quality of the sculpts helped. The wash flowed very nicely into the panel lines and only minimal touchup was needed. The details were painted and then the decal added. Finally I gave the models a light brown oil wash (mixed from ochre, grey, white and burnt umber) and a matt varnish.

I find I gravitate towards lighter colors with 6mm and now both my 6mm sci-fi armies have a yellowish colour (excluding my yellow Epic Imperial guard army) scheme so the next sci-fi army I paint will be a different colour!

The decals were from my decals pile and I used a mix of 1/300th aircraft and AFV decals along with 40K Eldar decals.