From BurkhardS - Warzone Resurrection Imperial Blood Berets and Brotherhood Valkyries (50 Points)

First of all apologies for not posting these last Monday, when they have been finished for over a week now. I had to get these ten minis done for a tournament in Hamburg on the 31st (Saturday) and essentially I finished the bases on Friday morning. After driving well over 700 clicks that day and playing three matches, I needed Sunday to relax so they had to skip last weeks deadline.

Anyway... what do we have here? Up first are five Imperial Blood Berets. There are ten more of them (they are on my painting table right now), but with the deadline, I had to concentrate on the five I needed for the tournament. Blood Berets are part of Imperials large Special Forces contingent and are named for the color of their berets. And this is where I made the first change. Usually their berets should be blood red, but I wanted them rather maroon to look more like British Paras (although they have no parachute skill). Also they are usually depicted fighting in the Venusian Jungle and therefore in green fatigues, green vests and armour painted in a camo of medium and dark green with light green dividers. Honestly, this was far too much green for my taste and I wanted more contrast. Plus my troops are not fighting on Venus (at least all the time), but are part of an expeditionary force that has to be at home on a number of planets and more importantly Astroids in the Outer Astroid Belt of the Solar System. 

So I went with black fatigues and olive vests. I always loved this color combo since I first watched Space: Above and Beyond, so I decided to use it here. With the armour I went for a brown / green camo with tan dividers. I felt this provided more contrast and was more at home in a umber of settings!

The other troops I needed for the tournament were some Brotherhood Valkyries. Now Imperial will only see its full release at Salute this year, so right now, the troops available are only a nucleus and they lack troops that can parachute anywhere. Luckily Imperial is allowed to take a few Brotherhood troops as support and amongst the choices are Valkyries, Brotherhoods parachute troops. Now one thing I noticed with many of the Brotherhood minis is, that they have more or less of a medieval look. So I wanted to give them a look like they are wearing medieval armour. This was only re-enforced, when I looked at the detail on the minis and found that the nay place (including joints) that does not seem to be covered by armour seems to be their buttocks. I guess the sculptor was male! ;-) They are described as very pure in their believes and I wanted to depict this with very shiny armour. I still had some Vallejo Airbrush Chrome paint that I had bought for a project I scrapped before I even started it so I gave that a try for the armour (including the buttocks). And I liked the final results a lot and did not want to ruin it with strong contrasts, so the joints and seams were only shaded a little bit. The effect did not last when I put on the matt varnish in the end, but now they have taken on a look of burned magnesium that I actually like a lot, too, so I have refrained from giving the armour a coat of gloss varnish. Otherwise they got dark weapons with chrome tips washed in blue, to show that they are electrified. The capes were done in red / white (red / gold for the squad leader) to keep with the medieval theme and blue translucent visors on their helmets and that was it.

So this is it for this week. Last week was taken up by painting the next theme round entry and a visit to my better halves family, but there will be more next week.

Oh and before anyone asks... these and the Imperial troops shown in recent weeks did well in Hamburg, earning me the 4th place overall.