Into The Combat Zone Pt.1 – Musk’s Marauders!

With the gaming shed now more or less organised, it’s time to jump back on a project we started earlier in the year when, in an uncharacteristic move, we actually bought a brand new starter set – EM4’s Combat Zone, a near-future post-apocalypse-pre-another-apocalypse sci fi skirmish game. The box contains two factions, the Corporate Troopers and the Gang members who, according to the blurb, are sworn enemies…

There’s a fair bit of plastic in the box, so it was the work of a solid evening to get everything built & primed, particularly the robot models (the bases don’t fit so you have to snip the pegs off the feet to fix them down) – but is that something to complain about? Hardly…

The quick play sheet gives you a set up for a first game – 5 gang members and 4 corporate troopers, and that seemed like a pretty achievable goal. First on the block – Corporate trooper squad from the Tesla Megacorp, “Musk’s Marauders”!

After building the models with superglue, I painted PVA across the bases and dragged them through the Garage Floor Dust (TM):

before spraying them with grey primer and then trying the zenithal highlight with a can of white primer:

Then I gave them a dunk with my take on the Midwinter Minis signature wash – dab of black paint, Smokey Ink, PVA, matt medium and a little bit of water. This sealed the models, made sure there were no bits of exposed plastic or primer, and gave a nice 3D surface to paint on with grey craft paint as a base for the uniforms:

(another terrain project in the back there…)

Speaking of uniforms, I went with an urban camo scheme – mid grey craft paint flecked with off white (Wilko Granite Dust) and craft black, black for the boots and leather details, Vallejo Filthy Brown washed with brown ink for the leather patches.

For the visors I used Wilko Duck Egg Blue over a white base coat and washed it with a thin coat of blue craft paint, and then it was on to basing – I painted the bases black before drybrushing up with the same palette we used for the urban board, Duck Egg Blue followed by craft red, followed by three shades of grey up to Granite dust before dusting lightly with a mix of flock and dried earth crumbled to a dust texture, and touching up the base edges in black.

I then hit the whole thing with an isopropyl alcohol spray, a spray of 1 part PVA to 10 parts water from an old Windolene spray battle and once that little lot was dry it was off to the shed for varnishing – thankfully the hobby gods were feeling well disposed and I wasn’t hit with frosting.. so, pics!

Squad leader rocking an assault rifle!

The lads on patrol…

And the rest of the box, built and ready for priming…

And that would be a #zenithalprimingfail…

Next up are the Gangers and then we’ve got ourselves a nice tidy little force for the first game of the campaign in the Combat Zone box set… be interesting to see how these lads scale against GW plastics too..

As always, stay thrifty out there and we’ll see you soon!