Hey everyone! Guild ball has been gathering quite an audience in my area lately, and after a couple of demo games, I too have caught the fever. After some deliberation, a minor amount of research, and a look at the various model ranges, I have decided to play a team of Engineers. Now, all of my research has told me that the Engineers have a tougher learning curve than some of the other guilds, but after a demo game with them, I think that their play style could be a lot of fun for me, and possibly frustrating for my opponent, based on the amount of knockdown, push, and other shenanigans that even just the starter set offers. Also, after looking through the various model ranges, I was most attracted to their asthetic, particularly the constructs. I had always like the idea of doing up a Necron army and painting them all as escaped puppets, but now I'm getting my fill with the engineers. So with all these factors I went down and got myself a starter box.
The first thing I noticed with these models was the incredible level of fine detail all over them. Looking them over, I found myself wondering exactly where to start and what kind of colour scheme to go with. Once I had decided on colours I found myself having hard time deciding on where to start putting down colours. There are lots of small bits sitting on top of other bits that made it impossible to use my usual style of doing all of one colour at once, so I ended up having to jump around quite a bit, which was sort of annoying, and led to me missing things here and there that I would then have to go back over again. This isn't really an issue with their design or the models themselves, but more with my own approach to model painting. Another thing that I found a little annoying was that these models use slotted bases I ended up being back able to work around it pretty easily though by using greenstuff over the slots and the metal bits, and with Ballista, I cut the metal part right off and just stuck him on directly. Anyways, the models are really very nice and look great when painted up, so without further ado, here's a showcase of my Engineers so far.
We'll start with the team captain Ballista. I decided that I wanted a scheme that was a little different than the showcase one so I went with blue for the pants, deciding on a blue-jeans kind of look. I originally had the shirt in green, but after looking at it I thought it looked stupid, so after deciding on a leather brown for the apron, I went with creme for the shirts for a brighter colour that goes well with blue and brown and really pops on the model. I decided on red for an accent colour, which I think looks cool on the fletching of the arrows. I was originally going to do his hair in a black/silver sort of greying scheme, but with all the metal parts already on the model I thought it might look weird, so I went with sandy blonde instead, and I'm glad I did. Lastly for the goggles I got to use the citadel green gemstone color, which I love the look of, to give them a night-vision goggles look.
Next is Salvo. Salvo was a bit more of a challenge because there a lot of really small details on him. His little hand crossbows were sort of annoying and he has these leg braces that combined with his pose were sort of tough to get at. The leg brace thing was weird to me, because he's sort of a fast dodgy character, so it seems strange that he's got leg braces like he's got polio or something. I don't know. Anyways, for him I mostly did the same thing as ballista, but I did the hair in a sort of blue-black look, which really only shows up in certain lights.
Velocity is the next one, but actually the first one I painted. This model was super easy. Thinned down brown with a black wash for the wood, gun metal with a brown was for the metal and some minor blue blending with a touch of white for the face glow thing. When I end up getting Hoist it's nice to know that it'll be easy to deal with. Nothing better than a model that takes minimal effort to complete but still looks good.
And finally, what would Guild Ball be without the ball? I decided to do this one sort of in the Engineers colours rather than the kinda typical off-white look. There's not really much to say about it. It's just a few layers of red and some black on a base.
Lastly is a team shot. The Engineers ready to play.
