Showcase: Red Scorpions HQ by RD Minis

Hi, I’m Ben from RD Minis and the lovely people at Tale of Painters have very kindly given me a spot on their blog to showcase some of my work.

First a little about me: I’ve been in or around the hobby since the early Rogue Trader days (the late 80’s) and have owned many a Games Workshop army/squad/team from the majority of the games systems they have produced, my current force is a rather large Red Scorpions Space Marine one based around Forgeworlds upgrades and artwork which is now nearing completion.

I currently run a commission painting service but also enjoy the hobby myself (particularly the painting and modelling aspect) and I’m looking forward to starting a new Adeptus Mechanicus/30k Mechanicum force using the great new models from GW combined with the equally good ones from Forgeworld after completing the aforementioned Red Scorpions.

Anyway enough waffle, bring on the models. I thought I’d begin with the HQ section of my current force and work my way through the rest along with painting guides and showcase pieces later on.

It’s the sort of project that’s been an ambition of mine for many years, though it’s only in the last few that I’ve been able to achieve it.

I chose this chapter mainly due to the amount of accessories, characters and units available from Forgeworld and because I wanted something a bit less obvious than the main chapters.

In painting this force I’ve used almost exclusively Games Workshop/Forgeworld products as an experiment to see what can be achieved with them and have drawn elements from across the entire Space Marine range both past and present (including a few limited edition, out of production and rare models which can be spotted in the various units) as well as their painting and modelling range.

I tried to stay away from sharp edge highlights for both speed of painting purposes and also because I wanted a duller more gritty look to the force.

With any force I do I take great pains to ensure that no two models are the same and that, hopefully, they’re all posed as naturally as possible which involves a lot of dry fitting with blu tac before gluing.

They were painted to what I would consider a high table top standard rather than a competition one (otherwise I’d be painting them for many years to come) using a variety of techniques including layered drybrushing, ink washes and so on, for the grey it’s basically a base coat of Mechanicus standard grey with an ink wash of Nuln oil followed by progressive layers of drybrushing with lighter colours. The same applies for the yellow areas but they start with a base of Averland Sunset and a wash of Seraphim Sepia. I’ll go into much more detail in a later post.

Once complete the entire force will be packed into KR Multicases and sold on to fund my next project which, given the recent GW releases, will almost certainly be an Ad Mech/30k Mechanicum force.

The HQ shown here has a Commander from each company along with a full high command and several command squads including one mounted on bikes along and dedicated transports.

Any questions feel free to ask in the comments.

My next post will take a look at the Adeptus Mechanicus of the Red Scorpions.