Aliens - The Beginning

12.11.2023

At some point in the past couple of years I picked up the pieces of the Gale Force 9 Aliens game because (1) it had cool minis and (2) I knew if I waited everything would be out of stock/production/license moved on. The first wave promptly sold out upon release, and then a 2nd printing with updated rules came along. There seemed to be a small buying window for everything, except the Alien Warriors. Maybe they just made too many of the 12-Warrior sets, but I kept seeing these pop up on sale almost everywhere for $15-%17. So I picked up a set I mean a couple fine I got 4 boxes. And being me, those boxes sat on a shelf for a long, long time.

Then one day I had an urge to paint something relatively simple besides zombies. That will come back to bite me in the ass. Simple, not zombies.

My first thought when I bought these kits that required assembly was to use magnets to adhere the tails to the bodies. The tails look rather fragile, so magnets would help there plus make things interchangeable! The problem here is that my tiniest magnets are still of larger circumference than the tails. So, glue it is.

Assembly is pretty straightforward. The body (torso, legs) is left & right sides that just fit together. Head and spine slide in. Arms and tail variations have a universal fit between all bodies. The front of the feet are part of the base, and then the back of the feet on the legs glue in. I thought the tail was going to be fragile, but the small 2 points of contact between the body and base - too thin and angled for pinning - won out there.

I used plastic cement for the body halves, head, and arms. I went with (thick) super glue for the tail and attaching to the base, hoping for a sturdier bond. I actually tried plastic cement once, and the body and tail eventually drooped regardless of how much support and drying time I gave it.

I had some aspirations for more than just a black/grey paint job. I while back I had watched a video using Turbo Dork paint that seemed spot on. I decided to test it out on one of these Alien Warriors.... and it looked like crap. The swirls of blue didn't... swirl right? Since the video used and Alien queen instead of these itsy bitsy warriors, the smaller scale and paint seemed to not be working for me. That was ass bite number 1.

Everyone knows Aliens are slimy and shiny. That equated to a glossy sealant coat when I thought about it. I started out testing 4 Aliens with various things - including the Turbo Dork paint scheme. Black primer with a dark grey drybrush seemed to be working out ok, and I had a couple of different variations on how hard/much drybrush I applied. On 1 with a little too much drybrush, I added what ended up being a little too much Nuln Oil wash, and everything was "streaky". Ok, don't do that. Out of the 4 I had 1 that I like well enough to move forward with, and then I gloss coated everything. At that point, from about 2 feet away, I had 4 shiny black(ish) blobs with no details visible. The gloss and sheen just covered everything up. Bite number 2.

With lessons learned, I basically went to my tried and true routes, even going so far as to re-prime the 4 that were mostly finished - and I always wondered how much detail in a mini is loss as you add more and more layers of paint and sealant. Turns out, it's very noticeable.

In the end, I went with black printer and dark grey drybrush that I tried to keep a light hand on. There were more than a couple of times the brush wasn't dry enough when I started, but that turned out ok. Citadel Iron Warriors went through multiple rounds of bringing out little bits - teeth and what looked to me like bands showing through the skin. Nuln Oil wash after that and the bodies were done. The grate for the bases got a coat of Iron Warriors, then a Nuln Oil wash to tone it down. Sepia wash was randomly added to show some rust, which worked really well. And then I added some Typhus Corrosion to a few bases randomly, most of which ended up with a little Nuln Oil added on top later. I'm not really sure why, but I went back and painted the rim of all the bases silver and then added (yet again) some nuln oil. It makes a subtle difference between the top and side of the base, but I like it even if I may be the only one to ever look close enough to notice.

And with that, there are 28 Alien minis ready to drool and spill acidic blood to and fro.

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