Vashtal and Axon

It's just occurred to me that two of the Muppets, my intrepid pirate band I use in Space Station Zero, haven't been featured on the site. So here they are!

These chaps are plastic Reaper minis that, for once, I actually ordered from Reaper and not from Amazon to get free shipping. They're both good sculpts in the newer grey Bones material and thankfully didn't have a lot of flash to remove. The single issue was Axon's base being a bit warped, as you can see in the photos, but apart from that they were fine.

On Reaper's site, Axon is called a Blood Nebula Mercenary. I have no idea if he's an android or a biological humanoid in a suit, so I left that bit ambivalent.

Axon's scheme has a bit of a K-2SO look to him, which I'm not bothered with as that droid was pretty cool and wonderfully snarky. After priming him black I thought he looked awesome, so I just gave him a coat of Black and drybrushed some Black Grey over it to bring out the details.

I was going to go with orange as a secondary colour, but then decided on gold as it's a good combo with black. I picked out the areas with Filthy Yellow to act as a base, then went over them with Polished Gold. A dab of Seraphim Sepia toned it down a bit, and he was done! Nice and easy, and he looks great. 

For some reason, Reaper describes the plastic version of this mini as a Rach Soldier but the metal figure as a Malvernis Soldier. I just named him Vashtal.

Vashtal was painted at the same time as Axon, and he was also primed black. I went with Neutral Grey all over, washed with Nuln Oil to bring out the details and then drybrushed him by adding some Ghost Grey to the Neutral Grey.

I basically ripped off the red areas from the painted example on Reaper's site as I like the look. When it came to his skin I wanted something suitably alien that would provide a third colour, and blue was the way to go. A coat of Magic Blue provided the base shade, and then I layered on Sky and Deep Sky blues and a bit of White until I got the look I wanted.

His chunky rifle is Nuln Oil over Plate Metal, and I dabbed a bit of Orange onto the front just to break it up a bit. The final thing was his belt and pouches, done with Chocolate and Mahogany browns.

Both minis came out looking great and were instant choices when I picked my Space Station Zero team.