I got my miniatures from the Mongoose Kickstarter this week and have been prepping them for painting. Hopefully I'll have them finished over the weekend. Here are the initial steps and I'll post the painted version as I finish them.



I was at first underwhelmed by these sculpts when I first looked them over but I've warmed up to them as I've started painting them. There are still a couple of issues, primarily with their enormous size and stiffness of pose, but they should be fun to paint and look good on the tabletop. It is very cool to have a whole squad of Citi-Def fighters and I'm hoping to start some Block Wars asap.
The minis had bright metal on them so it's obvious that someone was going over them to lessen flash and mould lines and overall the castings are fine. I did a little clean-up of my own and glued them to the bases. I added some bits of textured styrene and then built the bases up with some stuff I call "rubble rock". I make this by taking old Hirst Arts castings that mis-cast and grinding them in an old coffee grinder. This creates a texture that looks a lot more natural than railroad ballast or sand. I use screens and strainers to separate it into three grades, coarse, fine, and dust. I use thick PVA glue and add the rubble rock coarse first then fine and finally dust. I do this before priming since I don't want to mess with glue and stuff around a newly painted mini.


Now I'm waiting for the primer to dry and hopefully start adding some color tomorrow evening.
