SG15-J03 - Japanese Power Armour

The conclusion of my Ground Zero Games Japanese Corporate Troops painting project - power armour.

As you can see, we have a squad leader with a couple of very chunky swords.  They have small cables running into them so presumably they are power swords/vibroswords or something similar.  He also has 2 banner-styles fins containing sensors and communications gear.  Next in line are a pair of identical troopers armed with tribarrel support weapons, making good use of the power armour's extra load-carrying capacity.

The bottom row comprises a trooper with some sort of square-barrelled heavy weapon.  Maybe it's some sort of heavy flechette gun or launcher.  Finally there are a couple of troopers armed with paired shoulder-mounted missile pods which are obviously the same as the single hexagonal-fronted one carried by the heavy weapon trooper in the normal infantry set.

 I've followed a pretty similar colour scheme to the regular troopers, using Vallejo beastly brown and charred brown with GW red gore on the shoulder pads, backpack grilles and lower leg details.

The commander has the little sensor windows on his back fins detailed in green for a bit of contrast.

 Finally a comparison photo so that you can see how a normal trooper measures up against one in power armour.

I've seen several other reviews where people have commented on the "teddy-bear" shape of the helmet!  They are quite cute.

SG15-J04 Kneeling & Prone Japanese

I've just realised that I've done these out of order and that the Power Armour should have been next but never mind, I'll leave them for next time!

These kneeling and prone troopers have the same armour and assault rifles as the standing troops.  There's not much more to say really, whether you would buy this pack probably depends upon your views on prone figures.  If you didn't want to use them as regular riflemen, you could probably convert them into snipers or support gunners without too much bother by adding long gun barrels.  A bit of brass or plastic tube would give you an anti-tank missile.  This would be different from the hexagonal shaped launcher with the standing figures, but I've always thought that looks more like an anti-personnel launcher firing smaller warheads.

SG15-J02 Japanese Corporate Troops (bare headed)

 More Japanese Corporate Troops, this time without their helmets.  Other than that they're identical to those in pack SG15-J01.

I think that the bare heads add a huge amount of character to these models.  I particularly like the squad leader shouting orders

I've used exactly the same base colour scheme as the previous set.  After discussions with Jon Tuffley I've given them white headbands with a red circle in the middle to add to the Japanese feel.  I don't know if that would have any particular meaning in Japan but it looks OK anyway!

I'm especially impressed by the fact that these are 8 unique models, Jon has given each a different head rather than just doing 1 variation on each of the 5 basic figure types.

As you'd expect, these figures mix in well with the helmeted troopers.

 Tomorrow I hope to post the kneeling/prone Japanese troops - stay tuned!

SG15-J01 Japanese Corporate Troops

 I've aimed for a Samurai feel with these Japanese Corporate troopers from Ground Zero Games.

Vallejo beastly brown was used for the armour, Vallejo charred brown for the trousers and upper sleeves.  I overpainted some parts of the armour with GW red gore.  Painting it over the brown has kept it fairly restrained, unlike the bright red you'd get from painting it over a white undercoat.

The whole figure received a wash of Vallejo sepia ink.  The darker brown areas received a further wash of Vallejo black ink to ensure a good contrast with the lighter brown armour.

Weapons are Vallejo matt black with a Humbrol 32 dark grey drybrush.  Flesh is Vallejo dwarf flesh with a sepia wash, highlighted with dwarf flesh and then with elf flesh.  I'm not sure that it's an entirely convincing Japanese skin tone, but there's so little flesh on show that it hardly matters!

The officer's sword has GW red gore and Vallego bonewhite stripes.

A nice set of figures.  5 are armed with compact assault rifles, one a tribarrel support weapon and one a 6-round mini-missile launcher.  The officer has an assult rifel and a sword (perhaps a katana?).

Japanese Corporate Trooper and Islamic Federation

 A couple of my more recent projects...

Islamic Federation trooper from the "kneeling and prone" set.  A dusty yellow/brown palette for a desert feel.

Japanese Corporate trooper.  I've aimed for a Samurai sort of colouring to match the style of the armour, a mix of medium brown, red-brown and dark brown.  My research wasn't very detailed though, so apologies to real Samurai reading this!!