Cultural Learnings of Painting for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Nomads

Alright, two votes for both versions – I like that :)

One more repaint, my Custodier. I updated her with a modern Combi+Pitcher loadout a friend printed for me. Her colors also had to be muted down. As much as I liked that white cape, I decided to give my Observance a traditional black habit in the end. Additionally, choosing from my general color palette for my Nomads, I picked olive as a single secondary color, leaving out any blue and orange, to distinguish them from other troop types.

Which one's your personal favorite?

 

I didn't mind. And since I want my armies to look coherent, I'd rather repaint a few models than get new ones - especially since I never play more than one Custodier anyway.

Sorry, didn't mean to escalate :D But I'm happy you like both of them. And I'd be happy to face off against you ;)

It's one of my favorite models!

Another of my favorite models from the line is the recently-gone-oop BSG Healer. Now that Bakunin has a great profile for her (Agatha, not the actual Healer profile which still sucks), it was all the more fun to paint her up.
I'm very happy I got this model before it was replaced by the imo much worse Mother Theresa version. I got her without the sword on her back, so I had to improvise. Luckily her Riot Grrl colleagues were happy to lend her a piece of their riot gear...



To round out the Observance posts, here's a group pic of what I have for the Ladies of the Knife so far:

 

Next up for Bakunin, the Riot Grrls. I converted these using different helmets I had left over. Was not a fan of those faces. From left to right: Lynx, Zondnautica, Cheerkiller, Zondnautica again. The two Zondnautica helmets I still had from my Zondnautica conversion. From there I also had a Spitfire arm left, which enabled me to build a Spitfire Grrl out of the BSG one.

Finally, I had already painted these kind of Tinbots, so I wanted to change it up a little. So I gave this little guy a leftover Cheerkiller bat so he could riot with the big girls.

Spoiler: Riot Grrls

Spoiler: Tinbot

 

Something that was on my wishlist for a long time was the new Nomad Support Pack. I'm happy I was able to add them during my painting marathon in March as well.

A few notes:

• Since I already painted the Zondbots in orange last year for my Corregidor, I decided to give them Tunguska (olive) and Bakunin (cream white) colors this time, respectively.
• The Clockmaker is from Bakunin, so I thought why not make her Mystique?
• The Daktari shares so many features with the new Alguacile (which I use as Moderators) that he's the perfect Moderator Paramedic proxy.

Spoiler: Daktari (aka Moderator Paramedic)

Spoiler: Clockmaker

Spoiler: Zondbots

 

Little extra post: With the Daktari done, I can field four Moderators for my Bakunin. In my case, that's the three Crimson Stone Alguaciles which I kept and one Paramedic. Just add a Riot Grrl ML, right?

I used the chance to take new pictures of my Alguaciles as well, so here's the group pic:

 

Thanks! I agree with you, contrast is the most important thing to make a mini pop.

As for the photography aspect, I've slowly worked my way up. Nowadays, I use this lightbox as well as this camera. As a setup, I have the minis sitting on a box with a piece of white paper underneath. This way, I get a clean cut to the white background instead of having to deal with the issue of the sloping inlay. It looks like this:



My post-processing process consists of adjusting a bit of brightness and saturation, but not much. Sometimes, like with the Moderators, I do a bit of rearranging so I can fit them into a square for Instagram. I use GIMP for that. Here's a before and after:



And that's it. Hope that helps!

 

The last addition to my Bakunin I painted in March: The Taskmaster.

I had this model twice in the last three years. Once in 2020, when I bought it on my first unhinged Nomad buying spree, then, after I had sold it in a moment of sobriety, my wife gifted it to me again last Christmas. Now he's finally part of my Bakunin and has already proven his worth in his first game where he locked down half of the board with his HRL.

Since I only have one Taskmaster and not two, I decided to magnetize his arms so I can also play the Red Fury/HMG. Alright, enough talking.

Spoiler: More images

 

The name of this thread has gone through multiple iterations already, but I decided to change it one more time. This has two reasons:

1. I decided not to continue my Kosmoflot. They will turn into something else, which you will hear about soon.
2. I have long given up on the idea of playing Vanilla Nomads. I love sectorials, I don't like Vanilla, unless it feels like a sectorial, hence O-12.

So, since this thread will be exclusively about my Nomads from now on, the old name ("I say Tunguska, you say Vanilla – she says... Kosmoflot?") didn't make any sense anymore.

Luckily, I have some more Nomads to share.

After painting all that Bakunin in March, I went back to my Tunguska backlog. You already saw the Cheerkillers and my Szalamandra Pilot. After them, there were still a few pieces left I wanted to add for my inner completionist's sake.

The first: the BSG Spektr.



The olive for my Nomads has gotten consistently brighter and more saturated over the years, which you can see when you compare the MSR version with this one (I went back and updated the Combi a bit while I was painting this, so the difference is smaller):



Maybe it's even better to compare the first version (bottom) of the Combi Spektr with the update I did on her (top):



Anyway, I can play three Spektrs now. Why would I? For the fun of it, of course. I already built a list I'm gonna try out as soon as possible. Needless to say, it's called S.P.E.C.T.R.E.

 

I hope so.

The next thing that was left on my Tunguska pile was one fifth and final Zond. Why five Zonds? Because Tunguska can field two Stemplers, and I only had one.

I messed up the airbrush job a little bit, so I had to get creative. The result is what you get when you're Pano and you sell your old tech to the glorious Nomad nation:





I'm very happy if I never have to paint a PanO remote again though. Five did the job.

 

Another little Tunguska project finished: Having enough Grenzers to form a pure core link. Why would anyone do that? Because it looks cool :D

The last Grenzer I needed for that was the ML one. Tried out something new with the eyes by giving them more of an almond shape than the sculpt suggests.



I also decided to go back on a few of my earlier conversions and get them right. That meant a true Red Fury for this guy...


... and an actual Nomad MSR for this lady:


Here's the whole 5-man link:

 

Probably not, since you're paying 150+ points and most of your SWC on 5 1W models with no mimetism or anything to protect them. But it can potentially put out a lot of damage