The Sheik and his Uninvited Guests

Terry, that nice bloke who has helped keep my car on the road by buying painted figures from me at regular intervals has asked me for one last project. He picked up some rather nice US Special Forces from Khurasan Miniatures and asked me to paint them. I choked a bit and then said "yes -  I can't paint anywhere near as good as the stuff on the site but I don't mind giving it a try".

A little later a packet duly arrived - 8 Seal Types and a pack including a terrorist leader figure, hostage and guards. I was not at first enamoured with any of them (except the hostage figure) as they looked a bit flat and two dimensional. Here was my first mistake - I underestimated the US Special Forces!

I undercoated them, and then my new Dropzone Commander Resistance army arrived through the post. Seal Team Six was put aside while there was a frenzy of DZC. When I returned, disaster - one of the Seals was missing! Clearly one of them had seen Sole Survivor and decided to do a Mark Wahlberg impression. Tearing my hair out I scoured the room, but to no avail. Finally I decided there was no option, so at 5:18pm GMT I placed an order for a replacement with Khurasan back in the Good Ol US of A. At 8:18pm Wahlberg reappeared - he had been hiding behind some Battlefront WW2\Fire & Fury stat cards, but on hearing reinforcements were on the way, he reappeared.

Now the team was reunited I got down to painting the Seals, and was happy to say my initial reaction was miss-placed. Up close these are rather nice figures, with lots of detail and nice posing - with the possible exception of the sniper who I would have preferred either kneeling or prone. I put "Zero Dark 30" on the DVD player and did some research. At the end I was rather pleased with the results - I thought the subtle use of different colours on the khaki background hinted at the digital camo teh Seals were wearing in the film, so I sprayed them down with my standard Army Painter matt varnish and called it a night.

Next day I was tearing my hair out again. All that beautiful (to me anyway) and subtle brush work seemed to have merged overnight into a sort of dull brown fuzz! I was not pleased, but there was not a lot I could do about it. Looking at them now, theyre ok, but not as nice as before the varnish - Damn!

 

The Terrorist and his guards were however a pleasure to paint, and again once painted they looked rather good.

So there you go - all getting packed up and ready to ship to Terry. I strongly recommend on Khurasan btw, particularly some of their Modern and Sci Fi Stuff, and as I found out, shipping from the US to the UK was not that expensive.