Going Commando

Marauder Commando's make up the backbone of any Marauder Strike Team and the cheapest leader you can buy is the Commando Sergeant. He prefers to be up close and personal with a good fight stat and a short range pistol.

You can tailor your Strike Team around the special ability that the leader brings and the Sergeant allows you to spend a special power dice to re-roll any test for models with the Commando type. So if you include him you should bring plenty of Commando troops with you.

The basic ranged choice for the Marauders is the Commando who can be equipped with extra melee weapons at a cost but the basic Orc is a very solid choice.

For the color scheme I've gone with  green and purple for the uniforms with the basic troops getting a majority green and the specialists (mostly) getting a majority purple outfit. I've done these again with the contrast paints which went on in the same way as the Goblins and then the Vallejo pigment to complete the model. Some of the paints seem to work much better than others out of the bottle so the brown, blue and green are excellent but I think the purple will need to be thinned out a little next time. Unfortunately you cannot really see the end effect until the paint has dried.

Commando's also come in a Specialist variety with a choice of either Flamer or HMG weapons. My personal preference is the Flamer for it's ability to attack everything in a square and set it on fire.

The Flamer does have a short range however which the HMG does not suffer from which would allow the HMG Specialist to hang back and lay down fire over a reasonable are of a board.

Another model that can reach out is the Hulk, he's a big fella with a bigger gun which ignores even the heaviest of armor. As the weapon has the Heavy rule he cannot move and fire so again finding a good piece of high ground and sniping away would be his best bet.

Next up will be the other mech-suited Orcs which will almost complete the painting on the Marauders. The great thing about a skirmish army is how quick they can come together.

Something else which came together quickly (see what I did there?) are the Soul Reaver infantry for the Undead. I hadn't planned on getting them based up but then got a little over-excited and thought I would see how they looked.

As always some things work and some don't. I had bought some white bushes and grass clumps but when I got them onto the base with the black static grass the effect was too jarring so I pulled the bushes off and painted over the grass clumps.

If I was to be critical then the models could start a little darker but I really wanted them to stand out against the base so started fairly light. I do have another regiment to paint so I may do those starting on a black undercoat rather than grey.

So that's one unit down for the new army with a few lessons learnt for the next ones.