EXT: Defence Systems Lab

 Rampart-y time!

There was a delivery from the Plastic Crack Man a couple of weeks back - my copy of the City Ruins from the Archon Rampart kickstarter last year had arrived. Although I ought to paint all the worst, most boring or sloggy bits first, and I did at least sort out a quick and easy modular staircase and some paired security barriers, but I couldn't resist getting stuck into some of the best bits. 

Namely the transparent sprues, all unlocks from the campaign. Eerie aquamarine in colour, it's harder than standard grey plastic, and has a slight tendency to crack as you clip it if you aren't careful. So a little hard on the hands and nerves to get off the sprue, perhaps. 

Once it's off, the nerve games are just beginning. Like painting the transparent cockpit of a Valkyrie, you have to be very precise to keep the colour where you want it, i.e. not on the transparent bits. With some of the kits, that's very obvious and even easy - the force field above is in two bits, the concrete base could easily be painted separately. 

With these forcefields, though, the opposite is true. That's a three-piece kit, the end caps and the central shield are separate bits. So no spray paint here, just careful outlining. And careful inking. And drybrushing. And no coffee, I get the shakes. 

I did do a little bit of definition work with ink and drybrushing, just so it's clear that the lightning effect stuff isn't the same as whatever it's next to. Not totally sure I nailed it, really, but it does show you how good and crisp the sculpts are. Tons of detail on these. 

If I was a clever chap, I'd do fancy things with LEDs and batteries for this stuff. Not that it doesn't look great without it, but with a light underneath, you can really see a massive difference in them, and it really does look great. Definitely recommended, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the kit in due course, although it's all very different to this batch!