Balancing Terra...

So... its been a while...

But I have done some painting!

This started with me considering my Star Trek inspired Imperial Guardsmen and wondering whether there were any any other opponents for them that could also draw inspiration from classic Trek.

Two options came to mind. First Orks and Klingons, which do actually have a lot in common. However the original series Klingon uniforms are a rather nondescript and a bit... well... uniform (not very Orky). Plus I'm pretty happy with my current Ork scheme so I moved on.

Next was also quite obvious Eldar and Vulcans (Star Trek's very own psychic space elves...). Except apart from Spock (in his Starfleet uniform) the only other Vulcans featured in the original run are mostly civilian and also not really opponents for my Redshirts.

Fortunately Romulans exist and they actually have a bit more interest in their uniforms. So I tried to replicate these uniforms on some Eldar models. This also gave me the opportunity to paint the Eldar Trader from the Adventurers range who I've had for a while but hadn't been able to come up with a scheme for. In keeping with my preference for more alien Eldar I gave them blue skin (so they've become more a mix of Romulans and Andorians...).

So we start with Count Torma-Loch. The coloured half is on the opposite side to that of the inspiration but worked better particularly with the armoured model below.

 

I gave Torma-Loch a bit of female company in the form of the Talisman Sprite.

  

She suffers from one of the jankiest face castings of the era but still. I tried to replace her flowers with gemstones and gave her a bun to match better with the trader. I painted the wings as a slightly fleshy-bone colour as a sort of wraithbone decoration rather than actual wings.

Finally I painted them a bodyguard, hopefully with more to come.

 With this one I tried to bring in the blue of the lower ranked Romulans and the gold helmet. Tried out a new "prismatic" technique on the sword blade, definitely haven't quite mastered it although the sword probably wasn't ideal with the flat back of the blade.

And to finish the obligatory group shot.

Till next time...

Cap'n Smyrk

*For those not deeply versed in Star Trek and wondering about the post title, the Romulans first appeared in an episode entitled "Balance of Terror"*