Trench Crusade - Communicant anti-tank hunters

 

Following the Trench Crusade vibe I'm in at the moment, I've finally allowed myself to paint the Communicant anti-tank hunter from the very first Kickstarter.

The sculpt is from James Sheriff who has really put his immense talent into the rendition of the original art and the sculpt is an absolute gem of delicacy while still feeling tough and hard.

I was lucky enough to get 2 alternate sculpts and although I've still not really gone deep into the rules and band building, I knew I wanted to paint them all anyway.

Starting with the poster boy :

I'm not an expert on the lore yet (I'm really eager to get the book and immerse myself into it) but I get that communicants are altered humans with bits of the meta-christ (which I assume is some twisted clone from the blood of Jesus or something). That meant I wanted their skin to look pale and a little unnatural.

To achieve that I painted the base with stone grey from AP which is a slightly greenish grey, washed with a mix of blue and brown wash and a lot of medium to soften the effect. While fresh, some crimson wash was added to the parts I wanted a little red and then a couple of very soft highlights were added to bring back some definition.
To avoid having text conflicting with the skin pattern but to keep the idea of holy scriptures tattooed on the body, I added patches of text here and there to break the uniformity.

The armour was painted with a coat of black legion contrast over a rough drybrushed steel coat and then defninition was added back with black lining and silver edges with some rust effects.

I still have a few mercenaries left to do and I hope to get the other communicant and the anchorite shrine to paint , I also have ideas for the next band which will be the heretic legion and obviously a board to play it on !