Mercenary Painting Log: Magister Knights

My mercenary painting efforts are, finally, nearing the end. I was recently able to put the finishing touches on the last major group of Pan-O models, a set of Magister Knights. Now just a few odds-and-ends models remain, which I'm hoping to be able to punch out in relatively short order. Join me after the break for a shot of the finished Magister Knights and their associated painting notes.

Pan-O Magister Knights

When I was planning out how to tackle the set of models I'd need to paint, I intentionally saved the Magister Knights for later in the cycle. I reasoned that they'd be easier than the other "sets" to paint (if not the easiest overall) due to how straightforward they are: blue tinged metallic armor, black ceramic plates, white robes, and a few details.

Thankfully, my gut impressions were right. The trickiest part of painting the Magister Knights was something I've already done a lot of already - copious amounts of white/cloth - so they ended up not being particularly harrowing to paint. Truth be told, the only reason they ended up taking me so long to paint was that April/May was filled with various roadblocks that either prevented me from painting entirely (flare up of an old back injury) or distracted me wholesale (several very good vijda games).

Almost everything is based on how I painted the Order Sergeants. Most notably, the cloth and weapons were painted using the same colors and application techniques. The main variant this time around was the blue tinged armor, and I stumbled upon a pretty easy way to pull off that effect: drybrush all the metal with P3 Pig Iron (Cold Steel would likely work just as well and give you a brighter underlying metal), then heavily wash it with GW Drakenhof Nightshade wash. Finally, lightly wash the higher areas with P3 Cygnar Blue Highlight.

The results were much more impressive than I expected - the Cygnar Blue Highlight wash was what ended up really pulling it all together - and its a very quick technique. I'd be interested in experimenting with what you could do with different colors. I have an upcoming project that I may be able to apply this technique on, though I still have a few more Infinity models (and probably at least Ruin) to get through before I can get to that.

Overall, these models were very easy, quick, and pretty fun to paint up. Part of that is having a bit of practice with painting other models in the line - as with any holistic set of models, once you've painted a few of them you get a sense of what to expect and how to best approach each model - and part of it is also that this set of models has a mercifully easy paint scheme. I'm not sure how well Magister Knights stack up in-game (I barely have a handle on my own Nomad models), but I have to give them high marks initially just for being very paint friendly.

I'm very close to finishing up my mercenary painting job. I have a couple of standalone models remaining (i.e. models I couldn't really work into any of the other sets) which theoretically shouldn't take me too much time. I'm hoping that I'll be able to get them finished soon; Ruin is right around the corner, and I'm very excited to get him painted up and table-ready.