Five Mercs Ready for the Underhive

The brute stopped me in my tracks the moment I pulled him off the print bed. That lunging pose, weight forward, blades out, the kind of energy that makes you immediately start mentally placing him in a Necromunda alley or behind a Kill Team objective marker. Getting the supports off without losing any of that dynamic lean took a solid twenty minutes of careful snipping and scraping, which is exactly the kind of problem you want to have with a mini. It means the sculptor understood how silhouette and motion work together, and honestly it set the tone for the whole crew.

These five came off the MSLA printer in grey resin over a couple of sessions, and I spent a fair amount of time just studying them before touching them with anything sharp. Support removal on characterful sculpts like this is its own skill. The tech operative's backpack rig has a lot going on, straps, canisters, cables looping back around the torso, and every one of those needs the sprue nubs cleaned without flattening the surface detail underneath. I work with a combination of flush cutters, a sharp #11 blade, and a small round file, and even then you're making judgement calls constantly. On this batch I got lucky. The resin held clean and the detail survived intact across all five, pouches, armour plating, the lot.

What I'm genuinely pleased about is the silhouette variety across the group. You've got the cloaked gunslinger, narrow and watchful, next to the brute who takes up twice the space. The weary swordsman has that slightly slumped posture that reads immediately as someone who's been through it. The tech operative stands upright and deliberate, all business. And then there's the stocky armoured one, dwarf-proportioned but heavily plated, holding what looks like a reliquary or lantern weapon, and that piece is going to be a joy to paint whenever I get there. OSL from a warm amber source light, that's the plan. Maybe some verdigris on the older metalwork. I've had Dirty Down Rust sitting on the shelf waiting for exactly this kind of model.

Paint-wise, when I do get these under a brush, the plan is a zenithal prime in black and white rattlecan, then Contrast paints to knock in the shadows fast before going back in with highlights. The gunslinger's cloak is probably getting a desaturated blue-grey, something like a thinned Vallejo Model Air Dark Sea Grey over a Skeleton Horde base to give it that worn, grimy look without reading as straight black. The brute I want to keep brutally simple in palette, dirty leather, scratched metal, nothing distracting from that pose. For the basing I'm thinking cracked urban resin scatter, maybe a bit of Stirland Mud at the edges to tie them together as a crew. Whether they end up matching or just loosely coordinated depends on how much patience I have left by figure four.

I'll be real, these are sitting in the unpainted queue right now. Life, other commissions, the usual. But the prints are clean, the details are sharp, and the crew reads exactly as intended: scrappy, dangerous, and thoroughly at home in a grimdark underhive or post-apocalyptic warzone. They're suited for Necromunda, Kill Team, Turnip28, skirmish RPG encounters, anything that benefits from a warband with genuine character rather than uniformity. If you want to paint them yourself and beat me to it, the five-figure pack is up at artifexfabricatum.co.uk. I won't be offended. I might even ask to see photos.