Showcase: Hasslefree's Debra, Female Sci-Fi Trooper

Back in the days of fourth edition Warhammer 40k I was a devoted Imperial Guard player. Most of my collection was Valhallans, which I'll have to post pictures of sometime just to show what you can paint with a sponge! But, like everyone else I toyed with different colour schemes and army lists and at one time thought about doing some Cadians.   At the time I had just discovered Hasslefree miniatures and their fantastic modern day range.  I think Debra was their only sci-fi mini at the time.  I bought her as I thought she'd make a good female Cadian and painted her up to test out the colour scheme.


In terms of painting the figure was quite straightforward as it's mostly two colours. I started with a black undercoat since I wanted a subdued, natural look. After base coating with Vallejo olive drab and khaki it was mainly a case of using Games Workshop washes to do the shading and dry brushing almost everything to put on some highlights.

Since it was a test piece I spent a bit more time on the base than usual. I chose one of the lipped ones as they give you more room to work and painted part of it to look like swamp water. A coat of gloss varnish gave it a wet look. The rest of it got the usual brown earth paint job and static grass finish.

I spent a bit of extra effort on the face and it came out quite well. One if the eyes is wrong if you look at the close up but it isn't noticeable from a distance. The red lips and helmet light add a bit of colour to model.

I never did do a proper Cadian army in the end but I liked the colour scheme a lot; olive drab and khaki is simple to do and gives sci-fi soldiers a more realistic look. In fact I liked it so much that I continued to paint up the occasional trooper here and there, so watch this space for the rest of the squad..