"Unit Three Move In."

These five 28mm Federated Security models are by “Crooked Dice Game Design Studio” and are ‘dead-ringers’ for the dastardly black-clad henchmen of the Terran Federation from the BBC science fiction television series “Blake’s Seven”. Three of the miniatures, which are slightly thinner than ‘heroic 28mm’ scale and are somewhat sedentary, have been sculpted by “Crooked Dice” regular Ian Mountain. Whilst the more dynamically posed and slightly thicker-set Federation goons are by Martin Buck. All of the models came with separate heads.

Each figure was initially given a double undercoat of “Citadel” Abaddon Black before they were all rather roughly dry-brushed with “Vallejo” Heavy Charcoal. This is a new paint to me, although I have owned it for quite a while as it came as part of a larger set of dropper bottles, so I wasn’t entirely sure what effect it would actually have on the models. Needless to say I’ll be using it in the future to highlight all of my predominantly black coloured figures as it really brought out the detail of each model’s sculpting. However I did feel the need to tone down its contrast to the undercoat somewhat so I applied the first of three eventual washes of the “Citadel” Shade Nuln Oil over each miniature.

Once dry I painted each helmet’s green trim with a combination of “Vallejo” Heavy Khaki and “Citadel” Thrakka Green, and all of the figures’ visors with “Vallejo” Heavy Red. Finally their belt buckles and Federation rifles were painted with “Citadel” Boltgun Metal and their key chains with “Mithril Silver”. All of these areas, except the helmet trim, were then given two coats of Nuln Oil to tie them all together.

I am currently working on a second squad of these 'terrifying troopers', having bought both the Federated Security Starter Set from "Crooked Dice Game Design Studio", as well as a few additional carbine-carrying guards. Indeed, having almost finished their Guard Commander with Balaclava I have managed to dry-brush four of the henchmen's jump suits with charcoal and 'pick out' the trim on their gas mask helmets.

Originally I had swapped two of the models' heads with those from the company's Balaclava head sprue in order to create a couple of non-commissioned officers. But I found the heads to be slightly too large for my liking and as a result they seemed to actually make the miniatures marginally taller than those wearing the helmets; something which irked me to the point where I swapped the heads back.

Instead my Terran Federation forces will now be lead by Space Commander Travis, using the wonderfully understated Stefan Travers miniature by "Crooked Dice Game Design Studio".