“They Have A New Type Of Robot.”

"Quarks. You will set up the drilling site in accordance with the instructions of..."

This 27mm-tall "pewter" model of a Quark is produced by “Warlord Games” and forms part of the Nottingham-based company’s five-miniature strong "The Dominators" boxed set. Designed as an “attempt at creating a merchandise property” similar to the Daleks, the rectangular robots were “portrayed by children” and made their debut on “Doctor Who” in the August 1968 BBC television story "The Dominators".

“Cuboid in shape with a sphere on top”, the servitor was primed using some "Vallejo" Black Surface Primer, treated to a double coat of “Citadel” Ironbreaker and washed with Nuln Oil. It was then dry-brushed with (more) Ironbreaker before having the internal areas around its folding arms, retractable claws and pole-like legs, darkened using a splash of additional Nuln Oil.

70mm x 70mm x 42mm MDF WIPs - The MDF box/building has been painted "Citadel" Ironbreaker

In order to try and replicate the more popular palette choice found from the reference material I used, I ‘picked out’ the tiny rectangular areas beneath the bipedal machine’s sensory hemisphere with a combination of “Vallejo” Heavy Bluegrey and “Citadel” Nuln Oil. I had actually been strongly tempted to simply leave these parts alone and keep them ‘metallic silver’, but in the end liked the ‘official’ “Warlord Games” paint-job so much that I later returned to these areas and ‘highlighted’ them with an extra dab of “Vallejo” Heavy Bluegrey and (even more) “Citadel” Nuln Oil.

The actual sensors used for “detecting changes in heat, light and motion” were initially ‘outlined’ with some thinned-down Black and then layered with “Vallejo” Bluegrey and a splash of “Citadel” Nuln Oil. I subsequently lightly dry-brushed these tiny nodules with some “Vallejo” Bluegrey and Dead White.

100mm x 100mm x 60mm MDF WIPs - The second MDF box/building has been built and embellished

The Quark’s directional crystal beam transmitters gave me a moment’s pause, as I’ve previously read that “the spore spikes were red along with the rim attaching them all.” However, no-one seemed to have ever pigmented the robots in such a fashion, and all the photographs of the costumes I could find seemingly showed them to be white in colour. As a result I simply repeated the aforementioned process I used to paint the miniature’s sensory hemisphere.

Alongside completing the first of my three Quark figures, I've also spent some additional time working on the MDF boxes I recently bought from Tepic2000 on "Ebay", and plan to ‘transform’ into a Cyber-City to use with the "Warlord Games" rule-set "Doctor Who: Exterminate". "N-FX Game Design Studio" have very kindly sent me even more of their 3D decals to try out, and as a result I have not only begun washing the smallest of my planned buildings with some “Citadel” Nuln Oil, but assembled a slightly larger 100mm x 100mm x 60mm box and applied a number vents, electronic interfaces and metallic panels to it…