Painted: Nemesis Intruders and Crew

TLDR:
I painted the miniatures from my copy of Nemesis by Awaken Realms and here are the results. Scroll down for the gallery.

Intro

You know that bad habit of starting off painting projects but not finishing them? Well, I’m not immune and my copy of the highly entertaining Nemesis board game from Awaken Realms was afflicted with a severe case of painting procrastination! That’s not to say my copy hasn’t been played. It has and it’s a fantastically entertaining experience. It just languished as bare, grey plastic for quite some time.

Making a start

I speed painted the crew almost immediately, after receiving my Kickstarter copy. I made sure to colour code them as per their respective artwork, so a lot of white and grey was used as base coats, with various washes employed to make sure each whole model was tinged with green, purple, orange, red or blue. The wash used on the Scientist was good old Nuln Oil as I wanted a white-with-black-edges look for their outfit.

Next steps

After completing the crew, I went on to clean and prep all the Intruder models. I now wish I’d spent more time trimming mould lines, as there are some prominent ones remaining on my painted Breeders and a few other places. I then primed a handful of the Intruders and painted up one of the Creepers, but I wasn’t fond of my original colour scheme, so I lost interest and the rest fell by the wayside… for about a year!

Get it together

Eventually, I got my act together and painted up EVERYTHING. A few weeks ago, I did some batch-painting to get it finished and I painted the Larvae as the first batch. The design of the Larvae sculpts introduces a couple of issues that make them more difficult to paint than the larger models. Their intertwined design makes it difficult to reach certain areas with a paintbrush and because the quality of the moulds isn’t fantastic, it’s difficult to pick out the details compared to the larger models.
There was also a third issue that was all my own doing. I had previously primed the Larvae in white and when I returned to finish the job, I decided to go over the top of that with black primer. This meant I lost quite a bit of detail and in hindsight probably should have stripped them back first. I’ve not lost any sleep over it, as they’re the least impressive models in the game and can easily be substituted for ‘proper’ Facehuggers from my AvP collection. 😉

The Adult Intruders were done as another batch. Then the three Creepers and the two Breeders. The Queen was last.

The how

Most of this project involved drybrushing, but the first step was a base coat of Citadel Stegadon Green. After that I overbrushed and/or drybrushed progressively bluer (less green) paints and then lighter shades of blue. I experimented as I went, using different blues on different models, which when combined with certain washes and certain drybrushed colours, provide a consistent finish across all models. As I’m still learning a lot about painting, I find this type of experimentation teaches me about colour/paint combinations. I also like discovering multiple ways of achieving the same result.

I used washes after each of my first two layers, to ensure the recesses receded nicely, and I then performed quite an aggressive drybrush with some Thunderhawk Blue and finally some Etherium Blue on top of that to pick out the edges. Final steps involved some Blood for the Blood God, to suggest that these creatures have recently attacked humans and some Nurgle’s Rot, to make it look like the Larvae are recently hatched. The metal-looking bases are Citadel Leadbelcher with an Agrax Earthshade wash.

Two layers of Vallejo matt varnish sealed the paintwork but this also dulls the shiny/glistening effects of the blood and slime. Because I like to decide my placement of these before varnishing, I tend to reapply them again, after varnishing.

Gallery

Job done

I enjoyed how easy it was to drybrush the oversized Intruders. It made the job very easy to quickly get these to tabletop standard. I often spend more time on my models, but with these, I thought the game is going to see enough play (i.e. be exposed to some wear and tear), that I didn’t want to agonise over them. Speed painting was key – particularly with the crew. However, the difference between bare plastic vs models painted to this standard is huge on the table, so I’m chuffed. 🙂

There’s more?

Wave 1 of my Kickstarter pledge turned up more than a year ago, so it’s great to have these finally done. Nemesis is actually the first game I have ever painted in its entirety, so it’s a nice little milestone too. However, Kickstarter wave 2 turned up a few weeks ago, so I now have two more sets of aliens (the psychic Voidseeders and Dead Space-looking Carnomorphs) and a whole new crew to paint! It may be some time before they all get done, but it’ll be fun employing a similar painting style on those.

I can’t wait to play Nemesis again, with my newly-painted minis! 🙂

Attribution

The colourful backdrops in my photos are the Nemesis box cover art and the Nemesis Artbook. Both are from Awaken Realms and under their copyright.
The talented artists responsible are: Ewa Labak, Patryk Jędraszek, Piotr Foksowicz, Jakub Kaźmierczak, Piotr Kryński, Bożena Chądzyńska, Łukasz Jaskólski, Paweł Samborski, Piotr Gacek and Andrzej Półtoranos.

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