The Retained House of Kroy

A small package arrived this morning from 15mm.co.uk so I'm looking forward to painting up my new, shiny, Ghoulani and Automaton forces. But until then, I thought I'd say a little something about the Retained Knights and Muster Troops in my Gallery.

 The miniatures are from Alternative Armies and can be bought from the ion age website. Mine are the 16 that came with the Firefight 2.0 set, I haven't got round to buying any more yet but when I do I'll definitely be getting some Legion Pioneers for a budding Shia Khan force.

The initial idea behind the House of Kroy is really an amalgamation of a few things. A while back I realised that parts of the Ion Age fluff were very loosely based on the Wars of the Roses. It seemed to make sense to me that Canlaster and Yordan were Lancaster and York. It shouldn't take anyone with a few braincells to realise all I did then was reverse the letters in York to get Kroy. I felt a little cheeky calling my force that, as if it was a previously rejected name for Yordan. Apart from noticing the connection between Yordan and York and so coming up with Kroy, there really is no other similarities between Kroy and their historical equivalent. This is because I was fascinated by the story of the Ion Age universe as I read through the fluff available in the Firefight 2.0 rule book. One story in particular drew me in, the opening of the Matter Gate on Aldan IV, and the spewing forth of the Khanate Legions. The battle that ensued around the Matter Gate is something I just had to game (and haven't yet but am hoping to in the not too distant future). The House of Kroy then, just had to be one of the forces that arrived and attempted to stem the unending tide of the Shia Khan.

When it came to painting my little band of Retained and Muster I didn't have much money to hand, so I went with what paints I already had. I was really confined to red, white, silver, a tiny bit of green and some washes. The fastest way to paint power armour, is to first paint the whole model black, then drybrush it heavily with silver. You can then paint whatever colours over that by mixing them with some black wash and layering up the colours decreasing the amount of wash in each layer. Muster uniforms were just painted red and then washed. Working this way with the limited colours I had, I painted the 16 models all together in one evening. The beauty of the above method is that anything you miss does not look unpainted but battle damaged.

Here are some shots of some of the models:

I'm looking to expand on the story of the House of Kroy in the future, and put them through their paces, facing off against the Khanate, so watch this space!

Thanks for stopping by!
WGP