Praetorian Delihan Army - Liaison Officer

Lt Marcus Rhyn, Delihan Field Force

Good morning, welcome again to Palladian Guard.  A very special post this morning, as I post the first work in a collaborative project between myself and the Hon. Lord Gordon; a fellow blogger from way across the seas in Rheinland-Pfalz, sunny Germany.  

While surfing the blogosphere a few weeks ago, I noticed a post offering to do a collaborative exchange project between two Guard armies.  The idea is simple, and brilliant - we each build and paint one model from each other's army to act as a liaison or exchange officer.  It's a way to link the background of two armies as well as painting a brand new model!  I snapped up the opportunity (so did Gordon) and we both got to work.

'Left a bit, left a bit more!'

I say we both got to work; Gordon did and soon had a finished Master of Ordnance, Lt Gen Aemilius Agrippa, to show for his efforts.  I got my rear in gear and used one of the GW tank commanders with some Pig Iron legs to make the officer.  Painting was simple, I got the colours off Gordon which happened to be beige trousers and gloves, gold trim and a white hat.

I used a black undercoat and am not very happy with the way it turned out on part of the model; underneath his pouch on the rear view there's a blotchy, shiny patch.  I tried to paint over it and failed, so I've decided to leave it.  It's very inconspicuous and hopefully the Matt Varnish will take the shine away.  I should say he's mounted on a penny so that I could paint him, he'll eventually be based on a 40mm mini-diorama base.  Otherwise painting was simple (may re-tackle the face though).

Unsure what happened with the lower
back; hopefully varnish will cover the worst.

So, the Palladian Guard are a pretty well known bunch of theorists and strategic commanders with lots of lovely tactics and books (that never work in practice ... ) so it makes sense for them to do exchanges of officers.  This fellow, named Lieutenant Marcus Rhyn, starts off life as a junior redshirt, just tagging along with Captain Nero's command squad.  As my next campaign gets underway and the platoon commanders start dying, he might just find himself catapulted into command of one of 7 (Pioneer) Company's elite platoons.  (When my commanders die in a game, they really do die and don't come back, which means I have to make about 10 officer models).

Make sure you check out Lord Gordon's blog - he's got the world's largest reserves of Cadian Command Squad bitz and there are some lovely conversions on there.  (Oh, and by the way: Wenn Sie denken, dass Bloggen schwierig ist, dann versuchen, in einer Fremdsprache zu schreiben ... sorry if it's wrong Gordon!)

He might be new to the Palladian
Guard, but he's got  his fair share
of bottle caps already.

On a broader note, as I approach 10,000 views on the blog (surprise/excitement!) it does make me reflect a little bit on what blogging is all about.  I started in December last year, mainly with a view to showing off some fairly average models.  What has happened is that I've got friends and acquaintances from all over the world now, Canada, US, Germany, South Africa ... even as far into the sticks as Devon ;) and I find I've got far more out blogging than I ever put in to it, from hints and tips on painting to whole project (and army) ideas.

So keep the posts coming everybody, because I can never get enough from all your great blogs and I hope there's one or two more spots of inspiration for you still to come on Palladian Guard in the future.

Thanks for reading.