In our Army Showcase series, Goonhammer contributors take a look at the armies we’ve been collecting for years, and the new ones we’ve just finished – what drew us to them, why we keep building and painting, and how they play on the table. This week Raf is talking about his fearsome force from the Principality of New Antioch.
The Painter: Raf “captainraffi” Cordero
The Game:Â Trench Crusade
Ducats: 700ish. I think I painted an extra guy and we didn’t do WYSIWYG anyway.
Collecting Since: February 2025
Instagram:Â rafpaints
The Purpose
Up until basically 3 weeks ago, I wasn’t a big 3D printing guy. My buddies with printers have pulled off impressive work and I’ve been shocked to see the quality, particularly of resin, begin to rival commercial miniatures. By and large, however, I ignored it in favor of supporting the company producing them directly. Trench Crusade is essentially built on 3D printing however, and with that the only way to get models ahead of Adepticon I embraced it.
By embracing it, I mean that Dr. Gabe from the Basement of Death offered to print everyone who wanted to participate in a secret Adepticon campaign their entire warband on the condition that it be painted in time for the event. I approached this with the intent to learn. I had no idea whether or not Trench Crusade would be good and no idea how to build a list, so rather than jump into a sub-faction I built a vanilla list for the normalist dudes of New Antioch.
I’ve been fascinated by texture and contrast in miniature painting recently. I’ve spent so long trying to achieve invisible, seamless, blends that I have almost lost my ability to paint with deliberate contrast and a lot of my minis end up looking a little washed out. I recently painted an owl mage with the express purpose and goal of pushing contrast and decided to try something similar with texture here.
The Models
This was the model that really inspired the project. The goal was to make his cloak look like heavy canvas or tweed, as I imagine these guys not as a Mediterranean force deployed from the Vatican but as reinforcements from the UK or whatever hellhole it is in this version of history.
The paints are Camo Green, Yellow Green, and various other ProAcryl paints in that family along with Khaki for lightning. There’s no real trick here, other than lots and lots of horizontal lines. I used an Artis Opus Series M brush for this; our Goonhammer experts recommended them for freehand and I was treating this as in that family. This legitimately took a few hours, mostly because I often did not step up the next color enough and had to go back and forth darkening and lightening. My key take away was err on the side of too harsh as it’s much easier to glaze down and mellow it out than it is to create more contrast.
With the cloak done I attacked the blue uniforms the same way, using crosshatching and again lightning my blue with khaki. I was much more aggressive with the contrast here and while it might be a touch too strong in some places, overall it looked great at table distance and accomplished the feel I wanted.
Leather is one of my favorite things to paint, so having a lot of surface area here was nice. I use a nice reddish brown (Mahogany and/or Warm Brown from ProAcryl) and lighten it with Golden Brown. Blending is mess, and splochy, with lots of scratches painted in. I also do multiple wash steps with Agrax, but will also splatter or sploch every wash color except Green and Red to give the leather uneven discoloration.
My Mechanized Heavy Infantry carries a grenade launcher, but the print came with a machine gun so I used some greenstuff to take a weak stab at making it look more like a launcher. It’s fine I guess? The goal here was weathering, which I don’t often do. Built the model up with Blue and Light Blue, then did sponge weathering with Brown and Silver. Finally, I used ProAcryl Petroleum Brown (lovely color) with their Newsh medium. This is an acrylic medium that is supposed to work like an Oil Wash without having to use Oil Washes. It kicks ass, and I love this model.
Our ever valorous Lieutenant was essentially more of the same. There wasn’t anything new to this guy I haven’t already covered. You can see where I let the contrast get a little away from me on his shirt but again at tabletop it looks fine. For basing all these models I used Vallejo Black Mud and European Mud. The black went down first using a flat sculpting tool and I scraped the yellowish European mud over top and pressed the tool into the mixture over and over to build texture and mix the paints. When it was done I used Vallejo water effects to make it look wet in places. The models standing on trench boards were made with coffee sticks from Starbucks. They’re a little big, but totally functional.
Ye olde Sniper Priest carried forward all the texture stuff I’d learned before. I went with the blue for his shawl instead of the green so that he would stand out distinctly on the table. While all the models are wearing blue uniforms, it’s more or less hidden under brown leather. The priest’s jumps out and helps identify him. The black is just Coal Black and Warm Greys, but I toned down the crosshatching and the contrast to make it look like a distinct fabric.
Honestly these were my least favorite models to paint and the swords broke on the way home from Adepticon to boot. Metallics are annoying in general and I wish I could finally crack the code on basic NMM as I’d rather do that than use metallics honestly.
To tie all the models together, I gave them the bright red helmets from the official art. These are devoid of texture, using traditional blending techniques and sharp edge highlighting and I finished them with straight gloss varnish. I try not to use gloss varnish a lot, but I wanted the helmets (and Lt’s shield) to look specifically enameled and I’m pretty happy with them all.
What’s Next
If you read my Campaign experience article you’ll know I fell in love with this game. I think I’ll paint a Heretic Legion next, mostly because like everyone else I’m a sucker for the Artillery Witch. Hopefully official models are released for the Papal States Intervention Force as I’d love a super gaudy take on New Antioch. Before all that, however, I’m working on my Trench Crusade board. I’ve never made a dedicated board but the printer has been working over time printing ruins, trench bits, and destroyed tanks.
As far as my texture project, I’m pretty pleased. I learned a new skill and it served to demystify and give me more confidence in my abilities so look for me to overuse cross-hatching and fabric textures soon!
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