Walk softly and carry a big stick

Line Breaker Model

This Is Not A Test Line Breaker

Whether you are facing a bunch of hippies at a sit in or fending off mutant cannibals, you don't want to on the the receiving end of the Line Breaker's baton. The Line Breaker ($6.50) is the latest of the Peacekeeper warband in the NOVA Open Charitable Foundation Silent Auction.

I went slightly different with this model. Since the Maryland State Police wear camouflage uniforms for the special weapons and tactical teams, I went with more of a Baltimore feel for the model.

Maryland Flag Visor

The Baltimore SWAT units are equipped with practical equipment, the Line Breaker is ready to punish with a spiked club and a spiked, full-body shield. Both at the ready to smash his opponents. When holding the line, his tactical riot armor will help defend equally from knife sticks and small arms fire.

Since I was going with a real city feel, I went with a round lipped 30 mm sewer base from Town Square set ($10) offered by Secret Weapon Miniatures. I think one was a part of the NOVA Open 2015 swag bag.

Line Breaker (front)

While finishing up a previous model on one of the Hobby Hangouts, we were discussing freehand technique. For some reason while discussing freehand techniques for the trim of capes or the back of the capes, I decided that I needed to do a Maryland State flag ...and I needed to paint it on the visor. Now I am not sure how this officer can see out of the visor, but with a big spiky club; he may not care. The Maryland state flag colors are red, white, and black. The flag is the heraldic of George Calvert, Lord Baltimore. I tried to match the layout in style since the visor isn't rectangular and made it as close as possible. When the model was done, I used the Army Painter Anti-Shine to take it to a matte finish.

The base color for his uniform pants and shirt are based with Vallejo Blue then washed with the Vallejo Blue Shade. This took the flat blue to a more navy color like the S.W.A.T. uniforms.

Line Breaker (Shield)

The riot armor has the feel of a catcher's breast plate in texture, so I went with a pretty safe layout for that. The base was the Vallejo Black Grey. To get it darkened up, I used the Secret Weapon Soft Body Black wash. Though this is a wash, it covers pretty well and it rather opaque. The wash doesn't run off as readily as many other washes so I had to do a touch up on top with the Black Grey. The straps for the armor were done with Vallejo Black. His badge is a duel layer of Citadel Boltgun Metal with the star done with Citadel Shining Gold. The shoulder pads and the little protective pads on the gloves were painted with Reaper Military Grey. The gloves are painted Vallejo Leather Brown.

Line Breaker (Rear)

Most riot shields are either black or very dark grey. I went with a the black grey, but mixed in some of the soft body black wash with some bolt gun metal to give it a little shimmer. The mix provide some slight sparkle to the shield, but doesn't make it shimmer or take it too far from a flat metal look. The spikes on the front are painted with the Vallejo Boltgun Metal. The helmet is reaper Nightmare Black, which has a heavy purple base to it.

The sewer cover was based with the black grey and then touched over with Vallejo Tinny Tin. The tinny tin was added sporadically to give some low cover shimmery effect and a bit of the metallic rust color. On top of this was added some of the Secret Weapon Pigments (entire set of 23 for $99). I used a combination of Ancient Earth, Dark Earth, and Clay Earth. This was of course fixed with the Secret Weapon Pigment Fixer. This doesn't show up much int he image as the fixer was still wet. It will brighten up a bit when dried completely. You can see that at the NOVA Open in a couple of weeks.