New Antioch stands for the faithful side of Trench Crusade's endless war - massed regiments of soldiers holding the line against hell itself. Visually they are the most "historical" warband in the game: khaki and olive drab, steel helmets, webbing and puttees, with their faith worn as stark off-white crosses and field markings. That makes them a superb first Trench Crusade project, because the core scheme is essentially a WW1 uniform done well, then weathered hard.
The signature look
The base colour is a muted khaki drab - the recipe above builds the ramp for it. Against that you want three things: dark leather and webbing to give structure, cool gunmetal for weapons and helmets, and the heraldry - off-white crosses and unit markings that identify the faithful at a glance. The heraldry is the focal point, so it earns the most careful brushwork on the model.
Painting the uniforms
- Basecoat the cloth khaki and shade it with a brown wash - washes and shades do most of the work on folds and creases.
- Layer the raised folds back up with the base khaki, then a lightened khaki on the top edges. Keep it desaturated; parade-ground brightness is wrong here.
- Paint webbing, pouches and boots in dark earth browns, and helmets in either drab or dark gunmetal.
- Keep faces simple - flat flesh, a wash, one highlight. The mud will do the rest of the character work.
The faith heraldry
Paint crosses and field markings in a warm off-white rather than pure white - basecoat a pale bone-grey, then highlight towards white only at the centre. Freehand a cross with two strokes of a fine brush, tidy the edges with the surrounding khaki, and then - crucially - weather it back. A thin earth-tone glaze over the lower half of a cross, or a few chips picked out in the uniform colour, stops the marking floating on top of the model. Faith endures; paintwork does not.
Weathering
New Antioch should look like it has been in the line for months. Work up from the base: drybrush dusty earth over boots and puttees, stipple darker mud on shins and coat hems, and drag thinned brown streaks down from pouches and buckles. A little rust - orange-brown stippled at rivets and around the edges of helmets and shovels - finishes the metal. Drybrushing covers the fast way to do most of this, and a churned-mud base from the basing guide ties the warband together.
Tips and common mistakes
- Vary the khaki. Mix a touch of green or brown into the basecoat between models - a slightly mismatched warband reads as real soldiers, not toy soldiers.
- Off-white, not white. Pure white heraldry glows unnaturally against drab; bone-white weathered back looks earned.
- Cool metal, warm cloth. The contrast between grey steel and warm khaki is what keeps the muted scheme from going muddy.
- Save one clean thing. A banner, a medic's markings or an officer's sash kept relatively clean gives the eye a rest point among the filth.
When you are happy with the palette, open this scheme in the generator to swap paints between brands, nudge the mood or add a secondary colour.