This is the tenth faction I painted for Cthulhu Wars: The second to last of the eleven produced for the game. It’s easy to paint because it has fairly few figures. The only complication is that, in the fluff, gold is more closely associated with the Ancients of the golden city of Tsath, so I’d already used a bunch of gold on the figures of that faction, years before I got Bubastis.

Like Daemon Sultan and unlike earlier factions, Bubastis was digitally sculpted and does not have bases for all of its figures, but I fixed that. Thankfully, it doesn’t have any Cultists either.

The faction colour is a couple of different brands of gold, mostly a 50-50 mix of Smartcolors IONIC-0179 Gold and VMA 71.066 Gold, applied over VMC 70.829 Amaranth, itself over a primer of Vallejo SP German Red Brown, or “Rotbraun”. This looks slightly colder than the gold on the Ancients. I went with metallic colours and two-tone schemes as a theme throughout the faction.

Earth Cats

The sculpt suggests these cats are Egyptian Maus, so that’s what I went with, using warm greys from Pro Acryl. Nothing fancy.

Cats from Mars

The four arms suggest these cats are from A Princess of Mars (1912/1917), so I went with a green of sorts. Over the Rotbraun primer, I airbrushed GSW Colorshift Metal “Evil Forest” from the sides and then GSW Metal Color 1873 “Sirenscale Green” from the top. Minor shading with a dark brown enamel.

Cats from Saturn

Here I used a glossy black Vallejo primer on the figure. I then airbrushed GSW Colorshift Metal “Burning Gold” from below, followed by another shifter, Vallejo 77.015 “Gold Yellow Burnt Orange”, from above. Shaded by regular brush, using AK Deep Blue Wash, which is an enamel.

Cats from the seventh planet … in our solar system

Glossy black Vallejo primer again. GSW Colorshift Metal “Royal Burgundy” airbrushed from below, followed by “Solar Anomaly” of the same brand, from above. On the black basecoat, Royal Burgundy is a cold green and Solar Anomaly is a light rose colour, so the effect is almost the inverse of the Cats from Mars.

Bastet

I gave this figure a base because repeated use would not have been kind to its frilly coat.

The exposed skin and the wrappings were made to match the neutral Shadow Pharaoh model and the rest was made to match the box art for the faction: Gold on the front of the headdress and the earrings, juxtaposed with a rose red made from VGC 72.012 Scab Red and a little Inktense Crimson, plus sky blue fake eyes on the headdress.

I used a matching rose, with a much larger share of ink, for the red of the figure’s cloak. I glazed the shadows of that cloak in two desaturated sea greens (VMC 70.895, 70.920) to offset the rose without saturating the colours of a supposedly ancient piece of cloth. All the eyes are slitted, with yellow “pupils” on black irises, again to match the box art instead of realistic eyes.

Retrospective

The colourshifting metals were fast and easy, and look suitably alien. I should have done some more of that on other factions. I wish I’d varied the colours of the pillows that the Earth Cats sit on though. They look a bit dull.