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Hiroseki Redux: working on the forces of the late Jim Clark

The Hiroseki National Army are a force to be reckoned with. John Treadaway says: check them out here... How we got here... I was bequeathed, amongst other items, three detachments of the Hiroseki National Army from the estate of Hammer's Slammers: The Crucible fan Jim Clark. I'd played Jim with these forces a couple of years ago and I remember them as being nice and wanted to make sure that I could get them out and on the table again. On close inspection, though, the forces had a few problems. First and foremost, they had taken some damage through poor packing. There were some paint scrapes and such like but some of that was ‘friction ablation’ from the turrets being packed on top of the vehicles. That wouldn't normally be a vast problem but - secondarily - Jim had varnished them with... well it was hard to say what, exactly. But whatever it was, even after three years some of it was still sticky and so the paint beneath was a little too 'live' to stay on the models as they bashed up against each other. So that needed to be fixed somehow. Jim's painting style was normally a little ‘Liberal Agrax Earth’ (for want of a better term) but I suspected these had been hit with some Army Painter varnish dip over a green base. There was some nice detail painted in and lots of extras and kit and so forth added, but it all looked a bit... well messy. And sticky. And, in places, still quite shiny. The models also had been released (by Brigade Models) and painted by Jim before their Hiroseki deals were available but Jim had used some nicely appropriate red ones but I wanted a little more. Oh and the force seemed to lack infantry (and the Hiroseki, being Commissars, have 12TU detachments and Jim - being Jim - had already painted over two dozen vehicles for them in three detachments!). So I needed grunts. Finally, there were some new vehicles recently released (the Shinigami Light Combat car) which have come out in recent times which Jim hadn't had a chance to include, and I wanted to try to paint some.