Let’s paint!

Painting challenges are fun!  Especially since any type of painting encouragement is always good in my book! So without further ado, here’s some progress.

 

Nothing like a little Hac Tao Hacker action!  It’s a great sculpt and I was really excited to get paint onto him!  This big guy is definitely one of my favourite sculpts in the game, and likely to be the army centerpiece model for whenever I play vanilla Yu Jing!

’til next time!

 

Painting Progress 1

So as a small 3 week update after the friendly wager post, I thought I’d upload some pics of what I’ve been working on.

First of all, the lovely tankhunter sculpt, who I currently use as a second Spetznaz. These monsters generally accumulate more casualties over a game than anything else with withering Marksmanship Level 2 (Ignore cover, shock ammo) HMG fire, so I figured it was high time I got some paint on the second one:

– All the dead things!

 

You can see here a slight deformity on the left arm, which I filed down and turned into a bandage. This I think works really well, adding character to his generally more “relaxed” pose. You might notice the absence of any flags or markings, which I opted to do as a spec-ops unit just didn’t feel appropriate with them included.

Next up are a pair of older sculpts, who nonetheless I think really stand the test of time with a bit of TLC. First up is a French Paracommando:

– Commando style!

The blonde hair on the original was just a bit too overbearing given her massive braids, and as I already have a Chasseur with similarly vibrant hair, I think the black suits this one better.

You can see here the little french flag tucked in underneath her backpack. This model I actually christened “Cinderella” after an accidental conversion session got one of her boots snipped off and it subsequently disappeared for two days! (It turned up later stuck to the blanket we had in the living room, where the glue had fastened it quite securely despite my best efforts to turn the house upside down!).

In game I use her as a Forward Observer, as a Specialist who can get all the way upfield is pretty nice (usually following Uxia or taking the other flank) and Mimetism + Suppressing fire on the rifle is annoying to shift for anything but your opponents better models (who are usually somewhere else by then). Sadly she hasn’t made the cut in a lot of recent lists, though I’m hoping to change that soon 🙂

Finally, a conversion I’m quite happy with:

– Landmines!

The original sculpt of this model carries a grenade launcher (not nearly as useful as the standard Foxtrot FO loadout) and also has a spare hand off to the side, which is supposed to be pushing aside some bushes or something I guess? Anyway as you can see here, I raided the bits box for a small section of piston, which has a perfect red blinking light on the front (you might have to blow the image up in a new tab + zoom to see it).

The rifle meanwhile is from the Spec-ops sprue, which has the old grenade launcher stock to give it more of a “SCAR” feel. Finally, no US model would be complete without a freehand American flag:

Certainly dresses up an older sculpt a bit better I think!

Anyway that’s it from me, and I’ve started working on a Maverick biker for next post so that’s definitely going to be quite fun! I’m sure MC also has something pretty good cooking in the works, so until next time!

 

A friendly wager

As many of you know, infinity is going through an exciting time lately, with a series of incredibly releases only made more interesting with the addition of a whole new book of rules (H3N3) to play around with. New models, great sculpts, expanded factions… it’s all pretty tempting stuff for an average infinity player.

– And speaking of great sculpts, here’s the latest model I’ve painted up for my collection… Le Muet!

No small wonder that like just about everybody, I’m thinking of starting another faction.

But, like most gamers out there, both MidnightCarnival and I have a fair few unpainted models still in our collection. Even as I counted the 26 (!) models I have so far painted for Ariadna, I noticed I hadn’t even hit the half-way point of my collection, with a massive 28 still to go (and that’s not even counting some of the things I know I’ll pick up soon). Now for those of you more used to the model counts of 40k or Warmachine that doesn’t sound too bad, but in Infinity when every sculpt is an individual and lists of ~15 models is commonplace, that’s quite a lot.

So when our intrepid host announced he was acquiring yet another faction (Yu Jing, and I suppose technically the Onyx sectorial he’s expanding), I decided it was high time we had a little friendly wager 😉

“Paint a minimum of 25 models by the end of the year (should be good for at least 2 300 point lists)… or buy and ship the other $100 worth of models for a new faction.” 

Now completing 1 a week should take till about late October, but if any of you out there know the slow rate both of us paint at, that’s a pretty bold undertaking. After all, neither of us is a slouch when it comes to quality, and for a public dare like this, a rush-job simply won’t do. So our usual painting standards will be expected – Shading, highlights, faces, basing… the works. (You can see one of my best efforts above as a decent benchmark for mine!)

On top of this, I plan on moving house this summer, and of course MC works a million hours a week, so this could get very challenging. And of course to make matters more interesting for all of you readers out there, we plan to post our progress here on the site as we go, with updates for completed models and of course a final army shot at the end 🙂

After all, painted minis- isn’t that what it’s all about? Maybe some of you should do something similar in your FLGS’s, and make Christmas come early for some very lucky players 😉

– Challenge accepted?

So bring it on!