Hac Tao Special Intervention Unit (ML)

Be subtle until you are invisible,
Be as mysterious as silence,
And you will be the owner of your enemy’s destiny.
— Sun Tzu

There is something I like about the idea of an invisible, stealthy infantry in heavy armor; partly because most stealthy characters in other works are considered lightly armored, and partly because it reminds me of Predator. The Hac Tao Special Intervention Unit stalks the battlefield unseen with their thermo-optical camouflage, which makes them totally invisible to the enemy. Once the enemy gets into their killing range, they become anything but subtle, unleashing — in this case — a shoulder-launched armor-piercing HE missile, distorted light then traces their silhouette, as if looking through a warped glass, betraying the presence of the Hac Tao, only it is too late.

In the game, Hac Tao does not deploy normally, instead you write down secretly where they will appear on the board before the game begins. On your turn, you can then choose to place the Hac Tao at the location you specified (and usually followed by immediately launching a barrage of missiles or heavy machine-gun fire). Even after the opponent becomes aware of the location of the Hac Tao, enemy soldiers will still suffer a penalty at returning fire due to the Predator-esque cloaking effect. It is best to place the Hac Tao at vintage points overlooking potential corridors and/or staging grounds that the opponent will utilize, letting them underestimate your threat and overestimating the safety of those areas.

Primed to sealing: 11 hours.

Invincibles Shàng Jí

Yu Jing has revolutionized the concept of Heavy Infantry. The fourth generation of servo-powered combat armour implies a qualitative step up in mobility and in info-biotechnological protection. These unique new Shang Jí (“Superior”) armours are faster, lighter and definitively better. Only the best equipment for the bravest defenders of the People!

— Jin Ren Min

Ever since I found out about the game Infinity in 2008, I’ve been drawn to its distinct art style in their models. Some of my favorite models are from the various factions in this game.

I went to Meeplemart on a Thursday to pick up stuff for a friend, and there happened to be a demo game being set up. Played it and felt the turn-interruption and order pool mechanic was something special and thought that, hey, I’ve always loved their models, when wil be the best time to buy a load of them if not now?

So I picked the Yujing faction and picked up their starter box and few essential units. The Yujing is the concept of Sinosphere turned reality in the future: a massive East Asian union of assimilated nations centralized on China and the Chinese culture. Yujing is a strange mixture of restored Ming/Qing emperors as figurehead of the state, and the overbearing Communist party in true control behind the scenes, riding on an enormous and thriving economy and industry. It is where the old Forbidden Palace guards are brought back wearing power-armors, ninja and samurai from the Japanese contingent close in on the enemy in thermo-optical camouflage and dice them up with armor-piercing katana, Shoaling monks dart across the field behind a screen of smoke grenades and wielding electrical swords, and Japanese bōsōzoku are encouraged to join the army as an effective fast attack force.

I have several Yujing models in progress, the first one I finished was this Shang Ji Invincible. Yujing focuses on heavy infantry (in-game they can field the most heavy infantry models) and they pride themselves on this fact by calling their armed forces the Invincible Army. Shang Ji is an upgraded version of the typical Invincible trooper and came with the starter box. I hope they start selling them individually because their weapon load outs are quite sweet.

Box to sealing: 16.5 hours.

Marauder Horsemen

“Every head hewn from neck, every drop of blood spilt, makes Khorne stronger regardless of whom it is that dies in the dirt. You cannot win, for to fight us is to give us power.”

— Khagras, horselord of Khorne

Finally finished my Marauder Horsemen unit. These 5 cavalries took longer than my unit of 12 Chaos Warriors. They will repay me by running down and flanking helpless enemies of the Chaos and spill imaginary plastic blood of my plastic opponents.

Tried my hand for the first time at NMM (non-metallic metal) and used no metallic paints for this unit, which probably contributed to the long time spent on painting them. I personally dislike metallic paints in general, so I had sufficient motivation to experiment with the NMM techniques.

Next up, gonna try to quickly finish off 10 Chaos Warhounds. Since they are pretty small relatively, they shouldn’t take too long (which is what I said before I started these horsemen).

Or maybe I'll switch my palette and get some Retribution of Scyrah Mage Hunters done. Always thought these models look sweet and always wanted an excuse to paint those (also a fan of Eiryss. She represents what really matters in the Iron Kingdoms, which is hunting mages). Now that I’m also getting into Malifaux but hate all the Wyrd models, I can finally get these Mage Hunters to proxy for my Witch Hunters crew.

Total time spent on Marauder Horsemen unit (from opening the box to sealing the last model): 138.5 hours

Time spent per model: 27.7 hours

Marauder Horsemen Chieftain

Been working on my Chaos Marauder Horsemen unit. Most pieces are painted besides the horses themselves and heads of the marauders (for some reason I always leave the heads to the last). Went into tunnel-vision mode and finished painting the assembling the Marauder Horsemen Chieftain first so I could enjoy the partial fruit of my efforts. These are the first horse-based minis I’ve painted and it was pretty fun working on the horse. This mini hasn’t been sealed yet (took the picture and posted as soon as the parts were glued together), hence the shininess.

Chaos Warriors

“A Chaos Warrior needs not food, drink or sleep, for he is nourished by the carnage that he wreaks. His home is under the cold, uncaring skies. His bride is his blade. He is no longer human — rather he is a living weapon.”

Always wanted to play Warhammer ever since I knew it existed, but never had mustered up the resolve to put down the money and paint the masses of soldiers.

I heard an interview with a Press Ganger in August who mentioned that the Privateer Press studio Epic Eyriss was painted masterfully in 6 hours. It gave me tremendous motivation to start painting minis again. Also I played my first Warhammer Fantasy game with Phil’s Empire and Orcs, and liked it a lot for the formations and their tactical implications. Definitely different from all the mini games I’ve played. Finally I was convinced by my Waterloo game group in September and decided to start a Warhammer Fantasy army. Obviously I chose the heavy-hitting and heavily armored Warriors of Chaos, who in my opinion looks the best, with Dark Elves and the new Skavens closely behind (the new Beasts of Chaos might be pretty cool too) (Daemons of Chaos are cool too).

Bought the Warriors of Chaos battalion box, which includes 12 Chaos Warriors, 20 Chaos Marauders, 5 Chaos Knights, and 5 Chaos Warhounds. Opened it excitedly and for the past almost a month and a half I’ve been working on the 12 Chaos Warriors, meanwhile trying to improve my overall painting time. In the end, I totaled 78.5 hours at the completion of the whole unit. Breakdown of the hours is as follows:

Preparation 8.5h
Assembly 3h
Basing 2h
Painting 65h

78.5 hours might seem like a long time, but this is with 12 models, from cutting the first piece off the spruce to basing the painted and assembled models. My previous time records (averaging 30 hours for the Warmachine minis) only included painting, so this means on each Warhammer model I spent 5.41 hours on painting in contrast to 30 hours on the Warmachine models. Granted I definitely glossed over some details during painting, but they still seem pretty good in these photos.

Next up: 5 Marauder Horsemen. I really love the look of the Chaos Knights and can’t wait to start working on them, but I want to get as much practice as possible on the lesser units. Never painted horses, this will be interesting.

Manhunter

“Blood is the coin of this realm now, and she is the paymaster.”
— Kommander Sorscha Kratikoff

A few funny things happened after I said to myself “I think I’ll start on one of the Iron Fangs after seeing drab greens!” I did start assembling the Iron Fangs, and the process was tedious with lots of drilling and waiting for glue/epoxy to dry. I came up with the brilliant idea that I would start painting the second Widowmaker while the Iron Fangs are being prepared. So 24 hours later I had my second Widowmaker basecoated, right around the time I played my first Warmachine game at Dueling Grounds, and realizing that at the speed I'm going, I will finish my army sometime in 2012. Heeding my first opponent’s advice, I turned my focus away from mass troops and onto solo model units (an unit that has only one model, essentially a more elite unit) to reduce the time needed to ready a complete unit. That’s when I looked to the pile of pewter from my crazy Boxing Day 2008 shopping and picked out the Manhunter.

Long story short, 23 hours later (and many weeks later in real-time) I have my Manhunter painted and based. So as this story comes to a close, I’m reminded of another funny thing: I picked up Alten Ashley the Monster Hunter after playing against a Hordes army in my first Warmachine game. Alten is like a sniper that will shoot a warbeast dead. So, putting everything in my pile aside, I will start Alten Ashely next!

Widowmaker Sniper

“Those who would betray us must be shot down like dogs. It is only the enemies of Khador who must fear the Widowmakers, whether foreign-born or hiding in our ranks” — Orsus Zoktavir, The Butcher of Khardov

Finished painting and assembling one of the Khador Widowmaker snipers. They are elite sharpshooters that can pluck out high value enemy targets from a distance while camouflaged behind covers. I chose a green/brown colour scheme and avoided entirely the Khador faction colour (red) because I wanted to stress the unit’s preference of operating independently from the main army and ambushing the enemy from dense forests or other natural features. Making the mulch and dead leaves on the base was quite fun too.

On boxing day I picked up a unit of Khador Demolition Corps, two more Khador Iron Fang Pikemen (on top of my unit of 6 Iron Fang Pikemen), Iron Fang Kapitan and Standard Bearer, Khador Manhunter, and... Eiryss (DUN DUN DUN)!!! I think I’ll start on one of the Iron Fangs after seeing drab greens for... 30 hours.