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