Painted Drake MacBain

Here is Drake MacBain, a Warcaster for Mercenaries in Warmachine. I’ve actually never played him in the game yet; I picked the miniature up as part of a second hand lot a long time ago and just finally got the inspiration to put some paint on him. I feel like his spells would allow him to fit well into the Llaelese Resistance theme force, but actually building lists there continues to be an exercise in frustration for me.

MacBain isn’t, strictly speaking, a Steelhead. But he’s always depicted as a hard-bitten professional mercenary so I decided that he’d go nicely in the green colours that I’ve been favouring for the Steelheads anyway. I’m not a fan of the ludicrously oversized sword but the posing in general feels suitable for the action hero that he so clearly is. I also have to admit that I love the cigar-chomping sculpt of his face; it just tells such a story.

Since MacBain has languished in my Pile of Shame for too long now, I dedicate this post to the excellent Ann and her ‘Paint the Crap You Already Own!’ Painting and Hobby Challenge. You should also read her blog as it is very entertaining.

Next on the painting table: Intercessors.

Painted Ghordson Basher

This is a second Ghordson Basher for my Warmachine Mercenaries. There isn’t really much more to say than I wrote when I painted the previous Basher – it’s a cheap and cheerful Warjack that specialises in slam attacks.

I stuck with basically the same paint scheme for this Basher as the previous one as I wanted to keep them as clearly part of the same force. I’ve slightly mixed up which parts are cream vs green, and also those which are silver vs brass to keep them slightly unique but my vision for these Rhulic Warjacks is that they look to be part of the same force.

Next on the painting table: Drake MacBain.

Painted Alexia, Mistress of the Witchfire

This is Alexia, Mistress of the Witchfire, also known as Alexia2.  She’s a solo for the Mercenaries faction in Warmachine and I use her in my Soldiers of Fortune theme force.  In the storyline, Alexia is the end-boss of an old RPG (specifically, The Witchfire Trilogy) in which she is possessed by the magic sword Witchfire; this iteration of her is presumably set after those events and she is now in control of the sword rather than the other way round.  In game she can collect soul tokens from living models that die nearby and use them for a variety of purposes, my favourite of which is to summon Thrall Warriors.  This is a key part of the recycling engine that my army is based around: Steelhead Halberdier die, giving Alexia souls to turn into Thrall Warriors while Sergeant Verendrye brings them back as reinforcements.  Being able to summon Thrall Warriors is, of course, invaluable for scenario play so I generally try to keep Alexia safe from harm in the early stages of the game and only commit her in the late game.

I loved to paint Alexia; she has a very dynamic pose that I find really evocative of a rider in full flight.  I deliberately didn’t stick with the green and yellow scheme of the Steelheads, instead going for a nice bright Red Riding Hood look which I think works quite nicely.  The horse is meant to be some kind of undead beastie but after a bit of experimentation I couldn’t make the skin look the way I wanted so in the end it’s more like part-normal-horse and part-skeleton-horse.

Next on the painting table: Ghordson Basher.

Painted Tharn Ravager Chieftains

Here are a pair of Tharn Ravager Chieftains, unit attachments for Tharn Ravagers in my Circle Orboros army in Hordes. They’re pretty much a sure addition to any unit of Ravagers, being a possible free card in Devourer’s Host and giving exactly the abilities that Ravagers want to see. Specifically, they grant Vengeance to allow an out-of-activation attack if the unit took damage in the previous turn; a likely (even somewhat desirable) event considering that the unit natively has Tough and a form of healing. They also have a minifeat to allow Overtake, allowing one turn of going really wild with corpse tokens and leveraging that large reach on their axes.

The Chieftains were considerably more enjoyable to paint than their units (here and here). Being metal rather than the horrible resin/plastic material that PP used for the actual Ravagers really helps, and the details were nice and clean. In addition, I’d bought these second hand and the paint stripping process seems to work considerably better with the metal miniatures. I used the same colour schemes at their assigned units so that was an easy choice. With the completion of the Tharn Ravager Chieftains, I’ve now painted all the miniatures I own for Circle Orboros. Sadly this doesn’t actually add up to a legal force in the game but if I come back to this army then I would only need to pick up a few extra pieces.

Next on the painting table: Alexia, Mistress of the Witchfire.