Druze Bayram Security family photo

I finally finished painting all my (current batch of) miniatures for my Druze Bayram Security army in Infinity. Interest in the game has waned again among my group of friends so I don’t currently have any plans to get more. Of course, games go up and down in our desire to play them so Infinity is just one strong advocate away from returning to being a regular on the gaming table. In the meantime I enjoyed the process of painting this lot; they’re a rather different sculpting style than most of the miniatures I own.  In particular, I really like the way they look like a coherent force with their matching colours.

I don’t think that they add up to a very sensible army for gaming purposes, but in case anyone is interested, this is what they would be fielded as (with a minimum of messing with profiles).

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GROUP 1

BASHI BAZOUK Boarding Shotgun / Pistol, CC Weapon. (0 | 15)
VALERYA GROMOZ Hacker (Hacking Device UPGRADE: Expel) Combi Rifle + Pitcher / Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 21)
DRUZE HMG, Chain-colt / Viral Pistol, Knife. (1.5 | 29)
DRUZE (Fireteam: Haris, X Visor) Combi Rifle, Chain-colt, D.E.P. / Viral Pistol, CCW. (1 | 25)
DRUZE (Fireteam: Haris, X Visor) Combi Rifle, Chain-colt, D.E.P. / Viral Pistol, CCW. (1 | 25)
DRUZE (X Visor) Combi Rifle + Light Grenade Launcher (E/M and Nimbus) / Viral Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 27)
DRUZE (X Visor) Shock Marksman Rifle, Chain-colt / Viral Pistol, Knife. (0 | 27)
DRUZE Hacker (Killer Hacking Device) Combi Rifle + Pitcher, D-Charges / Viral Pistol, Knife. (0 | 25)
DRUZE Hacker (Assault Hacking Device) Combi Rifle + Pitcher, D-Charges / Viral Pistol, Knife. (0.5 | 28)
DRUZE Lieutenant (X Visor) Combi Rifle, Chain-colt / Viral Pistol, Knife. (0 | 23)

GROUP 2
CLIPPER DRONBOT Missile Launcher / Electric Pulse. (1.5 | 17)
FUGAZI DRONBOT Flash Pulse, Sniffer / Electric Pulse. (0 | 8)
PEACEMAKER Heavy Shotgun + AUXBOT_3 / Electric Pulse. (0 | 21)
AUXBOT_3 Heavy Flamethrower / Electric Pulse. (- | 4)
HUNZAKUT (Forward Observer, Deployable Repeater) Rifle + Light Shotgun, Antipersonnel Mines / Pistol, Knife. (0 | 18)

6.5 SWC | 309 Points

Open in Infinity Army

Painted Druze Shock Team with Chain Colt

So here, finally, is the last of my current batch of miniatures for my Druze Bayram Security force in Infinity. This is yet another Druze Shock Team and is toting a Chain Colt. In game terms, all Druze Shock Team profiles carry this as a side arm so I suppose that the idea is that this miniature can represent any equipment load-out.

I very much like the no-nonsense posing of this particular Druze Shock Team. Infinity has a lot of miniatures with rather outlandish poses and while I do certainly enjoy a dynamic miniature it is quite nice to have a rather more solid looking option on the table. The paint scheme, of course, is the same as the rest of this force.

Being the last Infinity miniature in the queue, I plan to take a family photo in the next few days and share the whole team at once.

Next on the painting table: Runebearer.

Painted Druze Shock Team with Marksman Rifle

Here is another Druze Shock Team to take her place in my Druze Bayram Security army in Infinity. She brings some slightly longer range firepower to the team compared to the various Combi Rifles and I’ve found the Marksman Rifle profile really useful for spot removal in the active turn. Otherwise (of course) she is much like all the other Druze, being rather reliable and hard to winkle out of good cover; a true professional.

This Druze Shock Team received the same colours as the rest of her team mates as I think that the white and green provide a nice contrast to each other and also to the dark of the weapons and strapping. Like the Heavy Machine Gunner, she is wearing battle heels which I find very silly, but I’m not about to reculpt her legs and feet just to ensure that she can go into battle in sensible shoes.

I dedicate this post to Alex from Leadballoony‘s Fembruary Challenge; it is a worthy reason to dig out female miniatures as they’re very under-represented in our hobby.

Next on the painting table: Blue Horrors.

Painted Druze Shock Team Hacker with Combi Rifle (second sculpt)

This is a second sculpt of a Druze Shock Team Hacker with a Combi Rifle to join my Druze Bayram Security army in Infinity (the earlier one is painted here). Luckily, the miniature being labelled as a Hacker doesn’t really mean any more than having one hand up in a slightly silly pose (and indeed, not even that in some cases) so I expect to use one of these Hackers as just a regular Druze Shock Team. On the other hand, there are a couple of different ‘flavours’ of Hacker, so presumably I could find some excuse to use both – I would still need to differentiate the two somehow though.

Painting-wise, this is just more of the same for the Druze Bayram Security army, with principally white and green armour leavened with black kit. I actually do slight highlights in grey on the metal stuff and blue on the fabric (belts, pouches etc) but it all seems to come out remarkably similar in the photos.

Next on the painting table: Troll Bouncer.

Painted Druze Shock Team with Heavy Machine Gun

I got back onto the Infinity painting pile with this Druze Shock Team, this time bearing a Heavy Machine Gun. As with previous posts, she is part of the Druze Bayram Security sectorial within the Non-Aligned Armies. Heavy Machine Guns are rather straightforward weapons in Infinity, winning firefights simply due to large numbers dice being thrown. Needless to say, this makes them much more useful in the active turn where this can be brought to bear, rather than in the reactive turn where I tend to lose the HMG far too easily to snipers and other similar weapons.

This miniature (and the three which will follow in due course) is part of a different box of Druze Shock Teams which I think were sculpted at a different time. As a result they are a bit different from the previous four I posted, though of course they are plenty similar enough for my tastes. AS far as possible I stuck with the same colour scheme as the others so it will look even less obvious when seen as a whole force on the tabletop. I realised when painting this particular miniature that I’ve been indoctrinated by GW and other gaming companies to expect giant weapons, so the HMG here looks quite dainty by comparison.

My only complaint about the sculpt is the unforgivable crime of putting battle heels on. Funnily enough, this bothers me a lot more than the chainmail bikinis of the Witch Aelves. Probably this is because (in my mind) the Witch Aelves are a knowing pastiche of fantasy cliches while Infinity brands itself as a more ‘realistic’ interpretation. Anyway, as you can see, it didn’t bother me enough to stop me from painting the Druze Shock Team by way of some kind of protest…

Next on the painting table: Druze Shock Team Hacker with Combi Rifle (second sculpt).

Painted Hunzakut with Rifle and Light Grenade Launcher

Here is my next miniature for my slowly-growing Druze Bayram Security army in Infinty. This Hunzakut with Rifle and Light Grenade Launcher is actually part of the Haqqislam faction but is co-opted into the Druze for some reason. Actually it occurred to me that Infinity is quite unusual in that the mercenary faction takes many options from ‘main’ forces rather than the other way round, for example in Warmachine. I’ve enjoyed putting the Hunzakut on the table as she’s quite annoying to deal with thanks to her stealth abilities and can deploy near to objectives. This gives me some useful board control tools and also saves having to waste precious orders walking around. Offensively the Rifle isn’t much to write home about but every now and then having the Light Grenade Launcher in the right place can make a fairly entertaining mess of an opposing fireteam (at least, until Joe realised that they don’t need to cuddle each other at the end of each order).

Like so many of Corvus Belli’s miniatures, the pose here is very sweet and evocative, while not being the standard ‘I have a gun and I’m shooting it’ approach common to many games. The colour scheme is the basic white and green to match the rest of the force. I assume that the box in her right hand is supposed to be a mine though it looks a lot like the ghost traps from Ghostbusters to me. Unless I buy any more, I have just four miniatures remaining to complete the army and I will probably do a group photo at that point.

Next on the painting table: Dire Troll Mauler.

Painted Dronbot Remotes (Clipper and Fugazi)

Here are two more remotes for my Infinity army, the Druze Bayram Security. Just like the Peacemaker, these are both ‘brought in’ from the PanOceania faction, which has the side-effect of making the miniatures frustratingly hard to find on a web catalogue for a new Infinity player like me (because they’re categorised under ‘PanOceania’ rather than ‘Non-Aligned Armies’). The Clipper (left in the photos) has a Missile Launcher which means that I really love to use it in the active turn. Being a remote, it can have various Supportware used on it by my Hackers to improve its accuracy and rather unusually for a remote it can also be part of a Fire Team. This makes it a really horrid piece to face when I can set the engagement. As a result, I’ve mainly lost it to camouflaged snipers gunning it down from halfway across the board in my reactive turn. The Fugazi (on the right) has some cool sensor equipment that I’ve never used well but I don’t mind because it’s really cheap and brings and Regular Order along. So if it does nothing but sit still and occasionally Flash Pulse some fools then I’m quite happy.

Nothing of note to say about the painting here; I just copied the Peacemaker as closely as I could manage. Trying to get straight lines along the green to white boundary gives me a new appreciation for all the talented painters out there who can do freehand.

Next on the painting table: Krielstone Bearer and Stone Scribes

Painted Bashi Bazouk with Boarding Shotgun

This is a Bashi Bazouk, another member of my slowly-expanding Druze Bayram Security army for Infinity. In the same way that the Peacemaker hails from the PanOceania faction, the Bashi Bazouk is brought in from the Haqqislam army list. Bashi Bazouks are paratroopers and so can appear on other board edges than my deployment zone for a bit of extra confusion. On top of this, they have the Holoecho rule which allows me to place a pair of additional dummy models when he arrives. Like many Infinity rules, I am not yet sure that we’ve actually played this rule correctly, but in essence it gives the real Bashi Bazouk a chance to cause some mayhem while nearby foes split fire between him and the holograms (which are, of course, immediately revealed as fakes as soon as they don’t return fire). This sculpt has a Boarding Shotgun but I’ve generally used the profile with the SMG for the simple reason that it is much, much cheaper.

The sculpt is in a bit of an unduly heroic pose for a sneaky special operations type, and he is also taking advantage of the classic Infinity ‘tactical junk’ to look even cooler.  I have to admit that I can’t imagine many scenarios where I’d prefer to fight using a knife rather than a giant death-cannon, but then again I’m not a futuristic space gangster with wings, so what do I know? I rather enjoyed painting the Bashi Bazouk; I stayed with the same very limited palette that I’ve used for most of the rest of the DBS force and I think it is starting to pay off when they’re together. Once I have all of my current crop painted I plan to take a family shot. My gentle reader(s) can then decide if it’s a nicely coherent force or a mess in green, white and black.

Next on the painting table: Earthborn Dire Troll

Painted Peacemaker and Auxbot

This cute little pair are Remotes (i.e. non-autonomous robots) for my Druze Bayram Security force in Infinity. The big one is the Peacemaker; the little one is an Auxbot that operates by broadly following the lead of the Peacemaker. The actual rules for this are a bit convoluted and I’m not completely convinced that we’ve managed to play them correctly yet. Anyway, both carry template weapons (a shotgun for the Peacemaker and a flamethrower for the Auxbot) so most of my play with them has been to throw them forward and hope to trade up in terms of damage before they inevitably get scrapped by return fire. Strictly speaking these are part of the PanOceania faction but, like many other entries for the Druze Bayram Security list, they are included in the general mercenary mish-mash.

The colour scheme is green and white to match the people from my Druze Bayram Security army. I tried to keep the transition lines between colours neat so that it would look a little more like they were factory painted, but at this magnification there are definitely a few bits where it didn’t work out well. Since both the Peacemaker and Auxbot are somewhat generic-looking future robots without obvious giant weapons they would be a nice fit as NPCs or even scenery in a space-set RPG.

Next on the painting table: Fennblade Officer and Drummer.

Painted Valerya Gromoz

This is Valerya Gromoz, a mercenary hacker in Infinity who can be taken as part of my Druze Bayram Security force. Infinity hackers work more or less like wizards in other game systems, being able to use programs (i.e. spells) to do various cool things that other pieces cannot. I quite like using Valerya over other hackers since she has a very high WIP skill which helps to achieve offensive hacking.

Valerya has quite an unusual pose for a miniature, almost all of whom are standing up (makes sense I suppose). I took the chance to use the same colours as the other DBS members and I like the way that they look on Valerya as she’s a bit more civilian than the armoured Druze Shock Teams. I gave her pink hair partly because, as Faust noted, I like to paint pink and partly because I wanted to emphasise that the DBS aren’t a proper military organisation and Valerya in particular is a freelancer.  The miniature would make quite a good NPC or civilian in some kind of futuristic system since she (again, quite unusually) isn’t carrying huge weapons; she does have a holstered handgun though.  More so than other miniatures, I struggled with the photography and there is a bit of glare on her left eye that I just couldn’t get rid of no matter what I did with the camera.  Nonetheless, I’m very pleased with the way she looks even at this hugely inflated scale.

Next on the painting table: Deathrippers.