Dark Elf Spearmen

It may come as a surprise, but yes, I still do collect my Dark Elves.  They are still the only actual army I own, now excepting the Infinity Yu-Jing bunch, but I count them as more of a strike team than an army...

This is a unit that I actually built almost a year ago now, but only to 66% completion.  I finished the highlights for the blue armour and the skin, the highlights and insignia on the shields as well as the gold-ish pieces of bling and the bases in the last couple of days.  My next port of call with the Druchii would be to either finish off some characters that need finishing, or to begin the labourious task of repairing my badly chipped Black Guard regiment.  I'm either going to need a battlefoam-esque contraption to carry them or I need to varnish them thoroughly, the first's expensive and the second's undesirable.  Unless I bother tracking down the good matt varnish I saw promoted on some forums...

There's an Infinity hacker ninja in the works too, but there are still a lot of hard-to-reach pockets of metal visible on the model, so it's gonna need a bit of touching up before it gets uploaded.

That's it for naow.  Happy dice-rolling!

Infinity: Ninja

So, many of my photographs from now on may seem different.  That's because of this thing:

Behold my new state-of-the-art high-spec no-expenses-spared MLG awesome-to-the-max (rubbish) Lightbox.

I am very proud of myself, yes I am.

Sarcasm aside, here's what I put in it (and then cheated by running them through Picasa).

First is this here Tango Ninja, I went for a scheme that ended up looking like the bad guy from Tron: Legacy, which isn't necessarily a bad look in my opinion.  In the original studio colour scheme, the Ninja are all in bright Neon green colours - an interesting juxtaposition with their stealth role I thought - so I wanted to have the same kind 'you shouldn't wear orange if you're trying to not be noticed' kind of vibe to them.  The fluff reasons for them being successful in their stealth of course is that they have invisibility fields.  More or less.

The second Ninja is one I got from Maelstrom because Maelstrom (as opposed to Wayland) give clear information on how much stock of model X they currently have - thus when two of the models I ordered from Wayland were out of stock (and given full refund, fair do's) I got them from Maelstrom instead.

Here's the Barbie Sniper:

I have two other Ninja set to paint and a green Oniwaban already done, so, yeah I'm doing Power Rangers.  If Power Rangers were invisible and used lethal force.  They should so do that.

Anyway, many scoff at the mere idea of a sniper ninja, seeing as how the Ninja's high CC skill is entirely wasted as you sit at one end of a fire-lane.  In fairness though, CC is extremely risky even for a vanilla-equipped Ninja, who'd be better off shooting at enemies with a Combi-Rifle.  Shooting lessens the risk of discovery and gives you 3 dice to kill your enemy with instead of CC's 1.

One last 'BBF' shot.

Well, I've got the Hacker Ninja and Shibobu Kitsune left to paint, so I'll get on those sooner or later.  If they'll be next is anyone's guess as I have a hankering to get some LotR rangers and some Khador Warjacks painted and out of the way, so we'll see eh?

Any painting or photography comments, criticism, advice, insults and/or slander welcome and encouraged.  May your fingers remain unstuck of super-glue.

Unboxing Ninjas!

Got me some more Infinity stuff.  Ninjas specifically.  Ordered two from Wayland Games and two from Maelstrom (uneconomical, I know, it just turned out that way).  The Wayland ones arrived today.

This first one is a special character, Oniwaban Shinobu Kitsune. Oniwaban is more of a title meaning 'Gardener' - pertaining to a Ninja chief's knowledge of poisons, but I'm pretty sure her given name means 'Stealth Fox' or something.  Anyway.
     One of the difficulties with Infinity models is the assembly - as they are in True Scale as opposed to GW/PP's more cartoony 'Heroic Scale', the pieces are smaller and more delicate to plonk together.  This is especially true of this lithe female character, and especially true of one of the two arm configurations, which has her posed in the process of drawing a sword i.e. the one I want. A tad typical of my luck I must say.  I also have to stick her head on, because of all that hair.
In-game, she's an Oniwaban - a stealth close combat one-hit-kill assassin with no ranged weapons at all, and ranged weapons are King in Infinity.  Models with high CC usually shoot and waggle their eyebrows at the enemy, daring them to get closer.  Unless they've got stealth, like Ninjas and Oniwaban.  Or smoke grenades. Or both, like Shinobu Kitsune.

The second is a bog standard Ninja, who comes with sword/scabbard arm configuration and a combi-rifle for some reason.  Well, the reason is that he has a combi-rifleis that his basic loadout includes one I suppose, but I have no idea where it would go.  I could glue/strap it to his back, but that would not be aesthetically preferable, and gluing it onto his base seems lazy.  It'll probably be the first addition to my Infinity bits box I suppose.  Nevertheless, I don't see any major difficulties arising to assembling him, past the normal 'small fiddly bits' problem.
In-game, he'll be deployed close to the enemy front lines for harass and killy duties, preferably shooting people off, despite his CC prowess, as closing with an enemy in CC often dispels his greatest defence, the TO: Camouflage (read: invisibility stealth suit).  Close Combat doesn't happen often in Infinity, yet I've gone and chosen the army that literally brings a sword to a gunfight as my starter army.

Sounds fun.