Game night this week say me trying to rekindle some of my passion for MERCS after the kick in the teeth delivered by the minis in the Kickstarter. Al has spent the week reading up on the rules, or at least that’s what he told us, I supplied some minis (not from the Kickstarter) and we set ourselves up for a bit of corporate espionage. I’d like to say that my passion has been rekindled but that’s just not the case. Don’t get me wrong, as a standalone game Recon is fun and I will certainly play it again, well I have too because we didn’t’ actually finish our game on Tuesday and will be picking it up later. But I think that as someone’s whose passion for gaming originates in the look and quality of the miniatures the poor quality of the miniatures in this game tarnish the MERCS brand as a whole. If they hadn’t produced some nice table top minis before this wouldn’t be a problem but they seem to have taken a massive step backwards. So I think I would sum up Recon up as a fun board game with rubbish minis.
On the hobby front even though I’ve played Recon I haven’t even looked at the MERCS stuff, but I have been plodding on with my Confederates. This week I’ve concentrated on working my through the characters I got as part of the Kickstarter. So let’s start at them top with Stonewall Jackson who is one the two bosses (but the only one I have) for the Confederates. Like the scouts I took the inspiration for this guy from the concept art book. He has a bit of different colour palate to the other minis I’ve painted but I’ve kept things like the leather work the same and given him the same sort of base so I think he keeps the overall feel I’ve been looking for. Whilst at the same time standing out a bit as a good leader should.
Next up we have Buford Nash who is one of the sidekick options. I was a bit worried when I start out with him because the concept art pictures of him are all brown and I was worried he may be a bit bland. I used the same colour scheme as I used for the cloths on the scouts but made the highlights a bit brighter. I think the brass areas work well with the browns and give things just enough pop.
Continuing with sidekick theme and in rank order we have Captain Williams with his Cyclone Repeater. I didn’t have any images of this guy but so I decided go with the same colour scheme I used for the Light Support Scout which in turn was based on the art work for Corporal Franklyn (who comes up next). My thinking behind this was that all my big guns as I’m referring to them will have a similar feel. They’re not as sneaky as the scouts so don’t need the cloaks, they just stand there and blast away.
Next up we have the above mentioned Corporal Franklyn with his Thermite Carbine. Not much more to say about him really.
The final model for this week was the one that has caused some consternation. Jim Peterson was a Kickstarter exclusive mercenary model. At Adepticon earlier this year someone had a different sculpt of this model painted up as Deadpool and it looked really nice. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to get any pictures, or if I did I can’t find them. But this sort of stuck the idea in my head that this was how he should be painted up. The problem was I didn’t know if could pull off such a paint job so I just kept looking at it and not actually making a decision. Until this week when I took the plunge and went full Deadpool. Well what I really mean is inspired by Deadpool.
I’ve also made a start on Ben Hamilton who is an underboss and the last of characters from my Kickstarter bundle so with a bit of look he will be finished from next week. That will then leave me with a Blackhoof Scout, the Nazombie and another box of ten scouts to complete everything that I got for the Confederates. I’m thinking that I may try and do a few head swaps for the next lot of scouts just to try and give them a bit of a different feel to the original ones I painted up.
That’s been it on the hobby front but I’ve also started to make some changes the website. It’s been a while since I did any painting guides and this has mainly been down to the time it takes to get all the step by step pictures. I find that when I get in the mood to paint I don’t want to keep stopping to take pictures and as a result I haven’t been doing painting guides. But have been keeping my notes on how I’ve painted everything, so I’m going to revamp the approach to doing painting guides. I’m still going to try and do some of the original step by step picture versions. But I’m also going to do some where I just have the finished pictures and just talk through how I did the veracious elements starting with one for Jim Peterson on Monday.
The other thing I’ve started to do not that there is quite a bit of content on the site is try and make it a bit easier to find things. I did set up a host of different categories when set the site up but I’ve not been making the best use of them. So I’m now going back through all my old posts making sure the content and categories match up. The idea being that it will be easier to find just what it is you are looking for. It’s one of those things I should have been doing from day one but just forgot about and I’m now paying for that but it should be worth the effort in the long run.
I’ve also noticed that the light box function has stopped working so you can’t click on an image to see the larger version. I don’t know why this has happened and at the moment I don’t know how to fix it. But I am trying to sort it out and will get there in the end so please give me a bit of time to work it out.
That’s it for this week. I’m going to continue to plod away on my Confederates so with a bit of look I’ll have Ben Hamilton finished for next week and I may well have started on the next batch of scouts. Have a good week and hope to see you all again next week.
