Weekly Waffle #356 – He’s Invincible
23rd November 2024
For this week’s weekly waffle I have something a little bit different for you. No grots and no orks this week. I know that’s me straying far from my normal mark of late, but sometimes a change is as good as rest. Although I do have to say the main reason is a lack of self control. Once I get something new and shiny I just can’t resist having a play with it. So the Infinity miniatures that arrived last week found their way onto my work bench, well it’s a desk, and it was only one miniature. I had fully intended to leave these until next year and to carry on with my Orks. But the idea of painting one of them up was just burning away at the back of my mind so in typical fashion I cracked.
I mentioned last week that a couple of guys have ordered Operation Sandtrap which the release that will introduce the N5 rule set. They were looking to give Infinity a go starting with that starter set and building up from there. I haven’t looked at any the release information but from wha they were saying there will be further releases or supporting material that will help build your force up from the starter set. So essentially start small with simple games, learn the core rules and then expand from there. Once you have the rules down you can start to play larger games. It all sounds really good and I love the minis so was going to give it a go.
The release of Operation Sandtrap should have been round about now but it has been pushed back. A bit disappointing for those waiting for it but for me it gives me a chance to try out a few ideas for which faction I want to try. Trawling the inter webs I haven’t really been able to find anything that helps me put a list together. The best advice I have found was to get a starter set. Learn the rules and then pick the miniatures you like. Which is excellent advice but didn’t really help me with picking which faction I wanted to go with.
I then stumbled across an article which gave a bit of breakdown of the pros and cons of each faction. If you want to have a look the site was ‘The Dice Abide’ and it gives a reading system for each faction. On of the things it rates them on is Accessibility or how easy it is to get to grips with the way the faction plays. For me I wanted something easy and one of the factions that scored the highest in this area was Yu Jing. Panoceania also scored high but I know Al already has some of these minis so I decided to go with Yu Jing. I like the look of the minis and if they were going to be easy or easier to learn how to use that was a winner for me.
I wanted to dip my toes into the water and not dive full in so picked up the Zuyong Invincible box set. It has four minis in it. Three Invisibles along with a remote and to be honest I just liked the look of the minis. No idea what they will be like in a game. I just wanted something to paint to make sure I liked how they looked. After all there is no point painting up an army if you don’t like how it looks. Or at least I don’t think there is.
The box art colour for them is an orange / yellow which is quite striking. I’ve painted on up in the past, although I have no idea where it is now. But it gave me the confidence that I could do the paint job justice and it would look nice on the table. But before i committed to anything I sent my diving down a rabbit hole. Which led me to a completely different colour scheme I wanted to try.
I came across the Lazy Painter site by Dmitry Bogdanov and he had a unit of Yu Jing that won the Best Unit at GenCon in 2018.. They looked fantastic, as you might expect, but he also has a tutorial of how he painted them on his site. They are Jade Green which fits the Yu Jing background very well. I know there is no way I can paint as well as him but I did think I could do something that wouldn’t embarrass him. Not that I have ever met him or am ever likely to. But I do want to give him a shout out for inspiring me.
So all of that is very long winded way of saying that for my hobby time this week I have been painting an Infinity Zuyong Invincible. Specifically the Specialist Kit Kokram. Simply because I like the fact he is dual wielding pistols and he looks really cool. I tried to follow the Lazy Painter guide and stuck to most of it. There was an odd bit where I had use an alternative paint but nothing major. It certainly didn’t alter the finished product.
The tutorial was really good and easy to follow. The first five steps were all done with the airbrush and then it was on to the brush to try and make it look as good as possible. Mine is nowhere near as good as Dmitry’s but I do like how it turned out. With more practice I think I can get better and I think these will look really cool on the table top. The free hand was real challenge and I think it has highlighted that the tips on my brushes are probably not at there best so I may need to replace one or two of them before trying the next set of free hand.
I decided to use some of the proper Infinity scenic bases in the form of the Epsilon Series ones. This was mainly because I had it in my head that winter themed bases would look really cool. But I also wanted a little bit of detail in the bases and these seemed to really fit the bill. Painted up as desert bases with snow added to them is exactly what I was looking for.
Overall I’m really happy with how he has turned out. I really think that I can do better in the future but I have pushed myself with this guy and I’m enthused to get a game in, in the new year. As long as I can paint up a few more minis. But what do you think of him.
I have the other three minis that came in the box to paint up so I think it will be a mix of them and the Orks I will be working on for the rest of the year. Work is going to get manic again over the next few weeks so hobby time will be impacted again but I think that between now and Christmas I have enough time and material to give you a finished mini each week. I’m also trying to decide what to get next to add the Yu Jing and I’m going to stick firmly with the rule of cool. If I like the look of it I will get it and then work out if it’s any good after that. Simply because I know I will enjoy painting it.
That’s it for this week. I hope you all have a great week whatever you have planned. Stay safe and hope to see you all back here again next week.
