Another day, another post. Today, here’s a freshly-repainted model from my return to Leonora and Freebooter’s Fate.

Capitan Alonso Garcia is a Leader for the Imperial Armada, and while he’s not the first choice for my demo crew, he will be used as the leader of my conventional Imperial Armada crew. Why am I clarifying this? Because one of the first people I’ve set up a demo for has requested trying a different Imperial Armada leader and crew build, plus it’s going to be a little more complicated and so he’ll be there for people just getting started with the game.

This model was the first in several experiments that I was working on when I was first trying out Freebooter’s Fate over 10 years ago:

• First time priming a model white.
• First time I tried NMM on a model.
• First time doing some conversion work on a metal model (okay, technically it was an accident, but there’s a minor conversion on his face to make him look like he’s lost his nose to a pirate’s sabre, because I nicked it off while cleaning the model)

So how did these experiments end up?

To give you an idea, there are no pictures of Capitan Garcia from before I did all this repainting, because it was not great. I was still in the “washes have to look good everywhere!” phase of painting and let me tell you, poorly applied wash over a chunky basecoat of blue does not a very pleasing model make. My NMM was quite chalky and didn’t actually look good, and his face – despite the conversion kind of working – was all a uniform shade of pink.

He’s still not technically a finished model, because I think his hair, the pistol holstered at his hip, and his base could use more painting work, but he’s pretty close. The gold NMM for his cloak and the embroidery accents is actually pretty good (for my painting ability), the blue feels like a nice fabric, and he reads as a leader with a commanding presence, so I’m calling him finished enough for demonstration purposes.

Demonstration Crew Composition: The Bog-Standard Imperial Armada

Capitan Garcia is, of course, the Leader model found in the first Imperial Armada starter box, and it’s abundantly clear why when you look at his card. He’s a good combatant, he does a great job of bolstering morale, and he represents a key part of the Imperial Armada’s strategy given his ability to issue orders and cover the gaps of his more shooting-based subordnates.

From a demonstration standpoint, he’s probably the ideal model to learn the game: he doesn’t have any complicated rules to teach, he can perform well in both ranged combat and melee (ST 8 on his cutlass arm isn’t anything to sneeze at!) and he does a great job keeping models in the game if they start panicking. He also teaches that the point of a leader isn’t to be your most expensive model or someone who charges in recklessly, but rather a model that can help keep the rest of your crew operating well.

In terms of demonstration weaknesses, I think it’s mostly down to flavor. While he fits the classic role of the noble captain opposed to the dastardly crew of pirates, that role isn’t quite the flavor you might want for a demo game unless he’s matched up against pirates in a skirmish. There’s also a lot of Leaders available for Imperial Armada that can provide a little more oomph.

Still, since I’m including this to talk about demonstration crews, what would a 300 doubloon list led by Garcia look like? My first thought is something like the following:

• Leader: Capitan Garcia
• Specialist: Sergeant Escopeta
• Deckhand: Arquebusier
• Deckhand: Arquebusier
• Deckhand: Asaltore

The idea here is the demonstrate how the Armada uses its strong shooting to establish a board presence, as well as how to effectively use Orders to move models up. While 3 Deckhands is a bit more than I’d normally want to bring in a demo, there’s not really any Specialists that I think fit into this, and I try to keep equipment and traits to a minimum for this sort of list.

This crew is a fantastic gunline, but since 4 out of the 5 ranged weapons are Heavy Weapons, that means reloading takes up a model’s entire activation. Unwary players who just try to shoot without thinking will quickly realize that an unloaded arquebus is just a double-handed club, and firing a shot every other turn means their opponents can learn to advance when weapons are unloaded. The hope is that they realize the strategy of having Capitan Garcia or Sergeant Escopeta issue an order to fire lets these soldiers reload during their turn and keep up a constant storm of lead; ideally, players would use the Wait action on one Arquebusier with a loaded weapon and have the other keep reloading and firing under orders.

The Asaltore is here to give a bit of a melee punch without losing the gunline theme, along with showing that different Deckhands can play different roles despite looking superficially similar. Additionally, I wanted an excuse to paint one of the several in my collection and avoid just having three of the same deckhand, which used to be restricted back in the day!

Overall, they’re the peak of a generic Imperial Armada crew – shooty with a clear chain of command and some morale-buffing. I can comfortably say someone with little wargaming experience could pick this demo crew up without a lot of difficulty.

Hobby Progress

Today saw me putting a lot of paint on a couple of Deckhands for my Cult crew, along with planning out some color recipes for the most important part of any Cult crew. I also worked on refining a few of the demo lists and making my cheat sheets for a lot of the rules so that I don’t have to explain things.

I also took some time to read through the three digital rulebooks that haven’t seen print in English yet: Tales of Longfall #8, #9, and #10. What surprised me the most was a bit in #8: Monster Island discussing optional rules to improve movement and make things feel more cinematic. I’ll probably talk about that in a post at some point, but the changes made seem really, really good and open up the verticality of the game.