Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day, perhaps the most important holiday for a game about pirate skirmish action. While today’s finished model isn’t quite a pirate, he falls close enough to the pirate spectrum to be appropriate to post.

The cazador Comadreja v2

Fun fact: this is the second sculpt that the Cazador Comadreja has gotten for Freebooter’s Fate. The first was retired a while ago, with the second being done by Krysa Project. Still, much as I love Werner Klocke’s sculpting, I also appreciate how others can work within his style and the visual language he created for Freebooter’s Fate.

Still, that’s not why people are here – it’s for hobby stuff and how it relates to Freebooter’s Fate. So, without too much further ado, here’s the Cazador Comadreja in full color (apart from his base):

While there’s some areas that I think can use more refinement, I think the overall effect of this mini is fantastic. It’s definitely one of the cleanest I’ve managed so far, and while there’s always going to be areas in photos that I see, at a tabletop distance he’s looking good.

I’ve already gone over my blues for the Imperial Armada, so let’s talk leather today. This was an experiment in a simple three-tone leather with a few mixes: base layer of a dark purple/red mixed with warm brown, then moving up to the warm brown, then successive mixed highlights up to a golden brown color, followed by a final glaze of red and brown mixed in to help tie everything together. This was a dead-simple leather recipe and it feels really good on the model. It also helps to keep the triad of tones nicely balanced – the dominant color is blue, with accents in yellow via the gold and a little hint of warm red via the leather.

I know I’ve talked a lot about NMM and how much I’ve been enjoying it lately, but I think that this model shows it off quite well. While I definitely could stand to work on the steel armor sections a bit, I’m finally comfortable enough with golds to say that I’ve got a recipe down. It’s a bold, somewhat cartoonish gold, but I love how it looks when placed next to the steel. The sword and pistol are both some of the best NMM I’ve managed to do yet, and while I think that some broader highlights on the sword would work better so there aren’t as many of the ‘checkerboard NMM’ patterns on the blade, it’s a great color overall that works fantastically on the model.

I’ll post up my thoughts on how he plays later, but in short: he’s the natural leader for my Cazadors, he buffs the rest of the crew nicely, and he’ll get to show off some of the fun mechanics against my Cult crews.

Hobby Progress

Well, I finished painting the Cazador Comadreja, which means that 50% of my Cazador force is completed! I hope to work on the rest tomorrow, as well as decide what the next two crews to work on will be. I know I gave a vague order on the blog, but this is turning into a more complex endeavor as I’m hoping to have a broad selection of models ready.

I’ll likely be priming a bunch of my freshly-assembled models later, especially because my demo crews for Pirates, Brotherhood, Goblin Pirates, and Amazons are all just partially-primed right now. I’m hoping to start thinking about how I want to approach things moving forward, but I know my planned Pirate crews have changed roughly three times at this point because I keep coming up with fun ideas for themed crews.

Finally, I’ve somehow managed to keep posting daily hobby content for longer than I thought I’d be able to, so I’m counting that as a hobby progress win, because actually doing stuff is the hardest part of getting things done. Yeah, that’s a ridiculous phrase, but I stand by it.