I want to take a bit of time here today to talk about why skirmish games are great for people who either don’t like to do too much painting or who paint rather slowly but enjoy working on pieces to the best of their abilities. This isn’t anything that hasn’t been written before – I’m pretty sure every discussion of skirmish games with low model counts talks about this – but it’s the kind of philosophical rambling that I really like to bring up sometimes. It’s also a backdoor to allow me to discuss things like the technical aspects of miniature sculpting, which was my main point of connection to the overall wargaming hobby for several years.

Freebooter’s Fate is an ideal game for this: it’s got enough history and existing models to have a lot of variety, but there’s a core group of sculptors who have followed consistent design language and theming (as well as materials!) to ensure that everything belongs to the same universe, no matter how weird or out there the concept ends up being. It’s also set in an era that doesn’t have as many fantasy miniatures designed for it – the default setting of many games is a vaguely medieval-ish/early modern fantasy world. This is, of course, present in the DNA of Freebooter’s Fate given that Werner Klocke sculpted for Games Workshop and even did some direct proxies via Freebooter Miniatures back in the early days, but really leaning into the Golden Age of Piracy design language creates a unique, unified feeling to the setting, to the point that older models that got folded into FF (Brahyn, Lobo) felt out of place.

Scale, Proportion, and Design Language

When talking about the art of sculpting miniatures, there’s three factors that keep models looking like they fit in the same universe. Unfortunately for us, the first two terms are used relatively interchangeably which can lead to problems when discussing how models look in relation to one another.

Scale refers to how large a miniature is in comparison to its (possibly imagined) real-life counterpart. The standard wargaming scale for most individually-based models is between 28mm – 35mm, depending on manufacturer; think of that like the rough scale for models for various Warhammers and games of those sort. The 28mm refers to how tall a standard human figure is – it’s closest to 1:64 scale, though that’s a bit wobbly at times as you start creeping up in size.

Proportion is where the real fun happens, however. This indicates how large certain parts of the miniature are in relation to the model itself: by the nature of miniatures, it’s necessary to exaggerate or simplify certain details to ensure that a model is readable on the table. Typically, we’ll see Heroic Proportions, where the hands and head are larger than they would be in reality. This typically means that a model in heroic proportions is going to be 5.5 – 6 heads in height, whereas as model in ‘realistic’ proportions would be 7 to 7.5 heads in height.

To better illustrate this (as well as show how Freebooter Miniatures are done in realistic proportions), here’s a quick photo edit showing these proportions off:

Since these models are 7 heads tall (and the hands aren’t overly-exaggerated), you can see that they are in ‘realistic’ proportions in 32mm scale.

Design Language is the last thing to talk about when considering how the models fit together. While there’s a lot of words to be spilled on this topic, the idea is to have a unified element of visual aesthetics that set the models as existing in the same imagined space, oftentimes with broader design choices reflected in how models tie into specific factions or groups. This is a giant category, but it’s one of the most important to consider when designing miniatures that will have incredibly varied designs. Think of what design elements make you think of a Space Marine; what are the key details that change the silhouette from “person” to “Space Marine” and which ones can be changed or embellished to create individual variations and characters from those points.

To talk about the design language of Freebooter’s Fate, let’s take a look at the two crews I have group pictures of:

While the colors were all chosen by me, I want you to take a look at some of the common elements of the models. Look at the buckles on Gualtiero and Cazador Comadreja’s boots – they’re the same design, which both ties into the Cultist leader’s past as a Cazador and creates a universe-based reference point for the footwear. You can also see how the lower-height shoes he’s wearing are very similar to those worn by the Cazador Guards – shoes are, after all, pretty universal objects, but there’s a lot you can do with the shapes to make them fit a certain time or place.

Secondly in terms of design elements, look at how everyone is standing. The Cazadors are all standing up straight, typically with a sort of proud bearing, whereas the Cult members are either showing movement or hunching over. This sells the visual difference between them, as well as creates an emotional impression in the mind of the viewer – the Cazadors can be read as brave for acting as the bulwark against (perceived) evil or as threatening as armed occupiers, whereas the Cultists can be read as cowardly due to shrinking and staggering while wearing masks or as justified underdogs due to seeming like regular people who just grew fed up with how horrible everything has been.

There’s a lot more I can talk about with these kinds of models, like how there’s a uniform kind of trim that you find in the Imperial Armada or how members of the Cult all have different kinds of masks than you’ll find on Brotherhood models, but they all contribute towards these design impressions to make everything seem like it fits together.

These three aspects all meet together to form the overall game scale – what each model represents, how large they are, and what world they inhabit. It’s a lot to take in, and the more esoteric you get in terms of scale, proportion, and design, the harder it is for people to make terrain that works for it or to find other miniatures that might fit into the world. With the advent of 3D printing, it’s easier to find stuff that works for games.

Painting Speed and the 40K Army Fallacy

Trying to get people to try new games is really difficult. The go-to strategy is to have everything available and ready to be used in a demonstration – I believe historical gamers are especially prone to the “build two opposing forces” philosophy of collecting if they ever want to actually game out any uncommon time periods or armies. Thankfully, skirmish games are fairly easy on the wallet when setting up a couple of demo forces (and the starter boxes for Freebooter’s Fate are pretty good for that, especially considering how the themed crew boxes combine with the main faction boxes to form a roughly 500 doubloon crew), but it also runs into the issue that many games without constant meta churn or large armies face: people are reluctant to commit to painting because they’re used to the amount of time needed to paint a large army, with existing step-by-step guides for most (if not all) models. There’s a reason the hobby is often shorthanded as “painting Warhammer” rather than just “painting miniatures”, and it’s this market share that makes people assume every game will have exactly the same issues.

This also brings up a secondary issue: playing with unpainted miniatures in a skirmish game just feels a little worse because there are fewer models. I think everyone should play what they want, and I think that encouraging a culture of painting miniatures and trying to provide a high-quality experience for everyone involved, but you should do what you can to make a welcome environment. I tend to paint before playing, especially if there are around 15-20 miniatures total for the game, but other people might not be as interested in that aspect, so making painted miniatures available is something I plan to do.

As far as the time commitment: I believe this blog does a good job of showing how much you can accomplish with just regular evening painting sessions. Considering the average Crew Starter box is 4-5 miniatures, that’s realistically accomplished in a couple of weeks even if you’re a slow painter. Encouraging painting is pretty easy when you can demonstrate how long these things take, after all, as well as discussing how you might go about painting these models. That is part of why I’m working through all of the various factions on this blog – showing how to paint the different models might help someone who needs that extra boost of confidence.

You really don’t need to be a fast painter to get a full crew ready, so give it a shot.

Hobby Progress

I’m steadily getting more painting done on several models right now. Goblin Pirates are really close to being finished, so I’ve been concentrating on them in hopes of getting them finished so I can start up the next process.

I’ve also done a little more on Locura, but that’s the marathon painting, rather than the relative sprints for the individual crews.