I’ve been a little more tuned in to some sculpting projects lately, but I did have some time to work on painting a couple more miniatures. I’ve noticed that I’m painting faster and having less difficulty making some choices on color. While my Goblin Pirates have been the primary beneficiary of my practice, I decided to take a break from the greenies and work on one of my Brotherhood minis.

Bonaccia

Bonaccia was one of the first miniatures I bought for Freebooter’s Fate, and it’s taken me way too long to actually put paint on her. Thankfully, she was easy to fit into my planned Brotherhood demo crew, so I decided to give her a quick coat of paint.

Her boots and gloves were painted with a base layer of Scale75 Red Leather, then highlighted up using successive mixes of golden brown and light umber to create a polished leather appearance. This involved a lot of intermediate glazes of the mixes – S75 is fantastic for glazing – to help the layers blend together. On closer inspection via photos, I think it needs a few more glazes here to really blend everything well, but at a tabletop distance, she’s fantastic.

Her cloak was basecoated in black, and then followed by a number of warm gray glazes. This went surprisingly fast – it was mostly smoothing the larger jumps. I think the shadows could use a bit more depth, but it does look like a smooth cloak in person. I mixed in some light umber to the warm gray to continue highlighting towards the edges, which ended up working out pretty nicely. Her clothing was done similarly, except starting with a dark green base coat, with the corset getting some extra green and the dress/bodysuit elements getting more gray.

The knife is one of my most successful NMM projects so far. I kept the usual recipe of going up from Coal Black to Hellbound Flesh. The final highlight, however, was a bluish-white to give it a cooler feel than my usual yellow highlights, and I spent a lot more time smoothing between the layers. I still notice things that aren’t quite right, but that’s just a matter of spending more time on it.

Her mask was a bit of a loose process as well – I started with a medium warm gray, then highlighted it up through ivory and into the bluish-white that I used for the NMM. A lot of glaze smoothing ensued, including deepening the shadows using a slightly darker gray paint than my original base coat. Smoothness was essential – white is such a tricky color, after all – but as it was a very small part of the overall miniature, it went by fast.

This is probably one of the nicest models I’ve painted so far, at least in person – the highlights look quite soft when you’re not zoomed in as much. This was not a model I spent a ton of time on, either: it went quickly, the decisions were all part of an easy workflow, and the colors all seem to work together nicely to give her a unified appearance.

So what does she do for the Brotherhood?

Bonaccia is a Specialist for the Brotherhood, as one might expect, and she is perhaps the most archetypal assassin model you can hire with them. She moves quickly, is surprisingly defensive thanks to Lightning Reflexes, and is remarkably resistant to ranged attack thanks to Agile and Hide. While she doesn’t have any ranged options, her close combat abilities are fantastic: Sneak Attack and Blade Mistress means that she can easily make complex charges around terrain and will be attacking at a huge advantage. Her basic ST of 7, along with poison, ensures that when she manages to get hits in, she can ensure that these hits start causing damage.

She’s a fantastic model, and she does everything that the Brotherhood is best at. While there’s no real surprises in her stats, she doesn’t really need them – if you want to play Brotherhood, you’ll be able to find a spot in your crew for her because she’s just that good.

Hobby Progress

I’ve been getting some more painting done, as one might expect. Brotherhood is now 75% ready for demos, which is a great benchmark to hit. They still need basing, obviously, but that’s a pretty quick process and ensures that they all will look unified on the game board.

I hope to get some Goblin Pirates painted tonight, though I have no idea how much energy I’ll have after today.