More work on pirates these days, as I suspect the theme will become clearer as you see more of the Specialists that I’m planning on using for them. Pirates are varied enough that you can make most crew ideas work if you’re willing to play around with your lists, and as with all less-than-serious games, aiming for thematic crews is a lot more fun than just optimizing your lists.

Also, I really need to apologize for how washed-out these photos are. Some of the paints used are quite glossy, so what looks fine in person is absolutely a nightmare to actually capture with a camera. I’ll have to work more on softening things up when I have the time.

Piedro the Publican

Piedro the Publican is a Specialist for the Pirates, and an absolute joy to paint for this. Thanks to the positioning of his head and arm, I’ve had to work on him in sub-assemblies: his right wrist/anchor is one such assembly, as is his head. If you recall the issues with getting the Queen of Shadows assembled after working that way, I am pleased to report that he went together much more easily thanks to having a much simpler attachment point.

His skin is the first major part that I worked on, as it’s such a prominent part of the model. I began by basecoating everything in a dark warm brown, followed by progressive layers of various fleshtones until I land at Monument’s Warm Flesh, thinned down into glazes, as my final highlight. There’s the usual back-and-forth to make sure that I’ve got some definition on the muscles and that it looks like he has skin, rather than isolated little islands of brightness, but that’s just the aperitif for the main reason anyone is interested in this – his tattoos!

Per the recommendations of other, much more skilled painters, I mixed up a ‘tattoo ink’ paint out of VMC’s Basic Skin Tone and Golden High-Flow Payne’s Grey. This combination gives that nice old-school tattoo appearance – not quite black, not quite blue or green, but faded into the skin. Then, using a very fine brush and a lot of well-braced paintwork, I started to draw designs on him. On his right shoulder, I took the designs directly from his concept art, but as I started drawing the coiling designs around his arm, I decided that it could easily be a rope. What better to attach to a rope than a gigantic anchor across his back, then? Using the physical model’s anchor as my guide, I sketched it – along with several other elements of more-or-less nautical theming – onto his back and started working back and forth with my skin tones. I think he came together fairly well after all of this, and this recipe is fantastic for many of the pirates I’ll be painting down the line.

Now that the important bits were done, it was time to start on his clothing. His apron – the biggest piece – started with a coat of Tindalos Red mixed with a bit of Payne’s Gray to reduce the redness and make a more neutral brown. I then started highlighting in a very scratchy fashion, using orange-browns, ochres, Iraqi sand, and Pale Sand for the final bits to create a well-worn, dirty looking apron for him.

The pants started off with a coat of a dark greenish-brown and then followed the same procedure, albeit with a few stopovers in actual green colors to give them a little bit more saturation and show that he’s wearing a pair of well-worn pants. It creates a nice, dingy duck cloth effect that I remember from my youth camping in ancient tents, so that’s definitely a plus. Piedro, having lost his bar, is now more interested in vengeance than fashion, so he’s going to be wearing these until the fools who tossed a rum barrel into the fireplace are taken care of.

Speaking of rum barrels, he’s still got one on him, so that’ll need some painting. Rum is traditionally aged in oak barrels, but given that this is a fantasy universe, I’ve opted to start with a coat of mahogany paint. Highlights are added using mixes of Iraqi Sand and Pale Sand to my base tone, and the barrel is ‘grayed’ to convey age using a very light drybrush of warm gray, followed by some strategic glazes of sepia ink – this has to look like a really impressive barrel, after all!

Next up is his ‘other’ most notable feature – the former sign of his beloved pub, the Golden Anchor. While the actual gold paint is gone now, I’ve added in a few spots here and there to evoke that memory using my usual old NMM gold recipe. The majority of it is good ol’ iron, however, and this was done by first painting everything in a deep matte black, followed by a first overall highlight/tone using the same high-flow Payne’s Grey that I used on his tattoos. Once that had dried, I started mixing in progressive amounts of blue-white and created broad highlights, making sure to diffuse them so that the anchor didn’t look too shiny when I was finished with it. This involves a lot of fuzzing via glazes, because the sharper the highlight, the shinier the object appears to be.

The tattoos especially were a great way to enjoy some freestyle painting – I don’t do much freehand, but it’s incredibly fun to do and I suspect some pirates are going to have a few tattoos in the future.

Piedro Brings the Rum

Piedro the Publican is a fantastic melee piece for the Pirates – with high T and V values, he’s able to soak up a hit or two as he tries to get into melee and has more than your average light V values to ensure he won’t panic as he’s approaching. While toughness is one thing, actually attacking opponents is another. He doesn’t get any extra A without a friend, but he practically doesn’t need it: using the Golden Anchor, he’s got a ST of 9 when he can connect. Chain Weapon makes cover useless against his strikes, and Armour-piercing ensures that if he hits, opponents can only resist using their lower T value. Finally, he’s got access to Whirlwind Attack – if you can get him into a multi-participant melee, then prepare to watch several enemies fall over.

What’s even more important than his combat abilities, however, is his Incentive trait. He grants a morale bonus to everyone within 20 cm of him – that’s huge, and it will (possibly) synergize well with some upcoming traits that we’ll be talking about later. Anything that helps morale is fantastic, and his giant cask of rum is a great way to keep your pirates in the fight for longer.

Hobby Progress

I’ve been doing a bit more random sculpting and working on my competition piece in addition to painting some pirates, which has been a great way to keep my motivation up. I’m hoping to get some tokens done next, which will be quite helpful as I prepare for my preferred demo scenarios.