Finally returning to my semi-regular posting style, I think it’s about time I made some additional progress on my Pirates. Everyone loves Pirates, after all, and they’re one of the most iconic factions for a game about pirates, after all. They also have such great variety – I’m never bored painting pirates, and I get to use a whole bunch of different colors to create a motley crew.

This is also a fun process because I’m getting closer and closer to finishing another crew – I’ve got a single Deckhand left for this crew now, and they’ll paint up relatively quickly, assuming I have the gumption to actually sit down and work.

Regicide Alvarez

A relatively standard paint job here, but one that really came together as I worked on her over the course of a few days. This is one of the few cases where I took a larger break between painting sessions on an individual model – I’ve found that I’m doing that more and more often for Leaders because I really want to get them looking great. Regicide has a lot of fiddly bits, but it’s all quite distinct and clear. I think she’s one of my favorite sculpts by Werner Klocke right now – there’s a lot going on. Assembly was a little bit fiddly, as I have her arms quite close to her body rather than extended outwards, but it’s totally fine.

Now, on to painting! First and most importantly would be the leather of her boots, cuffs, and hat. These were built up gradually from a basecoat of Dark Umber, shaded with some reddish hues to help tie her together. I then started to highlight up everything, starting with some Flat Earth, moving up through a Golden Brown, and then hitting the highest areas with a really thin glaze of Golden Brown mixed with Warm Yellow. This creates a nice, rich leather that shows a lot of wear over the years – it’s definitely in need of some additional refinement and cleanup, but it looks quite nice right now.

Her skin was the next bit I wanted to work on: I started with a mix of Orange Brown and Sanguine Shadow to create a bit of a warm undertone to her skin, and then started highlighting up using Sunny Skin Tone mixed with Brown Rose until I got to pure Sunny Skin Tone. At this point, I had a good mid tone established, so even further highlights were done using Tan Flesh, mixed with a touch of Olive Skin Tone to cool it a bit, as I got her face highlighted. Then, there were a lot of intermediate glazes to hopefully smooth things out a bit – this is key for skin, and doubly so for relatively smoother feminine skin. Regicide got some reds glazed in around the temple as well, to hopefully make her look slightly angrier.

Next up was her shirt and pants. I decided to use the same cloth recipe I use for my canvas color, so a simple Tan -> Khaki -> Iraqi Sand got me most of the way there. Then, as I keep trying to follow the concept art, I opted to add the freehanded stripes that she has on her bandana and pants, albeit a little less well-executed. Stripes were freehanded using a start of Orange Brown mixed with Sanguine Shadow, then highlighted using Orange Brown followed by Orange – this gives a nice, orange-y contrast that matches the concept art.

Next up, her jacket! There’s only one choice for this, and that’s red – it matches some of the art, but also seems really appropriate for someone as hot-tempered as Regicide. Locura has really taught me a lot about reds, so I started with a base coat of a reddish brown to establish the color (Burnt Red + Dark Umber), then worked my way up until I was at P3’s Khador Red, giving me an incredibly saturated red.

Now that the larger areas were done, it was time to tackle the next complicated bit – the NMM gold. As I mentioned above, she has a ton of little details and elements on her clothing that will need some careful NMM painting, so I opted for my warmer, old-gold recipe of Warm Brown -> Orange Brown -> Warm Yellow -> Ice Yellow -> Ivory, with some additional glazes of a reddish-brown into the shadows to help keep it nice and warm. This was a pretty back-and-forth process: she’s got some cool weird shapes that need to read as golden, so I was working on it for quite a while.

At this point, I noticed that her bodice and the straps on her boots were just kinda there, so I wanted to make them stand out a bit more. I painted all of the straps black before starting to highlight them up to a warmer gray to represent slightly-worn black leather. Admittedly, I still need to prime, paint, and attach her belt pistol, but we’re moving forward and that’s the most important bit.

The NMM on the sword was done using my recently-discovered favorite recipe. For those who want a refresher and to pad out my wordcount properly document everything as I think through this painting process, it all begins with a basecoat of black. Then, using Payne’s Grey and Anthracite Grey, I start blocking in the shadowed areas before mixing in a bluish-white to the mix as I gradually establish highlights for the metal. This makes a really nice, cold steel appearance.

I’d also like to take a second to acknowledge the blend on the flat of the blade, about halfway up. It’s probably the best one I’ve ever done, and I’m going to highlight it so I can remind myself to look at it and do that when painting for smoother blends.

Finally, the feather. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what color would stand out best here, so I randomly chose and landed on red – she’s got a lot of warm colors on her, so it only makes sense, and a red feather will coordinate with the rest of her outfit. Drawing on my work with Locura, I did the usual feather highlighting to keep the vanes really distinct.

Her base is going to need some additional work on the flag – I’m trying to find the proper color scheme for an Imperial Armada flag that she’s stomping on. I may do a separate post about flags and how to make them.

Captain Regicide Alvarez, The AngRiest Pirate Leader

Regicide Alvarez, first introduced in the Deep Jungle expansion of 1E, is a Leader for the Pirates and a pretty straightforward one at that. While she’s got the usual Authority, Order, and Rallying Cry traits that comes standard with a lot of Leaders, she’s unusual in that she has exceedingly high morale: her first couple of boxes in Grievous Injury even have her hitting the morale cap of 9, which is already impressive.

Regicide’s defining trait is, without a doubt, Hot-Blooded. As soon as she loses at least one LP, she’s overtaken by anger and suddenly what was a fairly standard stat line turns into a terrifying close combat fighter. She gets a +1/+2 ST bonus, +1/+1 T bonus, and the Steadfast trait for as long as she doesn’t fail a morale test. Note that her odds of failing a morale test are some of the lowest in the game: Steadfast allows for a re-test should she fail a morale test. She brings a pistol and a rapier to the fight, with her Hot-Blooded trait serving to change them from relatively average weapons into weapons that rival double-handed or heavy weapons.

She’s a solid, no-frills Leader for the Pirates, and while she’s a bit outshined in other areas by more specialized Pirate Leaders, she’s a great example of the versatility of Pirates – she can act as an Order-dispensing Leader until she’s wounded, at which point she’ll be able to charge in and deal with whatever enemy has the misfortune to have attacked her.

Hobby Progress

Priming is done for all of the initial crews! I’ve got them set aside on my desk and I’m steadily working through the backlog as I aim to have enough models for people to play. I’ve also ordered some rat miniatures for the Hunt for Rats in October, opting for the cheapest option Reaper could provide to start as I’d rather have scenario tokens to play the game.

I’m also starting in on sculpting some boats. At the moment, that mostly involves making some base meshes that look like the boat sizes, followed by messing about with adding details. This is probably going to take a while, but I at least have a Yola-shaped object started, and at the end of the day, isn’t that what we all need?