Showcase: Falkaaran Adventurers

It's new release Tuesday!  The Falkaaran adventurers have surpassed their Kickstarter goal, hit a stretch goal, and are on their way out to backers and retail stores!  

I just finished painting the company's studio models this week, so let's take a look at what the finished freeband looks like...

Where to start?  There's a ton of character in each model and they're all so different, the opportunities afforded while painting a Falkaaran freeband are huge.  I was directed to paint each model to its "codex" standard, but as we'll see in the weeks to come when I paint more, there's a ton of ways to make your adventurers stand out from the rest on the table top.

The Bladeseekers hail from their home in the Falkaaran city Jendal, where the country's most renowned blade-schools can be found.  Some of the best swordsmen in the world, Bladeseekers often lead freebands after committing to a blade-quest, seeking to attain the rank of master.

The colors of Jendal are green and white; to accent those colors on the model, dark brown was chosen for leather armor, cream for clothing, light brown for trimming, and brass for buckles and studs, just enough contrast between pieces so that all his great details stand out.

Jendal

The pikeman doesn't hail from one particular city, but is found across the country in the most populous areas, defending its citizens and protecting its baronies.  This model has fantastic scale armor that looks awesome painted with a dark silver and highlighted with mithril.

The shield has a lot of canvas for something cool to be painted on, or battle scarring from its time in the field, maybe something like this...

That's the Falkaar royal heraldry, but you could use any of the cities heraldry to make your shields stand out.

Falkaar Royalty

This tough looking guy is the Knight Defender, a royal guard and leader in the field.  Super tough this knight can stand up to a mountain of punishment and still lay down his own with his massive warhammer.

Hogwarts is located in Scotland, but the wizarding elite of Falkaar study the arcane arts in Tlhar (a tough name for a mere mortal to pronounce).  Their colors are a gold pterodactyl resplendent on a field of black.  The Traazorite Legions to the south are rumored to ride dinosaurs, and this seems proof positive of that.

Tlhar

I wanted to give this Fire Wizard the look of a true pyromancer, so a bit of glow on his staff, hand and eyes lets you know he can cast fireballs with the best of them.

The Falkaaran rune for fire is "Thra," which is featured prominently on the back of his cloak, surrounded by the signs of the celestial and mundane.  North (covered by his hanging hood), south, east, and west are at the four points on the circle, accompanied by sun (above east), moon (above west), earth (on the lower left), and more.  It's a kind of zodiac, if you will.

The Bladesisters of Karadel are resolute and pragmatic fighters, seeking the killing blow as swiftly as possible.  Red is a fitting color for such a maiden of death, and it just so happens that is the color of their home as well.

Karadel

The Bladesister is wonderfully posed and a true joy to paint, I had a lot of fun putting lipstick and eye-shadow on this one!

Those of Falkaar's cities open to the ocean host a swarm of sailors, so when the freeband heads out, there's sure to one or two tagging along for a chance to claim their share of the booty!

This cool Sailor sculpt can easily be converted to be holding a brace of daggers or a sword for a bit of variation in your freeband.  The anchor does look cool though!

That's it for this week and a look at the new Falkaaran Adventurers for DGS's fantasy skirmish game Freeblades!  Come back next time as we start getting ready for GenCon.

Good gaming and happy hobbying!

Bandit Job Posting: Those Who Wish to Keep Their Left Eye Need Not Apply

Raiding and pillaging is hard work, and those who are on the front lines take the brunt of the abuse.  Throughout the ages an army's expendables have gone by a plethora of names: cannon-fodder, grunt, chaff, kamikaze, the list goes on.  For the Black Rose Bandits in Faelon they simply call theirs "thugs."  This week we're going to look at four unlucky fellows who pulled the short straw and got the thankless duty of being bandit cannon fodder.  It's hard work, and as you can tell by every single one of them having an eye patch over their left eye, not a great career move if you want to keep your left side as your best side.

This project is thanks to Jon C. who commissioned up four different poses for his thugs.  He wanted something different, a little more dynamism, different flavor, but he didn't say anything about the eye patches...

Here's the stock thug pose, you may remember this guy from a previous post where I converted yet another thug for Jon.

To get the all-pewter models into different poses took a little green stuff, some brass pins, and a fair amount of elbow grease.

This guy is probably my favorite, somewhere along in his adventures he found a conquistador helmet!  Sometimes I have a very rough idea of what I want to do with the green stuff and I let it tell me what it wants to do when I put it on the model.  After smoothing and shaping the helmet a bit, it said, "Matt we're going back to the 16th century with this guy."  I can't argue with what the 'stuff says.

In hindsight I probably should have given him a silly little moustache.

Here he is painted up.  I really am pleased with his color palette, the contrasts are subtle and classic with a nice disbursement of light, medium, and dark browns.

It's hard not to like this pose, it says exactly what it means, "I'm going to brain you with this chunk of wood!"

This model needed a major leg reposition.  I cold get away with simply bending the leg on some with jeweler's pliers, but on this guy I had to get out the bone saw and take some off the top of his left leg to get the pewter to move as far as I wanted it to.  Repositioning the legs really is the difference in building the overall feel of this model's action, without it his lower half would look terribly rigid compared to the action above. 

This guy has a lot of potential for interpretation, what is he doing with his right arm?

Is he punching?  Taunting?  About to lay across with a backhand?

Ultimately it's up for you to decide, though I think he could be just about to do this.

This guy is really swinging for the fences!

So much so that he's completely weight bearing on his rear foot.

A blood trail streaming off his mace would push this guy over the top...

Well, that's it for this week and these thug models!  Thanks for stopping by and checking out my work.  If you'd like a model professionally converted contact me at midwestmonsterlab@gmail.com and I'll get started on your project!

What's on My Desk: Falkaaran Fire Wizard Green Stuff Conversion!

This week I'm finally ponying up a promise to Jason C. and finishing his free Falkaaran Fire Wizard.  Jason won a small trivia contest I offered on the DGS forums, where he had to guess the video game character that I took inspiration from for a paint job on a Haradelan Archer.  Click the link, you guess who it was?

If you said Link, from the Legend of Zelda, then you'd have been right!  That's what Jason guessed and for his prize I offered to paint a model for him for free.  He chose a Falkaaran fire wizard for his mini, and after a few months of playing email tag, we met up and I finally got the model on my desk.

Let's take a quick look at the modifications behind the conversion and then a few more pics of the finished project!

The fire wizard is a cool model with a lot of potential, but to me, it's up to the hobbyist to really make the model shout, "I'm going to hurl some hot fiery death at your face!"  With that goal in mind I decided to do a conversion, adding trail of flame arcing from the wizard's casting hand up to his staff.  To get the job done I'd need my pin-vice, a pair of jeweler's pliers, a piece of super thin brass rod, a paper-clip, and some good old green stuff.  

To start, I pinned a paper clip into his staff-arm allowing him a larger range of motion and the ability to hold his staff high above to better demonstrate his dramatics (fire mages are a showy bunch.  A bit of green stuff filled the gap nicely and fleshed out his sleeve to gel with his torso.

Next came the work on the most important part of the conversion, the flame trail.  I wanted to use the thinnest brass rod I had to be the support for the green stuff flame I had yet to sculpt.  This was for two reasons: the flame would be very thin at his hand and I didn't want any rod to show, and using a very light rod allowed me to easily get a smooth bend I wanted for the arc.  

To attach the rod, I pinned it into the wizard's left hand and then worked along its length with a pair of jeweler's pliers bending it to get a nice subtle curve.  I marked where it met his staff and then drilled a pilot there, fastened the rod and completed the arc.  Now all there was would be to sculpt the flame!

Unfortunately, I got a bit distracted with my time constraint and didn't take any more WIP pics from here, so hopefully those who are wondering about the exact details can make do with a brief explanation and the completed paint pics.  

To do the the green stuff flame (which I am a novice at and am eager to try different approaches) I wrapped 'stuff around the rod first, smoothing it and pushing it into what would look like waves.  Finally, I added tear drop pieces to the arc, fastening their fattest part to the arc and pulling the narrow end into wispy tongues of flame.

After that it was up to a killer paint job to drive home the effect.  I know a darker set of base tones would have really made the source lighting stand out, but I decided on day-time lighting so that the whole model was clearly visible.

On his robe, I incorporated a pattern of cool diamond and flame designs to give a little umph to such a broad surface.

For his wardrobe I went with a rich red to emphasize fire, ash gray for contrast, and cloth-of-gold for his under tunic.  I seesawed a bit on the choice between using gold or silver, but in the end the MacDaddy of metallics won out and it was definitely gold.  Who'd want to wear silver anyway?... proabably these guys.

And that's it for this Falkaaran Fire Wizard conversion and what's on my desk this week!  Congrats again to Jason for knowing is iconic video game characters and giving me the opportunity to do this project!

Come back next week to see the freshly painted Freeblades minis I'll be showing off.  

Thanks for stopping by, and as always, happy hobbying and good gaming!