I'm a long-time wargamer and hobbyist hailing from Vancouver, Canada. I’ve been wargaming for a little less than two decades now, bouncing between games like Warhammer: 40K, Warmachine/Hordes, Necromunda, and more recently X-Wing. But my first and dearest passion has always been for fantasy wargames...specifically Warhammer: Fantasy Battles. Thus it was with great sadness that I marked the passing of that illustrious game last summer.
Luckily for me, just as Sigmar’s hammer drove the last nails into Warhammer’s coffin, I caught wind of Mierce’s Metal Age kickstarter. Now truth be told I’d been following Darklands for some time at this point, holding off buying anything until closer to the actual shipping date once I’d gotten a sense of the rules and whether the game would be a success. But with Warhammer gone I had a hobby-sized hole in my life, and Darklands was screaming to fill it.
Thus without further ado I handed over my credit details and jumped in head first.
![Image](http://i.imgur.com/v5ABY44.jpg)
![Image](http://i.imgur.com/JI3I2Fj.jpg)
These two starter hosts will round out the core of my force. I also picked up a Hound Abberrant, a Death Brute, the Monstrous Infantry expansion to round out my Brutes to a full force, and...possibly a few other bits and pieces that I’m forgetting about. I also recently bought a Conjunct X off another club mate who went a little crazy on the Kickstarter backing.
It was a very tough choice between the various factions on offer, as all of them have some truly gorgeous miniatures. The Atalanteans were probably my second choice: I absolutely love the Greek aesthetic, and felt the larger bronze statues could easily be hammered out with a verdigris scheme I learned previously for my WHFB Undead army. Also high on my list were the Jutes (having painted 130+ skeletons to date, I have no desire to paint any more...as gorgeous as they are) and the Norse (LOVE those trolls and the Blood Maw, but the rest of the range didn’t inspire me).
At the end of the day, I decided the Ysians were enough of a departure from my previous armies to push me in new directions. My last two painting projects having been Deathwing for 40K and Vampire Counts / Tomb Kings for WHFB, I actually have surprisingly little experience painting exposed flesh...or really anything living. I figured it would be the perfect chance to grow my skills into some new techniques.
With the order locked in, it was then time to begin planning out my theme. I combed the internet for inspiration, finally settling on this amazing model by artist Sergey Popovichenko as the inspiration for my theme:
![Image](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oLB6uCklMgo/UkNDx82J8AI/AAAAAAAABvg/RTSIEATTVdc/s1600/1.jpg)
I didn’t want to go the traditional route of black or silver metal, and this tarnished brown-lacquered armour fit a more “marauder-esque” look that really appealed to me. I also liked the interplay between all the different browns on the model in the leathers, pouches, rags, furs, etc.
Settling on a basing scheme was a significantly more difficult task. I wanted to do something with water effects, and had originally thought that doing a swamp theme might be cool. I was even considering the “corpse field” bases from Secret Weapon Miniatures, but after playing around with a sample one I got in a grab bag at a tournament last fall I found myself actually rather unimpressed with the quality of the sculpt. Given the relatively low model count for this game I really want to push myself with the miniatures (especially since they’re so gorgeous and...well kind of expensive), and I just knew I would be disappointed with these bases once I was fully in the swing of things.
I also figured I should use the basing scheme to add a bit more contrast to the minis. After scouring the net some more, I settled on something like this:
![Image](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/bf/93/1b/bf931b1e9b710df13bff61070024ba9f.jpg)
My hope is that the cold blues and whites of the base will contrast well with the warm browns and flesh tones of the models. It will also give me some opportunities to embed cool things into the ice, adorn larger bases with icicles, broken ice, and all manner of other cool interest pieces.
For materials I picked up a clear, self-levelling liquid resin to do the ice itself, and some transparent crackle paste for more textured, broken-up ice. My original plan was to pour the liquid resin then carve out portions to replace with crackle paste. Unfortunately, in my tests I noticed that the crackle paste has a significant amount of shrinkage, making it rather difficult to align properly with the level of the ice. It’s going to get some more experimentation to get right, and it might be that I will need to manually place broken ice shards in with some transparent gel water effects instead. Either way, there is going to be some experimentation. I will probably do a post on the basing shortly down the line, once I have a better handle on the materials and techniques.
And now, without further ado, here is my test mini for the scheme:
![Image](http://i.imgur.com/pzQnMsR.jpg)
![Image](http://i.imgur.com/zF7pfbw.jpg)
He’s the “Marauder Champion” model from Avatars of War, intended for use as a D&D character for a campaign I joined recently. I’m still working on his base, as I’m rather unhappy with the Galeforce 9 snow flock that I grabbed from my local hobby store. The flakes are a bit too harsh for my liking.
As for this model, the plates are done with a series of reddish browns, washed with devlan mud and spot-tarnished with Typhus Corrosion. I picked out the edges with Mithril Silver to give the impression of nicks and scratches, and to differentiate the brown armour from the brown leather. His weapons are leadbelcher darkened with a mud wash and edged/drybrushed in Mithril Silver.
You also can’t tell from the picture, but his right hand and head are both magnetized so that I can swap them out as needed. His shield arm and bare head are not pictured here, as I’m still doing some greenstuff work on them.
That’s all for now, though! Next up I begin work on my Ax-Drunes themselves, which are the first batch of my models from the Kickstarter to arrive.