Agent Blaise and the ISB Agents

A little while ago, my friend James and I decided that we should try out Frostgrave. It's a fantasy based skirmish game that is brand-free. So you can use any miniatures that you want. You get a Wizard, an apprentice, and then you hire units to your cause. Then I guess, attack the opposing Wizard in hopes of getting his treasure (and maybe his spell book?) I haven't read the rules, so I don't really know all that much.

Anyways, it sounds like a fun game. But we've both been way too busy to do anything more than talk smack to each other (that being said, I did start painting miniatures that I plan to use for my army). I mention this because I made some terrain for James as a part of his birthday gift.

These rock pieces were made from Femo (Fimo?) that I've had traveling with me for about ten years. I had a mold that I was able to make a cast from. Then quickly painted them up.

 

These pieces were made from some foamcore scraps that I got for free from a local art store. The styrofoam came from some packaging (go-go reuse!) . Plus the obvious basing materials. I think that they look pretty good for what they are. I don't really have place to store terrain, nor do I usually play games that require it. So I'll probably never make enough that my stuff looks amazing. But it gets the job done.

Alright. Now on to some sexy Star Wars miniatures. We had a tournament last week and I finished second via a coin toss (I was tied for first. It was a fun event and I don't really care how I place. So it was all good in my books.)! It was a Rebel Spy team. I'm sure I'll get to showing it one day. But the poorly taken pictures that I have to show you today, were not a part of my team. They pretty cool though. For a while I was trying out an Imperial Spy team (before I switched to a Jedi team which then morphed into a Rebel Spy team) and these units were the guys that made the team fly...

Look at me!

The ISB Agents were....I guess not all that fun to paint. I think they had more color in the box art. But my agents were pretty dark in tone. It was a while ago, but I think I painted them black and then did a lot of layering with greys to lighten them up. I wanted them to be black, but with a little bit of light reflecting. I probably could have highlighted more. But, as with most of my stuff, I kept it subtle.

No, look at me!

They are an interesting unit to play. You need to keep the group within line of sight of each other as they have an ability that lets the other interrupt to preform an attack. So you need to be aggressive enough to get their abilities to trigger. But safe enough to keep both units alive.

Agent Blaise is one of my favorite Imperial Assault miniature sculpts. I don't care what anyone says. His pose is unique and there is a ton of fun to be had, if want to spend the time to give his pose context. But I figured that since he looked like a scout trooper, I would go with the speeder bike theme.

And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!

Years ago, Knight Models had the rights to make Star Wars miniatures. They were glorious, but expensive (it was a British company. I probably could have dealt with the currency conversion, but the shipping? Killer.). I found out about them shortly before they lost their license. So most of the sculpts that I wanted were no longer available. I do however, have a few. One of them being a scout trooper on his speeder bike. Sadly there were no instructions to put the bike together and there were more than a few pieces. So I never finished putting it together and painting it.

Get back here and fix my bike!

I could have just chopped off the bike pieces that I wanted, but that seemed wasteful. So instead I made a mold of the nose and then made a cast from that. I used a pin for the broken shaft. When painting the bike nose, I tried to make it look dirty...although it does kind of look like how I make things look rusty. Eh, I still think that it looks cool. I think my scratching technique needs some work though.

I had a lot of fun painting Blaise, probably because he was in the scout armor, which at least breaks up all of white that you would normally see in stormtrooper armor (which I disike painting). I made him a little older looking with some white streaks in his hair. His visible age coupled with the five o' clock shadow, lends itself to the grumpy old man that I was aiming to create. I could have easily put him on grass with a sign saying 'keep off of lawn'. Agent Blaise is probably one of my favorite painted miniatures.

...and don't you ever come back! Wait, I didn't mean it. Come back!