Infinity - Morat Aggression Force (mostly) Painted

Another long week attending a training class so not much in the way of hobby time, but my plans fell through for Saturday morning so suddenly there was a flurry of painting! More or less finished up the Morat Aggression Force, though as is always the case it is when manipulating and cropping the pictures for posting that I notice all sorts of little things on the models that I've missed or forgotten. This is especially true on these models, having never worked with them before it's only in retrospect that I realize "oh, that's a pouch/ammo clip/whatnot" or more distressingly "oh, that's actually a piece of flash". In any case, on with the pictures!

Kornak Gazarot, Superior Warrior-Officer - One of the better leader choices for the MAF, Kornak provides some extra leadership/order bonuses, and is a surprisingly effective combatant on the table. In many armies it behooves the player to 'hide' his army commander as there are penalties for losing the Lieutenant, but the MAF's special rules essentially allow them to ignore that. Pathetic cowardly humans, it is true and right that the officers should lead proudly by example!

Med-Tech Obsidon Medchanoid - Otherwise known as "Dr. Worm". The one non-Morat unit in the force, Dr. Worm and his attendant drones were must-have models just for the aesthetic, in my opinion.

Morat Vanguard Infantry - The backbone of the MAF, the Morat Vanguard are the most basic troopers, primarily there to provide Orders to the force. Treitak Anyat is a character that can join up with the Vanguard models to form a surprisingly flexible fireteam.

Morat Vanguard Specialists - The Vanguard have a wide array of equipment options, including a number of various heavy weapons as well as a functional but somewhat uninspiring hacker (not something the MAF excels at).

Raktorak, Morat Sergeant Major - The Raktorak are described as being the second-in-command/bodyguards to the MAF officers, though in-game they lack any rules that allow them to effectively do so, so unfortunately while they're some of my favorite models in the range, will likely never actually take the field.

Yaogat Strike Infantry - The Yaogat are the medium infantry of the MAF, with far heavier armour and better stats than the Vanguard. Quite a bit more expensive and lacking the heavy weapon and specialist options, they're nonetheless handy to have due to their multispectral visors which allows them to see through smoke and chaff which are common on the Infinity battlefields.

Daturazi Witch Soldiers - The Daturazi are the scary close combat units of the MAF, with a predilection for charging their opponents and carving them into little chunks. The MAF utilizes a range of different types of close combat weapons (AP, Shock, etc), so I tried to color-code them throughout the force to allow me to tell at a glance what type of weapon is cleaving into the opponent's forces.

Suryat Assault Heavy Infantry - The Suryats are the smallest of the power-armored units in the MAF, generally toting special or heavy weapons and being generally burly. Sadly there's just the one model available currently, but there's nothing wrong with a couple heavy machine guns! Generally these two will be backup up Kornak as he rampages around the table.

Sogarat Tempest Regiment - The heaviest power armour suits in the Morat Aggression Forge prior to the massive TAG suits, the Sogarat are extremely nasty. Mounted on 40mm bases and carrying heavy weapons similar to the Suryat, they are also capable of wielding scary close combat weapons as well. Very expensive however, so it is rare that I'd field all three at one time.

There's a few little details and things to clean up that have become apparent looking at the pics, but overall I'm reasonably pleased with them. It was quite interesting painting non-GW models for a chance, the aesthetic of the models provided a number of interesting challenges (not all of which I feel I was really able to rise to).

Now it's time to delve back into the Heresy! Bits have begun arriving for the upcoming Thousand Sons force and I'm itching to finish off the Geno Five-Two...

And Now For Something Completely Different - Infinity Morat Aggression Force painting begins

Happy new year everyone! Had a good time over the holiday, saw Star Wars and spent some time with some old friends visiting Colorado over the past week. Finally getting back to the painting desk after a break and I thought I'd give something else a try for a bit as a little breather. Brace yourselves for HERESY.

...Well, not Heresy, but you know what I mean. Hah!

At the urging of a couple friends I've taken another look at Infinity, not as a replacement for 40k/30k, but rather as an interesting skirmish level game akin to my much beloved Necromunda. As I'd alluded to previously the anime aesthetic of the models when the game first came out didn't really wow me, but in the intervening years they've come out with a several interesting new factions including several alien races - the opportunity to paint up some filthy xenos had some appeal after all the humans I've been painting of late. The crimson-faced murder apes of the Morat Aggression Forces caught my eye, so I picked up a number of boxes for a screaming deal from a fellow hobbyist, waited for a warm day and got to primering!

Anything worth doing is worth overdoing, so I ended up with way more miniatures than will ever hit the tabletop at one time. Does give me a number of options for force composition though! Started off by laying out all the models, getting the basic skin and hair colors laid in and really getting a chance to give the figures a good once-over to decide what needed to be painted what colors. At that point I figured "what the heck, may as well just batch paint the whole group, right"?

I decided to stick fairly close to the 'stock' color scheme, with the armor plating being a grey-ish hue and basic tan cloth. A number of the models are in powered armour and many models have exposed cabling, which got the electric blue treatment, which sets off nicely against the red skin tones so far. Tons and tons of line highlighting awaits, need to re-hone my fine detail brush skills - not a lot of hard edges to drybrush on these models. Definitely a different aesthetic from the angular 40k stuff I've been working on of late!

These models are what initially caught my eye in the Combined Army miniature line. Turns out this creepy fellow is the chief doctor for the force. "Dammit doc, not every medical procedure calls for 'a thorough probing'! Get away from me with whatever that is!"

So far so good - Was very interesting working with metal models again for the first time in years. Once these guys are done, we'll be back to our regularly scheduled Heresy - almost done with the remaining Geno Five-Two infantry as well, but they're in that middle stage of "these look TERRIBLE" where only the base colors have been blocked in and no detailing or highlighting has been done. Definitely not picture-worthy in their current state!