New Infinity New Faction – Haqqislam

Here’s Carmen! I’ve left it a little while to see if I like the chrome effect and I think it’ll do.

His name really is Batard. Glad I got to paint an antipode and here’re the results.

With bikes getting a bit more focus in the latest ITS I took the opportunity to try out painting a couple of miniatures from the Infinity range. Haqq is blessed with a lot of bike options but unfortunately they haven’t passed through to Ramah. We have one option, but it’s a good one: Carmen and Batard. Not only do I get to paint a bike but an antipode as well! Ariadna aren’t a faction that appeals to me so I don’t get many opportunities to paint Antipodes.

The antipode’s base was nothing special, just Agrellan Badland texture with shading and drybrushing. For Carmen I wanted her positioned by the roadside on a desert road. I used some Tamiya tape to make a straight edge and brushed on Astrogranite for the road surface. Agrellan Badland for the other side with a bit more Astrogranite dotted around as the road’s started to break.

I preshaded all the parts and broadly glazed to get the general colour. Some things to note on the paint schemes.

• I painted the Antipode fur with layered, thinned paint and blended where it worked. I added a lot of thin lines to simulate fur.
• Carmen was painted to colour the preshade and highlighted where needed.
• Carmen’s coat had a pattern etched into the back. I outlined it in white, coloured it simply and washed with Agrax Earthshade.
• The leather bags on the bike were painted using ScaleColour’s leather set. I varied the base and highlight colours so they weren’t all too uniform looking.
• The chrome effect was done by thinning out the detail of each side of the bike. This is why I wanted road on one side and desert on the other. Hopefully the difference between sides will help sell the effect. I went over the preshade with layers of grey before painting hte needed colours.

My first two remotes, the Shihab and the Fanous.

I tried something a bit different with the dotty texture on the blue areas. Normally I’d just airbrush a highlight.

The remotes looked a little dull so I added some stripes. I like them.

The final two units in the Beyond Red Veil Expansion were the Fiday and the Rajik.

Here we go. First round was a simple game. 150pts and just kill your opponent. A bonus point is awarded for:

1, dodging
2, entering suppressive fire

Escalation league games are training games so nothing too complex.

My opponent brought the Combined Army. Generally a lightish list to support a Charontid along with Dr Worm to keep it running.

For some reason sharing the army code for my list isn’t working. I took:

3 x Ghulams (1 a doctor)
a Krakot Renegade, merc cheap with two big templates
Shihab Total Reaction remote with an HMG (proxied PanO remote)
Miranda Ashcroft merc, she has a monofilament blade
Tariq Mansouri just ‘cos.

I won the lieutenant roll and chose to go first.

I kept the TR bot back and placed it in a fire lane facing his Charontid. The Charontid has a plasma rifle, fearsome at short range but here the range favoured me.

The right-side portion of the board was clear and I moved the Krakot forward, cautious moving past a gap. Took a few orders but he’d have the position to catch a lot of the enemy under two chain rifle templates. Ah ha ha ha ha. He chain rifled a lot of units and only one went down. In return the Krakot went down to AROs. Poor luck on my part.

For the remainder of my turn I sliced the pie with Tariq to get favourable fire arcs on one of his troops. I had two orders left. Plan was Tariq would gun down the Unidron I could then enter suppression fire with the Charontid in his fire arc. It would be trapped between Tariq and the TR remote. I somehow failed to kill the Unidron and didn’t want to give it a free shot on me by putting Tariq in suppression. I fired again and moved Tariq back, this time killing the Unidron.

My opponent’s turn started and he decided to take on the TR bot. Plasma will place a template where it hits and he thought he could catch a few of my units. But as I said, the range favoured the TR bot and it kept winning the face to face rolls. Eventually he pulled the Charontid back after it had taken damage. Having used a lot of orders he attempted to place units for AROs.

My turn began with Tariq going on the rampage. He moved back to his previous position and took on the Charontid. Tariq gets +2 damage which, combined with his spitfire gave a damage 16 weapon. This time my opponent’s luck deserted him and Tariq slaughtered the Charontid. Following that demolition I got quite bold and moved Tariq out of cover to take on more units. He killed all but one.

Come my opponent’s turn he conceded. First round to Haqq!

Early escalation league games can turn quickly and one good round can give you the game. It’ll get tougher but for now I’m happy with how my force performed.

I’d had some thoughts about moving to months Haqq before making the switch. I had the Magheriba Guard and was very keen to paint it so I thought it might pull me into wanting to paint more Haqq.

I had the kernel of my scheme in mind but really didn’t feel it while I painted this. I used green light sources rather than blue. I came away thinking I needed to plan my scheme better and Maggie needed a bit more of something.

I want to get back to it and update it a bit. But for now it’ll do.

One of Haqq’s power hitters with a superb miniature to match. Going into my first game I’d be picking either Tariq or the Al Fasid. It’s no contest.

I wanted Tariq to have a white coat but it was important it didn’t look too clean. I base coated it with Vallejo German Camo Orange (70.824) and sloshed some Aggaros Dunes contrast paint over it. From there I drybrushed and stippled up to white. I’m hoping this gave it a textured look.

The few games of N4 I’ve tried showed me armour is much more effective. Not only ‘cos crits don’t auto damage now but also ‘cos quite a few armour units get a 6″ first part of their move. Lovely for cautious move.

Haqq aren’t well known for their HI but I think they have some of the nicest looking powered armour in the game.

On this model I was a bit stuck on where to put some blue highlights. I didn’t find it compelling and preferred keeping it to a minimum. To make the miniature more interesting I added some yellow areas and stripes, saving the blue for actual light sources.

I had a go at freehanding the Ramah logo. It’s ok, not that great.

These figures followed the standard colour scheme. I changed their visors a little. The Zhayedan I tried to follow Scale Colours recipe for a copper colour. The finish is ok. I’m not going ot push any harder on it. Leila’s visor is a layering of tones starting from a white in the middle working through yellow, orange, red and purple. As you go through those tones they get easier to blend.

I’ve included a couple of progress pics of Leila. Partly to show the basecoating for the visor but mainly to show how bright the figure is before the oil wash.

The basic Haqq troop with some impressively good doctors.

I’ve built a collection of Haqq minis without any plan. Pieces I’ve got in starter boxes or bargains I couldn’t resist buying over the years. Thanks to the hobby shame league I’m participating in I’m trying to get my unpainted minis pile down. That means my current Haqq force will include:

• the Red Veil starter
• the Red Veil Beyond box
• the old Qapu Khalqi starter
• an Azra’il
• a couple of remotes
• a Bashi Bazouk
• the Magheriba Guard
• the Fat Yuan Yuan

Ehhh, honestly, I get a bit bored writing lists and reading rules. I need to play to really understand an army. So this force will be a mish mash of units for vanilla Haqq and Ramah.

To get stuff ready for my first escalation league game I’ll concentrate on the Red Veil units.

I’ve had some Antenocitis Workshop Badlands bases for a while now. I bought them when Red Veil came out but I only got round to painting the Yu Jing half of that box.

However I did paint the bases for them a while back and have to confess I can’t remember the exact colours. They’re supposed to be a slightly darker view of a desert.

In the case of the Magheriba Guard I decided to make the base myself. I glued rolled greenstuff into some rough ripples and glued on a couple of rocks. I then applied sand over it all.

With these bases I’d prime black then spray white from one angle. Apply lighter colours over the lighter side, something like Scale Colour Iroko, then run in a darker colour from the other side, Scale Colour Mars Orange I think. After that I use a wash like Druchii Violet to add shade in the darker side. I try to apply the paints quickly to blend them. Perhaps tidy the overlaps at the top of the sandy ripples. I don’t want to take too long over these.

I’ll apologise for the progress pics on these now. I painted a pile of them some time ago and didn’t document the process well. I can’t find the final process pic where I applied the purple but hopefully that stage will show on the finished bases.

I don’t want to follow the usual colour scheme. I think nearly every new Haqq player has thought about painting them in a Dune style Fremen scheme. Me included. At their heart the Dune Fremen scheme from the first movie is quite plain. So I’ll pick an accent colour for it and leave it at that.

Looking round for inspiration I rather liked the pics I saw of Tuareg people. They inspired me to push for a scheme of warm browns, light tan / sand colours, whites and blues. I’ve told myself it represents the colours of the desert earth and sky.

Generally I have several rough tones in mind and just mix them up as I see fit.

Darker Tones: Scale Colour Black Leather (SC32), Scale Colour Red Leather (SC30)

Mid Tones: Scale Colour  Walnut Brown (SC29), Scale Colour Orange Leather (SC28), Scale Colour Iroko (SC27)

High Tones: Scale Colour Mojave White (SC62)

For the blues I normally undercoated with grey then layered up with mixes of Scale Colour Cantabric Blue (SC53), Scale Colour Sky Blue (SC50) and White.

Afterwards my miniatures will get an oil wash tohelp hide the roughness of some transitions.