Progress Report: Let there be widows

This week is being quite productive for painting. Must be because I am on vacation and with no other pressing matters to attend and painting is a relaxing hobby... most of the time anyway... except when you mess up after several hours of work... or when you don't get the results you are looking for... or when you struggle to find the right colour scheme... Anyway, I am painting more than usual and that means I have material for another update.

This week it is the unit of snipers called Widowmakers (hence the title of the post). The idea of having snipers in a setting that is mostly medieval fantasy with steampunk elements is a bit weird. The guns in the game are based in early gunpowder weapons like flintlocks, at least they look like it with things like blunderbusses being common. Those weapons weren't very accurate or had much range. Some units have access to primitive rifles but the idea of adding a scope to them and shooting at the enemy at much longer ranges is a bit anachronistic to the setting. Anyway, it is a game with big f***ing steam powered robots controlled by magic, who needs historical accuracy?

The widowmakers in the game are a nice addition to the army as they are fairly accurate and have a nice ability called Sniper (who would have guessed that) that allows them to inflict a single point of damage regardless of armour instead of rolling damage. Very useful against high armour infantry dudes with a single wound, specially because usually high armour means low defense so they are easy to hit with their above average accuracy. They also get to choose what column or spiral gets the damage they inflict for Warjacks and Warbeasts respectively, which is a nice bonus.

They can get even better if you add a Widowmaker Marksman solo to the army and keep them together, which reminds me that I should have painted the marksman at the same time so they matched colours better and so on... too late for that now...sigh.

Widowmakers

I like how they ended up looking in general but as always, a few comments on them:

• Faces... I still need to improve quite a lot on them. I don't despise them but I admit they could have been better.
• Leather. Too much leather things on them: coat, lots of pouches, strips, belts... I tried to use different browns for different things but after some washes the difference between some of them is almost not noticeable, which is a shame as it increased the time of painting a lot. 
• Wood. The body of the rifle itself and the support for firing are supposed to be wooden. I definitely need to improve on that. There is a set from Vallejo for painting Leather and Wood so that may help with those two... decisions, decisions,...
• Oil Wash. I forgot to varnish before applying it. It did work anyway but must be more careful with that. This time I managed to apply it only to the parts that needed the wash without much of a mess which is an improvement. Yay!
• It's a bit disheartening the amount of hours that I had to put into them. If I am going to spend so much time (around 2 days for 4 miniatures) for everything, I will manage to finish the army around 2020 or so. I need some improvement on that but I guess that's what practice is for.

Next ones to be painted, probably the Great Bears of Gallowswood. That will be fun.

They are a character unit, meaning you cannot field more than one of that unit because they are supposed to be unique in the setting. I haven't used them in the game yet but they sound like fun with their combination of abilities. I will probably use them this week in the journeyman league, and that's why I want to paint them next... that, and that I liked them so much while I assembled them several weeks ago that I cannot wait to do that.