So, my first painting pledge lasted a month and a day. Not very long.

Now it's time to renew the pledge. I'm still going to finish the first batch of Nomad models before starting on the Haqqislam starter force I've got, but may well mix a few models in with the Haqq batch, in particular some more Nomads and some Yuan Yuans — mercenary drop troops. 

The Yuan Yuans can be added as mercenaries to almost any list in Infinity but they also form a direct part of the Qapu Khalki sub-faction of Haqqislam that I'm concentrating on. In keeping with the Infinity trend of going with the models you like the look of because they're all well-balanced in-game, I've bought the Yuan Yuan double-blister because the female model in it is in a nice Tai Chi sword-form-style pose with the sword held loosely between thumb and fingers and the left hand in 'sword-fingers' position, although with the thumb not crossed over:

The male figure I find OK but nothing special. Anyway, without committing myself to hard rules about not purchasing new models I will be keeping up the attempt to get stuff painted more quickly. This will be helped by using a white undercoat and lots of shading washes on the non-Nomad figures, particularly the Haqqislam models. With a bit of luck, I'll be able to get it down to under an hour per figure, while the Nomads have been taking me three+ hours even for the infantry, let alone the larger Remotes...

I'll be doing some conversions of the Haqqislam models as one of the central parts of my list is a 'Link Team' of four Odalisques, female bodyguards, of which there are only two models available.

What I'm going to try and do is swap the arms over so that I end up with one crouching model with Spitfire, a converted crouching model with a Boarding Shotgun, and standing model with Boarding Shotgun and a converted standing model with Spitfire. Here are some mockups of the conversions:



However the priority with the Haqqislam models will be to paint up the normal Boarding Shotgun Odalisque, a sitting Djanbazan sniper and the female Ghulam line infantry model (painted as a medic with a white armband and red crescent) as these are the figures which will be used in a series of Infinity demo/participation games I'm running at the Legionary games convention in Exeter in early May.

So, the revised pledge:

1. Keep putting time into painting models, that was the main idea behind the pledge in the first place!

2. Assemble and start painting the Haqqislam models and some of the new Nomad arrivals.

3. Don't buy many new models.

4. Win?!?

Ian