The project formerly known as ‘Prepping Maggie for Battle’

So, my FLGS has been trying to get rid of the rest of its Infinity minis with varying discounts. So, when I saw that they had some Morat units lying around, I couldn’t resist the temptation and picked them up.
So, naturally I left them lying around on the pile of shame for a bit before basecoating them in white and letting them lie around some more. Then I decided: I have to get shit done, so: minimal effort!
Since they were white anyway, I decided on a painting scheme based around white. Making them a strike force focussed on Svalarheima, seemed natural then.

As often recently, I painted them in a simple bright colour scheme and then applied dip. After that came a coat of mat varnish and then some final touches here and there.

I made myself put in just that extra little bit of effort for the bases, so I went off and got myself some snow flock. I picked up some pebbles from the road, painted and drybrushed those and added a liberal amount of snow. Quite pleased with the result, to be honest.

Annnnnd there she is: freshly glued onto her new base. As you may have seen in an earlier picture, I actually drilled holes into the base and was planning to pin Maggie to it. Somehow the metal of the mini was too hard for my drill, however, and I had to give up. So, I hope I added enough glue for her to stay in place for a bit. I think that the texture of the terrain will add some extra grip.

You may have noticed that I secretly painted Maggie as well, while working on the base. I went for a very simple colour scheme, topped off with a layer of dip. I’m very happy with how that turned out.

Now, the project was actually about finding a suitable base for my Maghariba Guard. I really like the whisky tin base for the mini, since it’s also made of metal, which adds a more sturdy feel to it and shifts the balance of the miniature just a bit downward when picking it up.

As noted before, I’ve got another whisky tin base lying around. With its 100mm diameter, I think it might be a good size for a kitbashed mech I’m thinking about building for Gamma Wolves. You’ll see it once I start building it!

So now it’s done, I just have to wait for the lockdown here to loosen up a little, so I can bring her to my next Infinity game against my brother and, hopefully, get my revenge!

So, I started off by filling up the edge with some grey stuff. In hindsight I could have done this neater, but at the moment it didn’t occur to me that I could have used a pen or something to make the new edges straight(ish). Ah well, it’s not messy; it’s playful?

So, I wanted to try something new (for me, at least) and decided to try and give the base a simple desert look. Yes, I have only recently started properly painting miniatures, their bases and flocking the latter, so this is in fact new territory for me…

Anyway, I first thought about just putting some PVA glue on the base and chucking some sand on. I worried that the sand might rub off from your standard wear and tear, though, and so wanted to go a different route. I found a video of a guy who mixed the sand with some paint and PVA glue and thought I’d try that.

I have a few big bottles of PVA glue left from when I was laying down the wooden floor in our living room and used sand from a bag in the garage, which I periodically broom between the tiles in the back yard. No worries: I did actually use proper paint; a mix of mainly Basilisk Brown with a bit of Matt White and Chaos Black.

The result looked interesting and was quite difficult to spread out over the base (not as easy as the guy in the video made it look!).

I made sure to make enough to also base my other painted Haqqislam minis, who had been going through live on bare black bases until then.

Well, it turned out I made way too much, so I just threw the rest on a piece of cardboard. Maybe I’ll turn it into a terrain piece at some point. Quicksand maybe?

After it had dried I was not too sure about the result. I felt like I had made a 1:1 scale replica of a biscuit (a kletskop to be precise), rather than a piece of desert terrain.

Hope was somewhat restored after a drybrush of Ushabti Bone. Not too sure about all the holes that have appeared after drying. Perhaps due to air bubbles? The result is not as sandy as I intended at first, but I am liking the more stone like look.

<Drum roll> the Laphroaig Quarter Cask!

Now, €45 for a single base may seem a bit steep, but it is solid metal and comes with a free Scottish Whisky.

After removing the whisky from the container, you can start removing the base from its packaging. I found a simple pair of scissors very effective for this task.

Look at her: if that’s not a perfect fit, I don’t know what is. The base needed a bit of cleaning, though, as there is still some cardboard stuck in the edge. As the cardboard was stuck very tightly into the rim of the base, it needed some soaking in a bath of warm water.

To get out the last bits of cardboard I used an advanced bit of tooling that is also very useful when eating maize on the cob. Consider that tip a gift from me to you ;-*

And there we go: squeaky clean. Next time, we’ll be planting some soil on the base!

This is ‘Maggie’. Maggie is a Maghariba Guard, which is the (!) TAG for the Haqqislam faction in Infinity. Maghariba Guard you say? Aren’t they supposed to look different? Or arguably cooler? Ah, you are referring to the newer model of the Maghariba Guard.

I started collecting Infinity when it just came out, so I have many old style models. One of these is Maggie. The cool thing about her is that when Corvus Belli brought out the new and different model, they worked it into the fluff. So, whereas the newer model is called the XPR-5 Akrep (‘Scorpion’), the older one is the Artefaktech XCR-1, with the codename Bokböceği (‘Beetle’).

So, when I dug Maggie up, she only had a white basecoat on her. No photos of that phase (sorry: forgot), but above you can see the first paints on her: Army Painter Warpaints Basilisk Brown and Shining Silver for most of the model, and Snake Scales for the cockpit. I’m on a mission to get stuff painted this year, so I’m keeping things simple. The plan generally is: a few colours, some dip and boom. Done.

Another thing you should know about the old school Maghariba Guard, is that there used to be no base in the box. This meant that you had to get one elsewhere. According to Corvus Belli, the Maghariba Guard should be planted on a 70 mm base. Now, it may be that I didn’t assemble Maggy perfectly compact at the time, but there is no way she would fit on a 70mm base! Also, I have no 70 mm base, and since lockdown, ordering stuff takes ages. So I’m on a quest to find her a nice bit to stand on.

In the picture above you can see Maggie on, or rather over, a 65mm GW base. Nnnnnope!

Then I found this bit of metal. So, she does fit on there, but with 100mm, it’s a bit big and will mean that Maggie will have a difficult time navigating those densely packed Infinity tables. (Although there are interesting changes in the ruleset as of N4!)

Now, the metal base above is the actually the bottom bit of an Edradour whisky container. Thus, my Quest for a Base brings me to and starts on my Drinks Shelf: