Infinity: Defiance & Beyond

I started the project with the Nox troopers. These are the basic footsoldier of the Shasvastii and I have 9 in total – 3 from Operation Wildfire and 6 from the core game. I only included 6 in the photo because in the Defiance game you get 3 different poses and two of each pose. It was far easier to fit 6 models into the frame than 9.

I haven’t ever painted any Combined Army before, and the thought of all that black armour really didn’t fill me confidence – it’s my least favourite colour to paint, especially hard armour surfaces. I know that I could in theory paint them any colour I like but with boardgames I like to match the artwork on the cards. I think this makes things easier for players who aren’t otherwise aware of the Infinity setting. In this case, I think the black not only makes them look more menacing but also I think it provides a nice contrast to the hero miniatures, which are all bright, poppy colours.

These were very much a sort of “trail blazing” exercise to see whether I could create a quick colour scheme that didn’t look too bad at general viewing distance but also didn’t look terrible up close. That’s why I started with the basic footsoldiers, I would lose less sleep over them if they didn’t turn out quite how I wanted them to. In order to try and speed up the armour areas, I primed them black and then gave them two drybrush coats of different shades of grey followed by a heavy black wash. I then painted all of the other areas of colour normally, using brighter colours to make them stand out kind of turns the black armour into a sort of “background” colour, your eyes are drawn away from it. It kind of worked although as you will see, it will take me a number of attempts to get the wash strength right.

Finally, as with all my Infinity miniatures, I am using colour coded, transparent acrylic bases. The colour I selected for the combined army is a rather fetching pink.

Overall, I have decided that, apart from the black armour, I really like the Shasvastii models. They remind me very much of some of the aliens from Mass Effect whilst facially having undertones of Predator.

Before I go any further with the project I thought I would share this – a little bit of information on how I photograph the models. I have learned over the years, both from my own struggles and also seeing how other people have struggled, a few tips on taking good photographs with a camera phone, especially if you don’t get the opportunity to do so using natural daylight.  I should stress that natural daylight provides the best results, better than the ones you will get using this setup at least.  However, because I generally work during the day and paint in the evening, I don’t always get the chance to take pictures using natural light.

So to get around this, my photo setup consists of the following items:

1. Photobooth
2. Daylight desklamp
3. A patterned mouse-mat (or sometimes a piece of paper)
4. A bluetooth smartphone tripod

Despite what people say, I find the photobooth incredibly useful.  On its own, the light quality isn’t great and the backdrops that you get with them are often poor quality.  I have seen them come with an XPS foam sheet which collects dirt and scuffs and all sorts marks and usually provides a grey, rather than black background.  I have seen them come with a sort of weird cloth/material sheets that whilst not particularly reflective have such a loose weave that it creates a patterned background.  However the other items on the list will mitgate these problems.

The daylight desklamp is used to brighten the area because the LED lights in the photobooth aren’t really that powerful.  However using both the LED lights and the desk lamp together eliminates most of the shadows that are usually created when you shine light on things.  So it’s definitely worth doing.

Mousemats are a much better backdrop than anything I have seen supplied with the little photo booths.  They are not overly reflective, the material weave is very small and so tends to be less visible and, if you really want to, you can buy them with interesting patterns to act as a backdrop for the models, which can really help make the pictures more interesting.  For my infinity and other sci-fi miniatures I have purchased a mousemat with a sci-fi image printed on it, it was a couple of quid off ebay but I think it is perfect for what I am currently doing.  I might buy another one with a different colour, red or green perhaps, so that I can take photos of blue miniatures that would potentially seem lost on a mostly blue background.  I also have one with a parchment effect on it, which I use for fantasy models (although you can save money by using parchment paper) and I have recently purchased one with “the Matrix” on it for cyberpunk models.

The last item I use is a Tripod.  This is really important as it means that you are not touching the camera when the picture is taken.  I don’t think I can stress enough how important this really is.  If you set your camera up on a tripod and use either a timed shutter release or, even better, a bluetooth shutter release then the camer remains still and thus retains focus as the picture is taken.  This significantly reduces the likelihood of blurring with your photographs.

Infinity has, for many years, been my absolute favourite miniatures range. I could buy and paint the miniatures and never even play a game with them (my brother, who is my primary adversary in any game, would probably argue that is exactly what I do). I just love the style of the miniatures, the art, the lore, everything.  As a setting it ticks just about all my boxes.  I have accrued a sizable collection over the years and rather than going in deep on a particular faction I tend to just buy the basic forces for each faction so that I can have lots of different games and also to enable me to introduce friends to the game as well.  I am not a competitive gamer and I probably never will be so approaching the hobby in this way allows me to exercise a bit more of my creativity as I get to build and paint lots of different styles of miniatures. However, due to other projects and commitments, so many of my Infinity miniatures are unpainted – there’s always something else demanding my time and for several years now it’s pretty meant that I haven’t necessarily painted miniatures that I wanted to paint, I have painted the ones I felt I had to paint.

So for 2022 I decided to make that change and Defiance represented the perfect vehicle for doing so.  Here was a boxed game, entirely self contained that could be easily defined as “complete”.  At the same time all the miniatures are fully compatible with the wider Infinity games, they have stats and profiles and thus represent a way of adding to my existing Infinity collection and getting some painted forces for the skirmish game also.  Because the link between the two games, what I intend to do is paint up releated miniatures along with the Defiance miniatures.  So when I paint the Shasvastii miniatures from the core set, I will also paint up the Shasvastii from Operation Wildfire.  Likewise I will try and paint the O-12 miniatures from Wildfire when I get around to the Outcast expansion box.  By doing this I expand my Infinity collection whilst also getting a nice, fully painted sci-fi dungeon crawler.

Now, I am not convinced that I am going to hit the target of 2022 for the whole set.  I tend to really take my time with Infinity miniatures, so there will be questions I have to answer about whether I am prepared to sacrifice some quality for some speed in order to complete the game.  I also have a second project that I am working, very much a passion project, painting a psuedo-historical army that I can use in Saga.  So we will see how far we get.  I am certain that the core set will be completed, not so sure about all the add-ons and expansion.

Also, as a final note, the first few entries are essentially playing catchup.  I did start working on this in January but for some reason I didn’t start a project.  I think probably because I was already running the other project and it just seemed like effort to run two.  However I am going to give it a whirl.