Daniel, one of my wargaming buddies in Oxford, put forward the idea of a miniature painting exchange to our little group of Warmachine players. I'm sure you're familiar with the idea: everyone paints a model for someone else's army, giving us all a chance to take a break from painting the 'n'th Troll/Skorne/undead thing and try out something new. We all decided that this was a great idea, so we're going to do it.
To make sure that, at the end of the day, everyone gets a model that they actually want in their army, we've decided to each choose and buy the model we're going to offer to the others for painting. Although probably the best way for us to do it, it left me with a tough decision to make. Which model do I want in my army that I don't particularly want to paint?
This is made more tricky by my painting style. I tend to paint my armies a rather limited palette of key colours, and stick to a similar theme throughout. Ideally, I'd want my exchanged model either to match the theme, or to be a model that can reasonably be completely different, and stand out without looking silly.
The obvious answer here is to choose a Mercenary or a Minion. They'll naturally end up looking different to my main factions, and things like Kell Bailoch, Orin Midwinter, the Totem Hunter or Croak Hunter might all do quite nicely. Hold on, though. They're just the kind of solos that can work for nearly anyone! If my painting buddies wanted to paint them, wouldn't they have already done so? Also, most Mercenary solos are characters. What if I want to paint them myself at some point?
This train of thought led me back to my factions. Maybe the answer is to go for a repeat of a solo I already have. A second Vassal, Reclaimer or Mechanik would be great for my Protectorate, and would probably help towards forming a theme list to boot. For my Skorne, an Ancestral Guardian would be ideal, because I haven't fixed the colour scheme for the constructs yet, giving my painter carte blanche.
So, decisions, decisions. What will I eventually end up going for? Any thoughts?
I like the idea of a Merc or Minion piece, to be honest. Anything that's done for a Guardian may have to be duplicated for any additional Guardians and Immortals at some stage, and look good when broken up and paired with a contrasting colour for the Kovaas if you follow that route. That's something I'd want a bit of control over, personally. Also... not knowing much about Team Oxford, but going by my experience of other groups, not everyone's necessarily painted up every single Merc/Minion solo available to them (I know I haven't), and the chance to toy with a different colourscheme or technique on something you're already familiar with painting is often welcomed.
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