Painting Hybrid - Templars of Hod

Another post in the painting category so soon after the previous one seems like a small miracle. This year I've been sorely behind on my planned Confrontation painting, but I'm slowly turning that around. I started out pretty strong with Cron and his diorama, but then it all somehow stopped in its tracks. In all honesty, the biggest blocker to my painting sessions, aside from real life which does fully intend to keep screwing up with me, was this Templar box. For some reason almost everything about it was a pain and instead of this being a quick and fun project it ended out being dragged out for months, so that was an additional motivator to sit down and sort my thoughts regarding the whole ordeal.

The kind of naiveté never seen before...

To begin with, assembly was a nightmare. The comment above was posted when I completed only the  Seneschal who was the easiest of the four Templars. These guys were like the greatest hits of painful assembly, they had it all: mould lines in all the wrong and hard to reach places, excess surfaces which simply didn't want to fit together, tiny joints which sadistically beg for pinning... just all of it. They all collectively made me question my sanity, sans Ambrosius who is a real chad. Pinning especially was a horrid experience due to the amount of excess metal that needed to be removed in order for the pieces to fit properly. In a couple of places I naturally managed to remove even more than needed, but luckily a proper amount of glue managed to hide my mistakes. Also since the tiny limbs really require a lot of precision and careful execution, which was hell in its own way, I'm starting to think that it might be a good decision to invest in one of those electric pen drill tools.

Work-in-progress photo doesn't begin to portray the horror...

This guy was the absolutely biggest offender since the placement of his arms just doesn't make sense physically. He looks like he is in the throes of challenging the Predator to a duel near the end of the movie of the same name, but he lacks muscle mass and his adversary already broke his limbs at the shoulder. Seriously Rackham, what even is this? The left arm in the photo especially was so bent backwards that it took me quite a few attempts of plain dry-fitting his limbs just to make sure that that was what Rackham wanted me to do. I should have taken a photo while I was trying to assemble him, but I was way too enraged to think about that...

So, when the painting was done this was the final product and it was a rather long road until I got there. They took ages to complete and for some reason I didn't enjoy the process at all. One of the things I find nice when painting a whole unit of dudes is that the unit is usually uniform, so using the same painting recipe for each one is somewhat easy on the brain. However, halfway through painting the Templars I realized that I don't really like my recipe for the blue coats. That particular recipe worked really well on some other non-Confrontation miniatures I painted a few years ago, but here I'm not too pleased with it, so instead of the aforementioned relaxation I was rather stressed, torn between redoing them or just plowing through. I ended up going with the latter. The more I look at them now, the more content I am with them, but I think this could have been better and I definitely want to try to find a better, more striking blue fabric recipe. Not to mention that one of the paints used, Deep Sky Blue from Vallejo probably due to age, ended up being too watery, which I didn't pay attention to, so highlights ended up more like glazes than sharp highlights like I intended to do.

The leather was fun to paint as usual. It is painted the same way as I did my Sessairs, only a tad bit less ivory stippling, while the smaller leather bits like the pouches I painted slightly different using Chocolate Brown, Flat Earth, and Old Wood, all from Vallejo. Unlike the leather, I'm still massively struggling with NMM. I think that my choice of paints is bad to begin with, but also I felt like the design of these blades was a bit too unnecessarily complex which makes it hell for an unskilled painter. Regardless, still figuring out how to do it and with some newly ordered paints and newfound guides I'll see how I fare on the next miniatures.

The Venerable Ambrosius, on the other hand, was an absolute joy to paint, so much so that I've managed to finish him in some record time... if I'm not mistaken two sessions with only a handful of hours. The sculpt itself is interesting to me, especially the flag/cloak part which gives you a nice blank canvas to play with. I believe this is the first time I tried some freehand with the lettering and it was pretty intimidating, not gonna lie. I went back and forth a few times to align the text, it could definitely be done way better, but overall it was fun to try something new. Also the whole process of making the cloth dirty and worn was my favorite part of the whole thing.

Speaking of making things dirty and worn, I immensely enjoyed working on the sandy cobblestone. Working on anything scenery or terrain related is always such a relaxing experience to me, it makes me wonder why I don't work more on terrain pieces... This is actually something I plan to change in the coming months, as I need to start setting up my Confrontation terrain. But anyways, the idea with these bases was for them to represent the sandy halls of the Dirz laboratory being investigated by the Templar. In hindsight I think I made them just a tad bit too light, but I reckon it is an easy fix if I decide to make them darker.

Also on the topic of the bases, I spent quite some time thinking what I want to do for the bases and in the end decided to try out Spellcrow. This is their "Pavement v.2" resin kit, I bought three of these for 3 quid a pop and honestly couldn't be happier. The details are crisp and it is designed in such a way that there are some clear paths for easy cutting, so depending on how you decide to carve them you could easily fit one block on roughly sixteen 25mm bases. For this Griffin box it worked like a charm, especially since there is nice difference in elevation of the stones, so the bases and mini poses end up being quite dynamic. I'll try the pavement on a 40mm base soon, so I'm curious how that will look like. But overall, highly recommended if you want an easy cobblestone basing kit!

For all the whining I did in this post and the amount of time I invested in this wretched box, I'm actually satisfied with how the minis came out. Taking these photos on the Hybrid tiles also kind of fixed my perception of the bases, so I think I'll postpone the thoughts of darkening them and just wait and see how it is when they actually hit the table. Soon enough I plan on tackling the Dirz box and then you can expect some Hybrid session reports around here, which makes me extremely excited. Until then, thank you for reading, see you in the next one!

Collection round-up - February to May 2026 and a painted Earth Elemental

It has been a while since I posted a collection update, mostly because up to this previous month the purchases have been rather miniscule and unimpressive. Not for lack of trying, mind you! The fervor and desire to collect all things Rackham is still very much omnipresent, but it seems like we've reached a point where the market well has gone dry. Rare things seldomly drop, sometimes when they do they are region specific (curse you, the seller who doesn't want my money when I'm not from your home country), and overall it is becoming a challenge. The hunt continues though, I suspect we'll see a surge of things coming from people's attics and basements once Monolith starts making the revival more and more imminent. 

The solitary box up until May was Cardinal Aerth. It landed in my lap while visiting a random online store in search for some miniature paints and they had the good cardinal for dirt cheap. I love these boxes which have two versions of the same character and Aerth himself is an interesting chap. The sculpt is a bit cartoony with its unreasonably large sword, but the whole miniature is just full of life and grandeur somehow. It's a fine addition to my small, but increasing, Griffin collection.

Like the Mounted Standard Bearer, Sardar Tillius is one of the rare Alahan designs I really like and just looking at it makes me want to paint just so that it can be on display at all times. The sculpt has a lot going on, but it is all so subtly done and it doesn't seem overwhelming. I particularly love the armor design and the lion.

The Master of Carnage I was so excited about, especially since he was a very cheap pickup from the same seller that had Tillius... up until the point when upon delivery I realized that I already own this particular MoC version... I was absolutely convinced that I own the other one, but my apparently poor collection management got the better of me. I'll probably offer this one for trade on 7 Hills.

One other Confrontation blister crept in along with some other online store purchase and this one is rather special. A humble Familiars of Air blister which happens to be my very first mispack! Yes sir! It's rather funny, since I was making a big purchase of some other miniature related stuff and the store happened to have the familiars for 2 euros, so I just tossed it in there. The image just showed the card side and although it arrived NIB the blister contains only two minis, missing the little guy holding the book. Not so tragic as it was a cheap purchase and this particular blister is still fairly common, plus I guess mispacks are themselves a rarity... it makes an interesting story, at the very least! It is funny to me how many times in the past I heard stories of terrible Rackham quality control and how pieces were often missing from blisters and boxes, but this is the first time I notice it in all my purchases so far. Probably jinxed it now!

Speaking of random bits and pieces, I came across this local sale featuring various loose bits of Confrontation models, primarily containing banners of all sorts. It was cheap and I think this lot will be useful for a couple of conversion ideas I have, so I just went for it. Surprisingly, it also features one complete Bregan, an incomplete Apostate of Darkness, and a Galhyan missing an arm and sword, all of which weren't even listed in the lot.

All of the above mentioned pick-ups were between February and April, but then May came along and a big boy dropped... 

...one of the biggest boys, in fact. The Cynwäll Dragon finally landed into my hands! I've been eyeing and dancing around it for months on end, but the English versions have been relatively hard to find, either not complete, too expensive, or not in Europe, aka not cheap. This one however I found for around 80e, which is quite on the cheaper side by today's standards, so it was time to pull the trigger. I didn't realize how huge the Dragon is, just the fact that the box is bigger than the usual Confrontation boxes made me squeal. Similarly, happy to add the Construct Warrior to my collection, both for the expansion of my Cynwäll roster and for use in Hybrid.

I was also very excited to get the version of Phidias which I was missing, primarily because I plan to use both incarnations for the bingo "character" challenge. Aside from that I love the sculpt, as it continues the Griffin vibe inspired by "Brotherhood of the Wolf". It is crazy to me how minimalistic the design is, but so evocative and effective, displaying that recognizable Rackham charm.

Last but definitely not the least, I've gotten another Kurujai, this one finally in English. This one was eluding me for quite some time. More than a year ago I ordered one from a seller expertly hidden in some backwater parts of eBay, but it turned out the person couldn't actually find where they stored the blister and so had to cancel the order to my great dismay. Then some time ago I found a French one on the cheap elsewhere, but it always bugged me that I don't have the card in English, a similar pain I'm still experiencing with my Erhyl who I also own in French.

A minor side note when it comes to Daikinee, people who know me also know by now that they are my favorite army and that I have a wild ambition and dedication to collecting them. I've purposely so far omitted writing about many Daikinee purchases I've made in the past year or so, but soon enough I plan to make a dedicated post for all of those as part of a bigger blog project. More on that later.

Also, I've used this bigger purchase as fuel for completing one bingo entry, namely I've painted the Earth Elemental for the "paint a mini within 48 hours of receiving it" and I've actually managed to pull it off.

Technically it is a bit of a cheat since stone and earth are very easy to paint, but then again it was fast and fun and thus a win! Such an amazing and underappreciated miniature, so many nice details and bits on it. Painted it all in one sitting and then decided to play around with some pigments and moss. Could have went a bit darker with the pigments and I still need to figure out how to more effectively do the moss effects (this one was the AK Interactive Moss Deposits and some White Spirits), but overall I'm pleased at the outcome especially considering the invested time. The pigment fixer stench obliterated me, next time I'm tempted to just do it on the balcony as it was truly horrendous. In any case, a great addition to the painted miniature cabinet.

And that is all for today, hope you enjoyed the read, see you in the next one!