Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion - Hatchet
I’m very much a stop-start painter, so I’ll paint a section or apply a wash and watch TV for half an hour, then do another section, and so on and so forth. But for some reason, I just attacked the Inox Hatchet miniature while I was watching some Peaky Blinders. Seriously, I think I got the main colours down in the space of an episode. So spoiler alert, this might not be a particularly long article.
It took a while to click, until I started writing this article in fact, but the Hatchet seems to be an homage to your typical Wild West Gunslinger. His little brimmed hat and poncho clearly inspired by Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name from the Dollars Trilogy. However instead of drawing a six-shooter the Hatchet throws an axe in your face. Hence the name I suppose.
So, to paint this lone wanderer I got out literally every brown paint that I owned. For his cloak and hat I gave them a couple of thin coats of Balor Brown, a nice yellow-brown colour that reminds me of sun bleached leather. For the leather, such as his boots, belt and quiver, I painted with my usual Mournfang Brown. His coat and trousers I painted with Steel Legion Drab. The handles on his hatchets and the band on his hat I painted with Dryad Bark. His horns I painted with Army Painter Skeleton Bone. Oddly the model doesn’t have a lot of details on the face, I’m not quite sure why. For the metallics I picked out his buttons and the broach on his quiver strap with Scale75 Dwarven Gold. All of these areas then got a wash of Army Painter Strong Tone.
Instead of trying to badly paint any of the facial details I gave it and his hands a simple coat of Dawnstone. I figure his face is supposed to be hidden by his hat anyway. And lastly the heads of each of his eponymous hatchets I painted with. Both the skin and silver areas I then washed with Nuln Oil.
Lastly, the Hatchet was based in the same way that I do all my miniatures for Gloomhaven. I started by slopping on some Stirland Mud texture paint, then when that was dry I washed the base with Army Painter Strong Tone. And once that was dry I drybrushed the base with Tyrant Skull. Stuck on a couple of grass tufts and the Inox Hatchet was ready to go adventuring. And I gotta say, it feels good to have all the miniatures from Jaws of the Lion painted.
As mentioned up top I basically smashed this out in an evening watching TV. But this Inox wasn’t the only thing I was painting at the time. I was finishing up work on my previous Gloomhaven miniature and looking for something new to paint, as I like to have a couple of projects on the go at once. I find that having a choice of what to paint helps to keep my enjoyment of painting going, otherwise if I force myself to paint just one thing I’ll quickly burnout and not want to paint anymore. In any case, while hunting for something to paint I came across a few Massive Darkness miniatures that my wife had started but not finished. They were about ninety percent complete, they just needed finishing touches and basing for the most part. Nothing worth writing an article about you’ll be pleased to hear. So, four miniatures were completed this weekend, not bad at all!
So that was the good news, the bad news is that our Massive Darkness 2 pledge was delivered. So that’s another hundred or so miniatures that I need to paint. Sigh. It’s like pushing a boulder up a hill sometimes. I’ll get them counted and added to the total below shortly.
Boardgame miniatures left to paint: 754
Boardgame miniatures painted this year: 12