Here they arrrr…
A first look at Freebooter’s Fate from a painting perspective.
A first look at Freebooter’s Fate from a painting perspective.
Finally I finished a project and I did it quite fast – at least for me. My best friend and I were given a Freebooter’s Fate Mate Deal by the kind guys at Freebooter Miniatures for review purposes. Since I never had greenskins in front of my brushes up to that point, I was kinda thrilled. Generally speaking, for me as a big fan of the Monkey Island games, the setting and the sense of humor of the game are really appealing to me, thus I was really curious when
Unboxing.
Then: a certain degree of disillusionment and memories of a time mid 90s, when carrying your miniature case made you do leg day the day after. Metal miniatures. In my memories they were heavy, a huge mess to glue them together, with no real nice level of detail. No comparison to modern plastic miniatures, neither in processing nor in posing options or richness of detail. The miniatures by “Capt’n” Werner Klocke were no exemption at first. Glueing them together was a pain with more glued fingers than miniatures. Why the hell are metal miniatures so difficult to glue together even when washed properly? Richness of Detail? So-so. Then I glued the modeled base plates (what a nice idea!) into the plastic 25mm bases. Argh, not one fitted without filing and bending. After that: base coat. Ok, the primer didn’t stick really well. Metal miniatures or an old spray paint, I honestly don’t know. But then I was really surprised. What looked like few and flat details at the time of assembly, turned out to be beautifully modeled. Hats off, Mr. Klocke! The gloss of the metal miniatures pre-base coating really belied the insanely elaborate details, the Capt’n sculpted. I had to really revise this prejudice against metal miniatures in general and the Freebooter’s Fate miniatures in particular.
I’ll take some unboxing photos when assembling the next models to show what I’m trying to say. And, anticipating this review’s conclusion, oh yeah, there will be more models! But I didn’t take some here, so without further ado, let’s go to
Handling the brushes.
I really love it when painting my miniatures is demanding and lets me discover something new. Painting the goblin pirates lets you discover lovely little details like the little cowering crab on Moby Dugg’s base. The models are really outstanding sculpts, there is no other way to say it. Since I had the chance to gain a little experience with sculpting some time ago, I can now really appreciate this form of art even more. They are beautifully detailed and the details are nicely raised, so friends of layering will have fun as well of drybrushing heroes. The square bases need getting used to (at least from my today’s 40k influenced view), but on the other hand they are quite nice, they remind me of past glory days in the city of Mordheim… The fact that every miniature is standing on a modeled base plate, which is then glued into the 25mm plastic base, is really nice, adds some flair and reduces efforts. All things considered, it likely adds more effort than reducing it when you paint the whole base nicely detailed instead of using some texture paint, drybrushing and putting some bits ore tufts on the base. But it feels effortlessly, at least for me. I’m just no big basing guy, it’s more a duty than a pleasure in my opinion. Last but not least: even the least deckhand is sculpted just as elaborate as the leader or the greatest legend. This is quite admirable and in my opinion shows how much Mr. Klocke loves his works. And yes, I can already judge it, I’ll get to that later. After painting the whole goblin pirate starter box, I have to admit: Moby Dugg was the most impressive miniature for me. Incredibly full of character, detailed and just perfect on the brink between fun and insanity. I really took the small guy into my nerdy heart.
So, at least from a modeling and painting point of view, my
Conclusion or rather tl;dr.
Negative:
– Metal miniatures. Oh my god, my fingers are still glued together, I didn’t miss that!
– The little modeled metal bases didn’t fit into the plastic bases, I had to do some postprocessing. Honestly, I faced worse in terms of postprocessing. Just saying Forgeworld resin, you’ll surely understand…
Neutral:
+- Badly sticking basecoat. Ok, as I said before, it could be my fault. I’ll buy new primer and try again.
+- Did I mention: metal miniatures? What I’m trying to say is, metal miniatures are way harder to customize than the plastic ones of other game systems. On the other hand, the Freebooter’s Fate miniatures are so full of character that I don’t feel the need to customize them. So what?
Positive:
++ Miniatures: just wow! There’s no other way to express my feelings about them. The details are so good, the sculpting is definitly top of the line. I’m happy, my first impression was changed that much!
++ Elaborateness and heart: even more wow! I never saw miniatures before, which were sculpted with more heart. Deckhands to legends, they are all beautiful. Ok, one has to admit that Freebooter’s Fate is a skirmish level game, so the quantity of models is small and the potential individuality is big. But Werner Klocke and his team did a great job, not only from a sculpting point of view.
++ Style. The overall look and feel and the style of Freebooter’s Fate suits me quite well and shows up not only in short stories in the rulebooks and the partially ridiculous characters but even more in the miniatures.
Conclusion:
I fell in love. Yes, really. I’ll never be a fan of white metal as a material for wargaming miniatures (way to many experiences in the past…), but I can understand that it’s probably the most economical sculpting for casting as far as Freebooter Miniatures is concerned. And Mr. Klockes sculpting skills and the game with this ludicrously fine sense of humor he produces together with his team makes up for the little drawbacks I feel. So I started a small Freebooter’s Fate collection. As much as I liked painting them, it won’t be the goblins initially, they will be my second team. I really fell in love with the Cult, their aesthetics suit my preferences even more. So in my project case, there are some Cult miniatures waiting for paint. Between them limited miniatures like Capitaine Octavia and even the legends Papa Houngan and Calamité Balfour. Don’t expect completion to soon, sansâmes only move slowly. But once moving, they are nearly impossible to stop…
I’ll write more Freebooter’s Fate reviews in the future for sure, once we played some games. Now we are working on our gaming table first.
And now, some photos of my complete gang of painted goblin pirates:
Finally there’s just one more thing left for me to say: Werner Klocke and Freebooter Miniatures provided us this starter box for free for reviewing purposes. My opinions are subjective for sure, but they 100% not bribed. I’m just really enthusiastic. Ahoy!
