After collecting Blood and plunder miniatures for years, the ‘Raise the Black’ Kickstarter finally motivated me to jump into the game and teach our local Pirate Club how to play their first wargame.
Starting with Maynard’s men, I assembled 6 Sea Dogs and 6 Able Sea Men from the very versatile sprues provided in the box. Miniatures were zenithal primed using black, grey and white spray cans, which is a feat in the Florida heat and humidity.
I always like to paint from the inside out and thus started with the skin Bugman’s Glow from GW. Do not forget the feet (I did) as some miniatures are bare feet.I then used Burned Sienna craft paint for the base.Once the bases color is dry, use some darktone wash to accentuate the wood patterns.I intend on highlighting the wood later but even at this sage, the base will look good enough for tabletop.Painting was delayed a bit by the arrival of two extra boxes of sailors, which I purchased in order to boost the number of sailor in a unit to 8, which is my standard for B&P and also to add a unit to each side, so as they both over 200 points without the ships.Back to painting, I have now completed color ‘blocking’ on the 8 miniatures of the unit (I find it easy to batch paint 8 miniatures at a time). I used mainly contrast paints, save for the white which I always like to basecoat pure white before applying white contrast paint. Note how the zenithal priming plays well with contrast colors. I found documentation detailing the fact that Maynard’s sailors often wore grey and red and thus made it a theme for the unit. The key is to select a few colors you will use .across the entire unit and, as they are not wearing uniforms in a traditional way, paint difernt garments with one color on a variety of miniatures, repeating the process with all the selected colors. In this case I chose red, grey, blue and white and use them across the entire unit. The same goes with hair. Use black/brown/blond/red so as to create a variety of model hair color.I decided to highlight the grey with two shades of progressively lighter medium grey. (Mechanicus Standard Grey and Dawnstone). As an afterthought, I think it would ahve been easier to just go with Administratum Grey highlight solely, due to the highlights already provided by the contrast paint.For the read, I used a double highlight, GW Mephiston Red and Wild Rider Red. Wild Rider Red was far to orangy for the uniform color so as I mixed it 50/50 with Mephiston Red.White was easy as straight white was applied over the contrast paint……giving me the opportunity to have fun with some of the pants.…For flesh, I added a layer of GW Cadian Fleshtone (two for lighter skintone). For the eyes, I added a shade of black , then a dot of white, followed by eyes created with a tiny dot of black applied with a brush (my usual marker tip was too large for the recessed sockets). Finally, I mixed a little flesh tone in some GW Dawnstone, which I then diluted before applying 5 o’clock shadows (do not forget the head for ‘bold’ miniatures.Metallic parts were added using GW Leadbelcher and some bronze/dark gold color. Google 17th century pistols and muskets for weapons in order to properly identify the metallic parts of these weapons. Paint the belt and show buckles (I suggest using some flesh wash for the brass/gold so as to dull its shine). Finally, you may want to brighten weapons edges to accentuate their sharp aspect (I used Vallejo Chrome).I did not feel good about placing the fragile plastic sailors in a foam container, as snagged hands would soon snap. I therefore came up with another solution: 25mm stick on magnets.I applied the magnets to each miniature…And annotated the bottom with the unit nationality and type using a metallic sharpie (B – ritish | Sea Dog | Maynard). Many units are similar and this will help moving forward when dozens are in the box.Speaking of boxes, holiday cookies are bad for your health but so good for your miniatures.Instant transportable storage. Let me know if you have suggestions to improve it 🙂I ran out of pistols as both maynard’s men and the pirates were to wirled braces of pistols. Footsore sells some pretty adequate pistols which arrived very fast and were promptly attached to the miniatures (below). Onces primed, it is difficult to tell the difference.I painted the Able Seamen in much the same way as I painted the seadogs, with a predominant red and grey them, which will nevertheless allow me to use them as British sailors in future forces configurations.
Lessons learned from the second unit painting:
Painting the flesh with a lighter flesh tone as a base (Cadian from GW) and then applying flesh wash allowed me to have a better final control over the facial features, hands and feet.
I switched to an old gold tone (Gehenna’s Gold) for the brass metal and it provides a more appropriate look for these elements (I still use GW gloss fleshshade to tone down the glare.
Maynard’s Pirate Hunters are now done. Next, Edward Teach’s pirates…
