Defender of the beer – Freja Fangbreaker

Freja Fangbreaker, a sculpt by Werner Klocke, is a nicely sculpted miniature with a reasonable amount of detail. Her belt buckle is a nice touch and I especially like the quilted frock.

The left side of her face is unfortunately a bit undefined making it hard to paint it to a satisfactory standard. The other details are all relatively crisp and well-defined, one does not have to guess what specific elements are supposed to be. Nevertheless, the Bones material can not deliver as crisp a result as a metal miniature, but I think for miniatures intended for the gaming table this is not a problem and they are far away from being featureless blobs.

Slight modifications

Her pose is convincing and does not look unnatural. She is depicted in a stance one might interpret as ‘waiting’ or ‘guarding’. Given it is not an action pose she is well suited for RPG games as a character, as it will match more situations. In a skirmish game the pose is still dynamic enough to give an impression of “Come get some”, so the miniature fits well in a war band. For rank and file there is no doubt that she could either be used as one of the troopers or even a company leader. Models of female dwarves are not as common and she surely is one of the better looking ones out there.

I had one problem with the original sculpt prompting me to get out the greenstuff: She is a fighter, wears a full plate armour, chain mail and a quilted frock….and naturally her heart is exposed to show off her bosom. Usually I have no problem with this – if it fits the miniature in question. However, here it makes no sense. So, I decided to close the front of her armour and make her more believable.

Painting Freja

One of the features of the Bones miniatures is, that they require no priming. It is true, it works. However, you cannot thin down your paint too much for the basecoat, as it will bead if you have too much water in the mix. After the basecoat is applied, you can paint the miniature using any techniques, washes etc. Some claim applying a basecoat this way would cover up details, but I cannot confirm this. The details are still there and you can pick them out easily.

I used a mix of Reaper Master Series paints and Vallejo Model Colour and GW washes.

Metal

Full Plate Armour: Brown Base Coat (RMS Muddy Brown) followed by Vallejo Bronze and a wash with GW Reikland Flesh. I then mixed some Vallejo Bright Bronze in it for the first and the second highlight finishing of with some Vallejo Silver.

Chainmail: Basecoat of black followed by Vallejo Gunmetal Grey. For the highlights Vallejo Oily Steel with successive drops of Vallejo Silver.

Face and skin

Hair: RMS Muddy Brown with a bit of RMS Blood Red as base colour, highlights with successive amount of RMS Tanned Leather and RMS Fair Skin.

Face: The face gave me quite some trouble, as I tried out the RMS paints for the first time. I used RMS Tanned Flesh as a basecoat followed by a wash with GW Reikland Flesh. highlights with RMS Fair Skin and Tanned Flesh 50:50 turned out too pale and I ended up using Vallejo Basic Skintone. The face didn’t come out as nicely as I hoped, but the next miniature will hopefully be better in the face department.

Cloth

Quilted frock: I had in mind to give the frock a subtle cross pattern, so some of the squares are green, some turquoise. For the green parts I used a basecoat of RMS Grass Green and successive amounts of RMS Sun Yellow for the highlights. The turquoise parts got a basecoat of 50:50 RMS Grass Green and RMS Sapphire Blue, highlighted with successive amounts of RMS Pure White.

Loin cloth: Basecoat of RMS Pure White with a hint of RMS Muddy Brown, wash with GW Agrax Earthshade and highlights with RMS Pure White.

Accessories

Wooden parts: Basecoat of 90:10 RMS Muddy Brown and Vallejo London Grey. Highlights with successive drops of RMS Pure White.

Leather parts: Basecoat RMS Tanned Leather, wash with GW Agrax Earthshade, successive highlights with RMS Pure White.

Base

Base: The tiles are made from thin cardboard, painted and drybrushed with cheap acrylic wall paint, following the same routine as with the dungeon wall segment. The grass is MiniNatur Autumn Grass Tufts.