Now that I have enough Orphans painted for a small force, all they were missing was an opposing force. Since I initially got into the game with the Arbonte’s Menace two-player starter, I already owned the start of a Rocavivas army, which I reinforced with a faction starter back in the 2010s. I wasn’t looking at the rules when I bought them, but by a strange happenstance, both my collections come to about the same point size, so that was perfect.
The recent announcement by Zenit Miniatures that they are relaunching the game couldn’t have come at a better moment for me, as I was already invested in painting and trying the game. That also meant that I want to play it sooner than later, to know if I really like it, before they launch the upcoming Kickstarter project. That made me make the decision to try out painting the Rocavivas a bit faster than the Orphans, in a more army scale way, starting with a test unit of Kyanites.
The models
The models have been available as resin cast and metal. The ones I have are resin, and I don’t know if that was for the older or newer kits. The Rocavivas models are quite small, and their weapon and banner shafts are tiny, and sadly, quite fragile. I broke multiple, and had to repair them with pins. While talking of pin and hobbying, I got two pairs of twins in my unit, as I got two starters. Units can go from 2 to 5 in Nemesis, probably explaining the low number of sculpt, so it’s understandable. However, I made some small repose so the models weren’t exactly the same. You can see those here.
Painting
As mentioned, I decided to go more for speed than quality. I don’t mean that I wanted to botch them, but just that I wanted to get them to the table faster, even if they didn’t get to the same standard that I used for the Orphans. To help with that, most of the base coats were applied with GW Contrast and AP Speed Paints, over a zenithal primer, to give good details and definition straight with the first coat. I then did some highlights, and I did push a bit further on the faces and weapons, to make them stand out a bit better. I wasn’t too sure of the look while the process was ongoing, but in the end I’m quite happy with the results.
The Kyanites
The background behind the models was way too close and too busy, so they are a bit hard to see in the following pictures. I’ll have to try and pay better attention to that next time, but those will do for now.
If you are interested in the game, I invite you to join the fan Facebook group for it, the World of Miter.
Backdrop by Jon Hodgson Backdrops
