A Quick Escalation

Infinity is back in the mix as the local group I’ve been meeting with haphazardly has started an Escalation League. With an overwhelming backlog of Infinity minis still new-in-box/blister, I decided to use the league start tamping down on that issue. I also want to use the opportunity to start up a new faction: Dahshat.

I actually started down the Dahshat road a little over a year ago. Listening to the Dice Abide twitchcast, I won a free figure and decided to use it to jumpstart my Dahshat experience. I picked the Dogfaced merc, McMurrough (pictured on the scene above on the left). And then he promptly sat as I slowly grabbed other figures for the sectorial faction. Being part of the “NA-2” group of non-aligned entities, the figure line is made up of existing figures from various factions. This faction houses a few Yu Jing figures so it was a logical evolution in my collection.

The Escalation League will start collections out at 150 points and run up the point value every couple of weeks. The emphasis is on getting games in, playing different people in the league to get to know everyone, and getting other people involved to help push interest in the game and community. As I want to always play with painted models for this, I need to work fast to get some of these new models on the table.

With that in mind, I built up a quick mix of figures that can easily insert into my existing Yu Jing mix to make a Dahshat force of sorts. I originally was going to try to game on Saturday to give me time to paint all this up but my free time took a hit and I moved things around to play during week. As such I had a bit less time to get things prepared so I focused on two figures, Valerya Gromoz on the back left and Fiddler riding the tactical Segway on the front right.

I was able to get both painted in time but the pics will have to wait. While I had the chance, I also put together this group of old school Yu Jing monks. I don’t really need them for the sectorials I play but these specific models are going out of print and I don’t like the newer ones as much.

One of the challenges with these models are the monk staffs several models wield. They are in the typical soft pewter and came out of the box like bent up noodles. I didn’t have a lot of faith that I’d ever get them straight or be able to keep them that way so I cut them out.

To replace the staffs, I cut a longer piece of piano wire and drill through the hands to glue in the new staff replacements. This is the same piano wire I use for pinning so I have a lot of it and the pinvise sized specifically for it. After cutting the wire, I used a belt sander to flatten the sharp edges of the wire and fit it into place with superglue. They are a little thinner than I’d want but will ultimately do just fine.

I’ll post up my painting results and recap some of the league results next time.