While IA is designed to play power armor troops as much as possible it also relies a lot on their drones. At least you would want to have one Yao Xie Pangguling and one Yaokong Son Bae, preferably a RuiShi and Lu Duan too. That would be my minimum to have some flexible list building. In order to have a healthy amount of options: Box of Pangguling, Box of Yao Xie RuiShi and Lu Duan and two boxes of Yaokong REMs. But that's probably what you want to avoid. Additionally the support box is highly suggested. An engineer is a must in each list and despite you can get it in the form of HaiDao or Krit Kokram, it's a good idea to have the mech-engineer Zanshi Gocheng. Also the Zanshi Yisheng adds a good value if your list contains any TacAware unit as they are always worth the orders spent in healing such units back to action. Regarding Zanshi, a defensive Zanshi link is the second option if you don't want to be stuck playing always similar Zuyong lists. However, don't worry. There's no need to buy the SWC box of zanshis as that core relies in the HaiDao sniper and the zanshi are just fillers. You'll be playing basic zanshi and/or the FO option, therefore you're already done with the three Zanshi you're using in Ikari as Keisotsu proxies. I think their current color scheme contrasts nicely with the Zuyongs yellow/orange and HaiDao's grey. With a HaiDao sniper, a Pangguling or Son Bae and those three Zanshi you're good to go if you ever need to add such core into your lists.
Paints:- Vallejo: Imperial blue base as base. Imperial blue blended with deep sky blue to highlight. Skyblue as fine edge highlight. Tricky part is the middle colour blending which requires a bit of paint mixing, wet blending and building up layers to lighter colour. :-)
Thanks for tips and advice. My thoughts also were to proxy my JSA/Ikari Drones and Zhanshi in the short term to make the army playable. Pity I don't like the large Yu Jing drones to get motivated about painting some up (The designs are abit of a mish mash in my opinion), but I may be tempted to have a go at them at some point.
INFINITY YU JING INVINCIBLE ARMY: Haidao (Combi Rifle) Haidao (Combi Rifle) This guy is my favourite in the starter set, I think due to his badass pose (tactical rocks have a place people lol!). I didn't like the green on the studio models so thinking up an alternative was the main task I set in thinking about doing a Yi Jing IA team. After I did a bunch of research on cool looking sci fi armour colours, I settled on this blue grey scheme. My biggest change from the studio version was to make grey the main colour with yellow as a spot colour and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. After I worked out the colour scheme on this guy I was able to plot out the colours of the rest of the army. The sniper dude may be more useful but this guy trumps him in the rule of cool in my opinion.
INFINITY YU JING INVINCIBLE ARMY: Liu Xing (Hacker) Liu Xing (Hacker) The Liu Xing was probably the toughest guy to finish in the starter. That’s why I left him until last. The backpack is what I find intimidating, and it took about 2 to 3 hours all up to finish it alone. I agonised over adding red stripes or blue for many days, as I was a huge fan of the Studio Painted Tiger Soldiers with the red stripes long before I started collecting Yu Jing. In the end I went with blue to tie in this guy with the rest of my army and I’m glad I did as I think it turned out quite well. I’m also happy with how the yellow turned out in balance with black, blue and grey (I only kept a little red in the tail lights and some markings). Out of all the starter miniatures this guy was the most satisfying to paint, probably because he was the toughest nut to crack. I like how chunky he looks and in terms of rule of cool this guy is right up there with the best that infinity has to offer. The State Empire is glad to have in it's ranks this flying tonne of pain that will crush whatever he lands on!
INFINITY YU JING INVINCIBLE ARMY: Zencha (Hacker) Zencha (Hacker) This guy is one of the reasons I wanted to do IA. He's got one of the best tactical rocks on the game lol! I wanted his paint scheme to blend in with my army so went with urban camo on the poncho. I tried to emulate digital camo designs and I think it turned out OK. Fun mini to plan colors for and paint up.
Thanks. I looked up digital camo as a reference and then copied the style on the poncho. It was hard because digital camo is way more detailed than you can paint in 28mm, however I worked out that general shape of it and applied it by painting little rectangulare lines.
INFINITY YU JING INVINCIBLE ARMY: Daoying (Hacker) Daoying (Hacker) The pose on the hacker is so much cooler than the sniper and this was one of the minis that sold me on IA. It was fun to paint her and see my paint scheme for the Daoying more clearly. I chose white as the main colour due to her force commander status and took inspiration from Star Wars Clone Trooper armour. Blue is pretty standard as per the studio and it goes well with yellow. The grey ties in the model with other minis in my army and I think I did the highlights better than last time. She's now ready to boss about her IA buddies.
Is the camo effect the last thing you paint on the cloak or do you do the effect and then apply some kind of wash?
camo is tricky because you can lose depth when you paint it. Usually I paint the main base color and apply shading (in this case grey). Then I work on each camo colour one at a time, in this case light grey and then black. This method helps break up the camo evenly across the model. Once this is done I will have 3 camo colours across the model (3 is minimum), but it will look flat due to the camo not having shading or highlights. So after this I carefully wash in one darker colour (in this case dark grey) in the recesses and also blend a light colour over the top (light grey).
INFINITY YU JING INVINCIBLE ARMY: Hac Tao (HMG) Hac Tao (HMG) This guy is one of my favorite Yu Jing miniatures (It's hard to pick one as so many are so cool). One thing that tipped me over into starting Invincible Army is that all my fav sculps are in it (Only robocat is missing). Hac Tao HMG is just iconic infinity, gracing the cover of N3 and sporting jet black power armour and a big gun. I painted this guy based closely on the Studio as I've never been confident with NNM black. I think I did him justice in the end. I kept the yellow lines based on the dossier as this colour ties him in with the rest of the army, but I think I painted them a little sharper than the studio model. I also added the Hac Tao emblem and some numbering in freehand (the emblem was a pain and required a lot of redos to get it right). Mostly happy with how the black turned out though. Next up his hacker bro...
Dude, I hope that YJ will be unplayable and absent of N4 so that you wanna sell your whole army out of rage. I would insta-buy it!
The model is great and your paint job is just top notch, truly impressive (and that applies for everything you've shown in this thread)! Now I'm seriously wondering why after 4 years in the game and an only Yu Jing composed collection, I still haven't got any Hac Tao models. What is wrong with me??
Yeah, what is wrong with you! Thicc Stealthy boy is pricey but god damn worthes his points back in a majority of games I used him. =)
@archangeleong would you mind sharing your setup for taking pics of the models? I'm struggling to find a way to show the final product in a decent way. Your minis look amazing and the quality of the pics shows it really good.
Really impressive work an your YuJing. The Daoying Sniper and the Zencha are my favourites but all other units are just freaking sweet as well. Very well done, your colors and blends are beyond belief.
