Painting Runebound: Unbreakable Bonds (with Special Guest)

Runebound remains one of the most-played games in my library, although it had sat unplayed for almost a year. A few weeks ago, I decided to see if my second son would enjoy it. Turns out, he loves it, so we've played four or five times together now—the two boys and I. The Unbreakable Bonds expansion was something that had been on my radar for some time because it added a cooperative mode, but it came out around when our interest was waning. With the resurgence of Runebound here, I picked up that expansion and set to painting the figures. We have played with some of the extras added to the base game, but we have not yet tried the co-operative mode, preferring instead to let my second son experience the competitive scenarios that we already had.

There are only two heroes in the expansion, and first up is Tatianna.

Her character is distinguished by the aqua sashes and a variety of tattoos. The tattoos on the card art were too finely detailed for me to reproduce, but I think I captured the circle and dot motif. The bands around her legs are not shown in the illustration, which stops at the knees, so I decided to bring in some more of the bright red as well as the blue-purple of the left shoulder. Although it's a bit loud for leg decorations compared to the plain black bands on her arms, I think it provides a good triangular arrangement of both colors.

The other hero is Eliam, whose hair is frankly ridiculous. I am still not sure if the shade in the hair is too dark, or if it accurately captures the shadows in his pale locks. This guy had some nasty mold lines cutting across his arms and clothes, but I was able to clean most of them up. I think I'm most happy with the blue-grey outfit. This is not the most exciting part of the figure, but I think the highlighting sells the idea that it's a lit dark color rather than a shaded light color. The blades are kind of uninteresting, but they are this way in the card art as well.

I tried something different on these bases. I had picked up Vallejo Brown Earth texture paint after having seen Sorastro use it in a few videos, particularly his Star Wars Legion series. The first time I put this on a base—honestly, I cannot remember when that was—I was kind of disappointed with the tone of it, which appeared much more red than I had hoped. It was Black Magic Craft's quick review of the product line that got me thinking I could just apply it before priming and then paint it whatever color I want. I thought I had taken a photo of these two after priming but before painting, but I must have forgotten. The texture paste leveled out more than I expected, leaving just a bare layer of mostly fine grit. It was quick and easy, but I think the effect of the superglue technique I used with my Thunderstone Quest miniatures is more appealing. However, I knew I wanted to apply a lot of flock to these guys, so it was more of an undercoat of texture anyway. For the record, I added chunks of cork to Elias' base as rocks, wet blending a few different colors to get a reddish-brown tone, and then flocked with pale green and, primarily, rooibos tea. Tatianna has a mix of green flocks and green and black tea, but as her character abilities clearly indicate a comfort with the wilderness, I went heavy on the static grass for her.

And now, the Special Guest. Last year, my son received the Gilded Blade expansion, which includes the hero, Red Scorpion. He painted her many months ago, but as I was painting Elias and Tatianna, he decided to touch up the paint job. Here she is, painted by my 11-year-old son:

Red Scorpion is, of course, red, and red is a tricky one to paint. I think he did a nice job with the highlights on both the sweeping red cloak and the hair. The facial highlights are a bit stark, but he'll get better with time. Also, he's using cheap craft paints, which I find to be very difficult to work with for fine detail and thin layers. I may have to graduate him to better paints and brushes. It's hard to believe it was over three years ago that he, my wife, and I painted minis for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game.

Interested readers can find my other painted Runebound miniatures here, here, and here.