I’ve got a few tabs open and have had them open for weeks while I was trying to find inspiration for the Troubleshooters box.
Unfortunately, those models are back in the case and I don’t plan on playing Malifaux anytime soon and I have a bunch of other painting priorities so I’m going to put the links here. 🙂
I kind of just wanted to use the stock photo of Ironsides as my inspiration. It’s simple, and nice looking and would look good against the other plans I had.
I liked where this guy was going with the Captain, but felt it wasn’t finished. I thought the brownish orange would look good with a bit more shading and contrasting.
Lastly, the Ox. Mages. I wanted them to be super bright colours so I started painting their cloaks in pink and started painting their magic effects in…well, I don’t remember, but I wanted bright colours.
Who knows if these models will ever be finished, but this is here as some good things to look at!
Building things makes me happy, which is one of the top reasons I’m still in this hobby so many years down the line.
Professionally I’m a software developer, which also allows me to build things. Then, when I have spare time, I get to loop back and build software for my model hobby.
CheatedFates radio asked me today on Twitter if I was going to update my web crew builder and model reference. (side note: Twitter is not the best place to grab me, but it works) So I spent a half hour and updated, greatly assisted by having a PDF copy of the book. Previously I’d write hand-write notes from the book on the bus (I do a lot of stuff on the bus/Skytrain), then translate those (occasionally poorly done) notes to computer form on my lunch break at work. The PDF let me skip that horrible middle step.
Here’s a link:Â http://geeksong.com/Malifaux/
And for any software developers who use this tool and who might feel inclined to make it cooler, I accept pull requests on GitHub: https://github.com/rythos42/MalifauxModels-Web
I plan to use these models in a game next week, so I wanted to get some paint on them quickly so I wasn’t using unpainted models.
Bases are also pretty easy in this crew, so I thought I’d do the base coat and then finish off the bases. Then I found 3 more Arcanist models in my case that hadn’t had bases done, including a very old Silent One I based and primed a while back and my Sparks conversion and Mechanized Porkchop model.
I’m doing pink capes on my Oxfordian Mages. You can’t stop me.
I took the metal version of Ophelia, because it was a model that was good enough for my needs. The plastic one would have worked as well, but it was $50 for the Kin box, when I only needed 1 model from it.
I started by cutting her hat and gun away.
Then I puttied some hair on. And found a gretchin hammer thing, and an ork wrench thing and glued them on. The ork thing was initially much much bigger, and had like a little satchel and a pouch and a flag on it, but it turns out when you’re dealing with a tiny true scale model, things get small quickly.
I wasn’t super unhappy with the hair sculpting, but I wasn’t happy either.
I waited for that to dry, and then put some goggles on her to finish the look. I started by trying to sculpt little circles, which was getting super frustrating and super ineffective. After I threw my putty away while I sulked, I found a nearby flying stand, drilled a hole in it and cut two slices off. Jobs a good ‘un.
The base will be similar to my old Arcanist railway bases, since Sparks and the Mech Pig will be going into my Mei Feng crew! Mei can take Foundry models, and Sparks and Mech Pig are both Foundry!
I had a free Sunday so I went to Wet Coast GT for just the one day. They were running Henchman Hardcore, an alternative Malifaux format where you get 20ss, must take a Henchman as your Leader, no summoning and the only Strategy is Turf War and the only Scheme is Assassinate. The goal is to run at the center and hurt your opponent — a decidedly “unMalifauxy” goal, in my opinion.
It’s not my favourite format, but it was nice to play Malifaux again. I took Kang and 3 Rail Workers and got my ass handed to me.
After that, we played an Enforcer Brawl with….9 people? Maybe 8? You get 1 Enforcer and one upgrade. You get 1VP for wounding an unwounded model (2VP if it’s more SS than you), 3VP for killing something (4VP if it’s more SS than you) and -3VP for dying. I took my Ice Golem because I haven’t really played with it a lot, and wanted to show it off! He ended up being excellent, as whenever he died I tended to get 2VPs for doing damage to someone for his explosive, which means I lost fewer points than others who died.
I won this event, but only because Mark won and Mark was the TO. Mark also played an Ice Golem, he just died a lot less than I did. 🙂
The next day CHOP! chat got excited about Malifaux again. I think the confluence of WCGT and the GenCon order stuff going up caused folks to get excited about it again. I pulled Taelor out of my to-do pile and put some paint on her. A few hours later, this was the result:
I was tempted to leave her albino after I had shaded basecoated her boots, pants, shirt and hair. She had this crazy goth look to her that I really liked. So I ended up leaving her skin less coloured than I would have otherwise, adding white to the Dheneb Stone when I highlighted, which took a lot of the pink out of the colour.
Otherwise I was just trying to copy this drawing. The pants really are that shiny — I tried to tone them down but have been unsuccessful so far. Still, I really like the contrast here.
I went to Malifood, and since I’d been playing the Arcane Emissary a lot in the campaign Derrick and I are playing, I wanted to finish the job I’d converted a few months ago so I could use him!
This was a super simple paint job. Bases are as my Arcanist bases, most of the model and the gears are Mithril Silver with some Seraphim Sepia and Nuln oil over. The blue is Ice Blue, painted up in darker tones and then drybrushed over the finished silver in a cheap sort of blue OSL.
This guy is phenomenal in-game. I think I would pay 10 stones for his ability to give a (1) AP action to any non-leader within 6″. My usual crews suffer from being super slow, so being able to take an extra 4″ is really helpful! Or to force an Interact for a model that only barely made it. Or get someone to finish off someone at 1 health from afar.
Because the campaign is Henchmen only, I got to play with the Conflux upgrades this weekend too. I didn’t end up using Mei Fengs (drop a +6Ca Scrap Marker, discard to attack again) because they were on different sides of the table. Ramos (Magnetism ability, plus Construct) I tried to use against the Necropunks across the table but didn’t work. And Kaeris’ (+1 Burning for Minions and Instinctual) I used to great effect in turn 1 to draw 3 cards, but ended up needing Kaeris to leave Burning on her crew to drop Scheme Markers (Grab ‘n Drop) for points instead.
Which leaves me to believe that the “basic” Conflux upgrade might be more useful than it looks. Or, that Imbued Energies on this guy could be nice, since he’s Wk 4 as well.
It’s been a busy summer, and it’s been hard to get time to play games (and when I am playing games, I’m playing Blood Bowl as I’m in a league that has 2 scheduled games a month!). But a good friend is moving across Canada shortly, and he wanted to get some games in before he left forever.
We tend to play 3 player, since there are 3 of us in this group, so I’ve gotten inventive about writing multiplayer scenarios at the end I’ll share the scenario we used.
Arcanists vs Arcanists vs Resurrectionists
Arcanists #1 (me!)
Rasputina, with Armor of December and Arcane Reservoir. I originally had her with Imbued Energies, but decided I wanted more cards. Armor of December was an inspired choice, and I think it was the difference between losing miserably and winning.
Ice Golem. I’d originally planned to take the new murderspider/Arcane Emissary, but decided to go with the Ice Golem since it was finished and I didn’t want to start painting a new project…
December Acolyte. I wanted 2 of them…but again, with the not starting new projects. I took Frame for Murder on this guy because he always dies. And I figured 2 points was good.
2xIce Gamin
Silent One. This model was unpainted…because of not …starting new projects!
Arcanists #2 (Derrick)
Marcus, with Trail of the Gods and Feral Instinct.
Myranda with Imbued Energies. Derrick ended up tossing this card for Fast, instead of sac’ing Myranda and getting 4 cards!
Rogue Necro
Slate Ridge Mauler. Derrick knows this is a sub-optimal model, but he took it because he’d been told to handicap himself a bit.
Canine Remains. For Frame for Murder…
Resurrectionists (Duke)
Seamus, with Red Chapel Killer
Sybelle
Copycat Killer
3x Belle
Duke pretty much takes the same list every time. It worked out well for him this time! Here’s a photo to break up this text. 🙂
Marcus ran at me in the first turn and Raspy and the Ice Golem tanked him for 3 turns.
Scenario
The scenario was Mistaken Identity, which I wrote originally for Breaching the Faux. I was pretty happy with how it looked, but I hadn’t had time to playtest it.
There is a 30mm marker in the middle of the table. Any player gets 2VP if they end the game with the marker on one of their models stat cards, and they gain it by taking (1) Interact Actions. If the model dies, it’s placed into base contact before removing the model. If you have 2 models within 3″ of the model with the marker at the end of the game, gain 1VP.
Randomly deal each player an Ace, making sure the Tome is in the pile. The Tome player gets 2VP at the end of the game if no one has seen their Ace. The other players get 1VP if they’ve seen the Tome players card. Whenever you kill a model, flip a card and on a 10+ you get to see the card of the owner of the model.
The necro has just killed Bette Noire, and the Bear is about to pick up the Arcane Heart marker.
The Game
Marcus ran at me quickly, I think assuming that he could take me out and deal with Seamus later. Seamus spread out to get Line in the Sand. I…tanked Marcus and tried to kill him while Myranda healed him. I took Frame for Murder (successfully getting the Acolyte killed by Sybelle) and Make Them Suffer. Suffer was harder – I kept killing Minions without Raspy killing them! Marcus lost most of his models around Turn 4. He forced me to put most of my forces into him, then split up a bit and when Seamus came in with his models he lost almost everything.
The Bear picked up the Marker, then died and dropped it, allowing Seamus to pop in and pick it up and then Back Alley out to the far side of the board where he’d be safe with his 2VPs and preventing others from getting 1VP from being close to him.
In the end, I won with 6VP, Duke got second with 5VP and Derrick got 3VPs.
A sweet photo of the Breaching the Faux deck made this year. I bought about 20 of these to give away at a future tournament. If only I had time to organize such a thing…
Scenario?
After playing it, I felt that the Tomes player 2VP were too swingy, either getting 2VP easily or requiring them to play defensively to keep it. I also thought that the “end the game within” 1VP was too difficult.
I changed:
“May” flip. Forcing someone to flip after they’d already seen the players card was weird.
10+ -> 9+. Just making it a little easier to get. I also considered allowing people to cheat the flip to give it a little less randomness. I think if you can cheat it, I’d put it back at 10+ or even 11+.
1VP for the Tomes player if your card is unrevealed to at least 1 other player. This maintains the “secrets from other players” aspect I really like, but makes it a little less swingy. I imagined a 4 player game being difficult to lose this point.
I moved that 1VP so that everyone is trying to stand near the Arcane Heart model. It’s just nice to bring people together. 🙂
The actual model is the Arcane Emissary, but after this art preview image, people started calling it the murderbull. And it’s not that I don’t love the murderbull imagery, it’s more that I don’t believe I could successfully convert one. Like this guy. That’s a damn fine conversion!
I wanted something with more spider legs, so I picked up the Ramos Avatar model to ensure the proper density of legs. Then scoured my bits box for more legs until I found the new plastic Brass Arachnid model. Not quite the same…but since everyone complains it won’t fit on a 30mm, may as well drop it onto a 50mm!
I also took this opportunity to try out my new Basius pad. I used milliput, which I’m not certain was a great plan. It was really hard to press into the pad, and left big chunks un-sculpted, so I added some random gears until it looked better. Some friends are using something called FixIt, and I might try some greenstuff if I get some cheaply somewhere.
This blurry spider photo is supposed to be showing detail of the basius. The parts that did get pressed properly look pretty good!
And then some photos of murderspider. On his magnificent 50mm base! Going to sculpt some more arcane flames coming out of parts of it, but it’s good start!
It’s not that I haven’t been painting…well…not just. It’s that I’ve been to busy to bother taking my photography stuff out and I finished a bunch of Hordes stuff! Pretty happy with the models I’ve been doing so far – it’s nice to finally put paint on models that are ~5 years old!
In the mean time, more base coats!
This one is fun because I literally painted this in a half hour. Or 20 minutes. Having a game with some friends this weekend, and I decided I wanted to use my Union Miners for the game. I’d previously assembled them in a model-building frenzy, so they were nicely primed and ready for paint! Should be able to finish them off sometime this week, as they aren’t overly complicated models!
Included in this photo is my paint palette. It’s the top of a plastic box of spinach or arugula or similar iron-filled leafy vegetable. The 5 more brilliant colours are the ones I used this morning – Blazing Orange, Shadow Grey, Rhinox Hide, Dheneb Stone, Snakebite Leather and there’s a less obvious Mithril Silver between the orange and the stone.
