waferthinninja

Haven't had much chance to play Malifaux recently, so my painting had kind of fell by the wayside. I've had a load of Guild figures lying around unpainted for about a year. Had the urge to paint again, so pulled out Lucius as I always really liked the figure. Hope you like it, critique and advice always welcome. The photo isn't great, I've never quite been able to justify buying an SLR, so these were taken with my phone! Lucius by waferthinninja, on Flickr

The stockings were basecoated in a mix of black and Tallaran Flesh (about 50-50, can't remember exactly). Then I gradually added Tallaran Flesh to build up highlights, 2 or 3 iterations. The closer to pure flesh your mix gets, the more "sheer" the stockings will look. Rather than the normal highlighting where you think about where the light will fall/catch, with the stockings I was more thinking about the areas where the fabric would be streched most. Always keep the paint watered down - way more than you would think. That's pretty much the no 1 tip that revolutionised my painting. It varies colour by colour, but generally I use about 1 part paint to 3 parts water. Skimmed milk is the way people tend to describe the consistency. If you use one of those pallettes with the dimples, you can draw the paint up the side of the dimple and it should be slightly translucent i.e. you should be able to see the white of the pallette through the paint. It takes longer as you typically need more coats, but it means you can build things up gradually, mistakes are easier to fix, and the end result is smoother.

Eyes are always a nightmare! I used quite runny black paint at first so it would flow into the eye socket, then a tiny dot of off-white (tiny bit of yellow added so its not unnaturally white) to one side gives the effect of a mascaraed eye looking to one side. My figures quite often end up looking to one side, as its easier than making them look straight ahead (one white dot not two!), and adds a bit of expression and life to the face. The eyeshadow was easy really - just a blue glaze to the rest of the eye socket. It was especially easy on Colette since the sculpt has quite a well defined socket. I actually thought I had overdone it a bit, slightly too tarty!

If you are patient, you can wait until I get around to texturing up the ones I am making. I will be making them freely available. However, I am a terrible procrastinator so it may be a quite a while before I finish them! http://www.waferthinninja.com/dojo/?p=84 Wild west building test run by waferthinninja, on Flickr

They look great. I want to make some outdoorsy terrain soon, and haven't much liked the available "premade" options - looks like I will be buying some wire and some sculpey and some of that cool foliage...

I basecoated in black mixed with Tallarn Flesh, then added more Tallarn Flesh for the highlights, then a little more (the closer to pure flesh you go, the more "sheer" the tights will look). Keep it all quite watered down and build it up gradually. Colette finished by waferthinninja, on Flickr

Colette finished by waferthinninja, on Flickr I'm calling her done. Lots of little things I've noticed that I could fix, but I'm trying not to obsess over one figure for too long else I will never get the whole crew done. The base is a bit plain, but I think with the whole crew mounted on them they will look good together. Next up will be a Performer.

Sounds like it should be a wiki - provide the template but let other people do the work for you in populating it.

Yes that's why I specified WHFB/WH40K . BloodBowl made the cut and became a computer game for the same reason they stopped supporting the figure game version; a game where you buy a box set then one team (or even just a team if your friend has a pitch) just isn't profitable compared to a money pit like WH40K. If someone bought the BB computer game and not the figure game, GW got roughly the same amount of cash.

I very much doubt it would happen, the minatures are where the money is; I doubt they make much money on the rulebooks. Personally I'd have no problem playing the game with tokens, or with figures vs tokens. IMHO It would be a much fairer game since money (and time) wouldn't be an issue, everyone would be on the same level. I can afford whatever figs I want, but I can imagine the frustration of someone who can't. The same applies to CCGs - I love the games, but the method of marketing makes them unfair. I personally enjoy the hobby aspect and from an aesthetic point of view its much nicer to have painted figures and nice terrain, but from an intellectual perspective its hard to argue that they make the *game* better. They only make the *experience* of playing better. A computer version of Malifaux would be awesome - the best of both worlds in most respects - nice graphics would replace painted figs, but you'd have access to every figure and multiple terrain setups for a fixed and, relatively speaking, low price. But its not going to happen since its just not profitable. Games Workshop have made RTS games based off their IP, but they've never made a turn based computerised WHFB/WH40K game - i.e. an accurate recreation of the figure game. The reason should be fairly clear.

I guess Malifaux is such a crazy place, it wouldn't be too hard for them to introduce pretty much anything. But I think the reason I'd like to see existing themes more thoroughly expanded is that it would allow for more variety in model choice whilst allowing your crew to remain coherant in terms of fluff/theme. If you just add more and more themes, you're left with a choice between playing with the same small subset of figures over and over, or having your crew be a hodgepodge of different themes.

I think there are enough major themes to be getting on with already. However cool Hindu mythology is, I just feel we don't need to go there whilst there is still so much to be done with the themes already represented. I'm a big fan of Norse mythology too, but I just don't think it belongs in Malifaux. I'd like to see the Wild West theme developed further - (Native American) Indians in particular feel like they are under represented, and as Hansel mentioned, there were a lot of Chinese in the old west which gives an opening into their rich mythology.

Even Go, which has an incredibly elegant and simple ruleset, still has a slightly klunky Ko rule to prevent an infinite game, and an even klunkier Superko rule. It would be nice for Malifaux to have a generic Ko type rule to prevent all possible infinite combos, but I can't think of a way to word it, especially with semi-infinite combos built into the game (e.g. Rasputina's Biting Chill), and the golden rule that models special abilities override the general rules. I think you pretty much just have to unofficially errata/ban them as they arise, and keep them as intellectual curiosities until their wording can be officially errata'd. Noone is seriously going to be allowed to win a tournament just by playing Hamelin and "pressing the win button".

Another vote for &8^*ing eyes! I actually try to do them early on now as there is nothing worse than having a figure you are pleased with, then messing up the eyes.

Vanity first: Father Ninja Win Neat Wharf Jinni Rift in Henna Jaw Victor Ramos: Vicars Motor Cars or Vomit Mr Octavo Sir Mr Coat Visor

The key difference is that dice rolls are independent events, same odds each time, whereas card flips are not, since each flip changes the composition of the remaining deck. In some ways card counting is easier in Malifaux - you are only dealing with one deck rather than a six to eight deck shoe. With your starting hand you get to see > 10% of the deck; in subsequent turns its even more since you shuffle, then discard and redraw. By the middle of a turn you might have seen half the deck depending on how much action there has been, so its not too hard to have a good idea whether the remainder of the deck is full of high or low cards, even without explicitly counting. Having said that I think its a lot harder to really benefit from card counting in a complex game like Malifaux compared to a much simpler game like Blackjack. Even in Blackjack it only nudges expected return in your favour, so in the long run you will win. To make money card counting you have to play for hours on end, and you can still end sessions down. In Malifaux, many of your flips are involuntary (defensive), so knowing your odds doesn't help on those. Of the active flips, its only really going to help on those occasions where you are making a judgement call about whether to risk something - maybe a couple of times per game - the luck factor is still going to overwhelm any edge card counting has given you.

I didn't rescale. Its not realistic - but then this is a game where a gun only shoots 8", but you can hit someone with a hammer from 3" away! It is a little small, but not to the point where it looks out of place. I think the scale would only be an issue if you tried to combine it with other stuff that was a different scale. Because its all from the same company it looks consistent, which is more important than realism IMHO. With the larger buildings you probably can't scale it up too much without blowing the printable area on your printer (unless you have an A3 printer or something) - and scale up too much and it will make things look washed out. There are enough pics on http://www.flickr.com/photos/maxvon_d/tags/malifaux/ that you should be able to get a good idea of the scale in relation to the figs

Awesome! I can't imagine it being *quite* as well balanced as Bloodbowl, I have a feeling some crews have somewhat of an edge!

Nice! You should extend it to show the odds required to flip a specific suit too, since that's something you commonly need to do to cast a spell or activate a trigger. Interesting analysis on the wrinkles caused by the Jokers too. The card flipping mechanic is definitely more than just a gimmicky replacement for dice rolling.

I have my basic Showgirls crew (box + coryphee + doves) all based up and undercoated ready to go, I thought I would start a thread to track my progress in painting the harlots. I got some painting time today, so started work on the main girl Colette: Colette WIP by waferthinninja, on Flickr (Click through for the horrible truths exposed by larger images! I think the small thumbnail looks more like it does in real life)

Awesome, see you there!

Any UK players going to Salute this year?

A variation on Sholtos magnetized solution: http://www.waferthinninja.com/dojo/?p=26 Dance Apart by waferthinninja, on Flickr Dance Together by waferthinninja, on Flickr Dance in Pieces by waferthinninja, on Flickr

I'm waiting on the figure before playing the Mobile Toolkit, so this is a theoretical analysis rather than being based on real play. Take it with a pinch of salt. The Brass Arachnid suits using Ramos offensively, moving him up to the front lines and blasting away with his electricity. His armour, arcing screen and so on will be in constant use. You probably won't do much summoning, since your high :tomes will be used for Stoke, but you can still use those that aren't high enough for Stoke to reconstruct the odd dead steampunk arachnid or make an Electrical Creation or two to supplement your blasting. You could argue the case for using Essence of Power for this offensive role instead. on every single casting might be better than an occasional Reactivate? However, the threat of Reactivating is arguably as important as the times you actually do it... The Mobile Toolkit suits using Ramos defensively in a support role - sit him at the back, summon an Arachnid and a Creation every turn, and use the constant stream of Surges to cycle the guff out of your hand, benefitting the whole crew. So in short I don't think there is a "best" totem, its more about what role he is going to play, which in turn will be down to what the Strategy is, the terrain and so on. I think he's generally a bit too slow for the offensive role, though it does depend on how far you need him to travel to get into a good position - with a nice open area, you might only need to walk him for a turn or two to get into a nice spot.

I've mostly stuck to Arcanists, plus the Viktorias (whose schtick is Mercenaries, which anyone can use). My plan is to move into Guild at some point, my next master will probably be C. Hoffman because of Ramos connections/figure reuse. My main opponent uses Ressers and Neverborn, so we'll cover pretty much everything between us. However, I'm restraining myself from buying more until some of the Mountain Of Lead is painted.