Jackanory

I've done a bit of sculpting myself. I'm not amazing but I get ok results so feel free to take my comments with a grain of salt, YMMV etc! So it looks like you've used milliput, which is why you're lacking a bit of detail and you also seem to have gone straight into the shaping/detailing in one go. The best way of sculpting is to lay down the basic shapes (for which milliput is ideal), waiting for the base layer to cure, and then layering on the details with another putty that holds its shape a bit better. I've only used greenstuff so far which Dmeep has already pointed out is better for organic shapes. It's really good work for your 2nd sculpt though!

Keep some reference pictures to hand, and make sure you leave room for the number 1 headband!

Afro samurai's afro is more flowing and free than a regular tight 'fro: If I was doing it I'd lay down a quick layer of GS in the basic shape of his afro on the mini's head (sort of an elongated twisted cone), let that cure (patience), and then add a whole load of little blobs/threads of GS to the basic shape and kind of tease and prod them into shape with a pointy tool so they formed a loose mass.

Damn! That's a great point! I might just buy that box and convert McCabe I guess I could either keep the rest of them or sell them off...

The Lone Marshal is coming up with an RRP of £23.99 on the online stores. Surely this is an error isn't it? If not that's pretty expensive for one guy on a horse...

This guy from GW?

I really don't mean to sound harsh but I feel like a lot of these issues are the fault of you guys and not the kits. Pieces getting lost or pinging off when they're being clipped can all be avoided if you take care, gaps in the joins can be filled with greenstuff or some other kind of putty (all the Wyrd plastic models I've built have had a normal amount of gappage) and small, weak connections really shouldn't be an issue if you're using proper plastic poly-cement and not super glue. I recently put together the Yan Lo box and didn't have too many issues with it. The beard was a little fiddly but the fact that it's a plastic model made it pretty easy. The only problem I have with the box is that the ashigaru spears and banners and the Soul Porter's staff are all really thin so I don't have high hopes that they'll last. I should have replaced them with some kind of metal rod but I was being lazy. Just by the way, I'm in no way a Wyrd fanboy so I'm not just blindly defending the models!

Pro tip: Use plastic glue.

Just received my model from GRAEME27UK so positives for that!

Really think they screwed up the 3D rendering of the monks, especially the one who's depicted in the book (the one with an open hand held up to his chest). In his artwork he looks poised and balanced, whereas in the render he looks like he's about to topple backwards. For some reason his centre of gravity has been shifted back significantly. Also, there are way too many creases and folds in their cloaks, it makes the material look too light. The marshall looks great though, can't wait to pick him up! Glad they went for a more dynamic looking horse.

Where's the option for modellers (I.e. more into sculpting and converting)? I'd say I'm a modeller > painter > gamer!

The easiest way would be to superglue a small piece of sheet plasticard to the cork, and then use plastic glue to glue the gamin to the plasticard. The bond formed using plastic glue is really strong. You'd have to cover up the plasticard with basing material but that should be pretty easy with grass or snow or mud or whatever!

Wow, your TO sounds awful!

Thanks! Good luck with Marcus! I see that CMoN article as being more for people who already know how to paint white skin, they just need advice on what colours to go for when painting other ethnicities. So it doesn't tell you exactly how to use the suggested paints because it's assuming you already know that. I like it and it works for me, but you're right in saying that it's not a fully comprehensive tutorial!

I've also made good use of that Cool Mini Or Not article for my Infinity Japanese Sectorial Army and my Eden Clan Bamaka. For the African skin tone of my Bamaka guys I just took three of the colours on the CMoN article partly because the shop where I was buying the paints didn't have all the colours and partly because it made it cheaper. So I started with the Black Brown #822, then gradually mix in Flat Brown #984 and then Cork Brown #843. I also threw some watered down dark blue in the darkest recesses. Blue works well as a shade for brown. This was one of the pygmies painted using that recipe (the skin is more or less finished but the rest is WIP at this stage):

PM sent...

For me he's too muscly and too badass looking, which makes him a bit boring IMO. I like the fact that martial artists are generally not super bulky, which makes the feats of strength and athleticism they can achieve even more impressive.

Thanks everyone! In 1st edition it was a real necessity!

If you could bring yourself to buy two copies of that model the ashen core could be like a limp version of it lying on the ground (I think that kit comes with a bunch of spare parts so you might be able to do it without having to buy two), and then the dust storm would be a cloud of the alchemical vapours that had previously animated it.

I've had a few of these floating around for a while now. Thought I'd get round to posting some group shots! The crew I'm currently playing is Sonnia, and that's actually the only crew I've played since M2E came out. My other three crews, Hamelin, Hoffman and Collodi (in chronological order) are the crews I played back in 1st edition. They've been shelved because of "new toy syndrome". I actually bought most of my Sonnia crew when 1st edition was still around but then my gaming group got caught up in playing Infinity and then Eden (very briefly, not a very well thought out game) and Malifaux got put aside for a while. We've gotten really into Malifaux again since 2nd edition came out though! You may notice that I tend to paint my crews with very uniform colour schemes. I like it when you put a crew out and they all look quite coherent! I tried to paint my witch hunters with quite low saturation, so there's a lot of grey mixed in with most of the colours I used. My version of Sonnia doesn't use orange blazing fire in her spells, she uses glowing turquoise arcane energy, which is why the OSL is like that, why I got rid of the flame effect coming out of her hand, and why her totem isn't wreathed in flames. Obviously there are a few proxy models in the crew to represent the exorcist, the purifying flame and a desperate mercenary (though they're a bit useless in this crew in M2E) I also switched out Sonnia's sword for an arcane looking dagger. I still have Sam Hopkins, Francisco Ortega, an Executioner and a witchling handler to build and paint. Hamelin's crew is pretty straight forward but with a ton of rats from other manufacturers! This was my first crew and was a bit of a pain for my buddies to play against. Looking back I feel a bit bad about it, I don't think many people who played against him had a very good time (especially the gremlins): Hoffman's jungle expedition. Couple of proxy wardens I built using GW's black orcs as this crew predated the warden release. I also made a proxy Watcher as I really didn't like the official model. Hoffman got himself a flat cap and I removed his walking apparatus to represent his low rate of movement. The guy at the back is Mr. Singh, a proxy model for Joss. I thought it made more sense for Hoffman to have a bodyguard who was from the British Empire. He was actually based on this model, which I greenstuffed over to turn into a Sikh warrior (I was originally going to make something a bit closer to Joss' original concept) With Collodi I tried to give them a moonlit forest theme, and then make it look like his various dolls and puppets were glowing with OSL. I had just watched Coraline, which had inspired me to go for some bright glowing effects. Sorry, the picture's really shiny, which obscures some of the paint job. Think they need another coat of matt varnish. ---------- Post added at 11:01 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:59 PM ---------- Usual caveat that all these photos are a bit crap and they all look way better in real life!

No one knows frustration like someone who has assembled the Hoffman box set + Peacekeeper.

I'll second the fishing weight recommendation - the little round ones that look like tiny metal Pacmen? Pacmans? They're super cheap and because they're made of lead you can squish them down really easily with a pair of pliers so you can cram a whole bunch into the underside of your base. Either just use superglue to stick them in place or glom a bunch of greenstuff around them.

Cool, glad I'm not the only one! I had always thought that super glue was just runny and ready to use or hard and set, that there were only really two states for it to be in and that old, bad glue would just set hard in the bottle. Didn't realise there was a third gloopy, ruined state for it to be in. I might have gone a bit too far but the glue I replaced it with was these three mini bottles! They probably cost the same together (£3 at Wilko's) than one big bottle but I'd rather not risk it happening again.

Ok so it was a big, pretty cheap bottle I'd had for about a year. Can't really remember how it behaved when I first bought it but most recently it's turned kind of goopy and pulls out into strings. I was holding the models together and it was still not holding properly. I've never scored the models I've glued before (good tip) but it's never been a problem. Anyway, I went and bought som Loctite and it's solved my problems!

Has anyone had any issues with superglue just not setting? I've had the bottle for a while now - maybe even more than a year (it's a big bottle!). I'm wondering why it's not working. Could it be because I didn't wash my minis? They're metal and I'm using paper clips to pin.