sssk

Bear (pun intended) in mind that this is my 3rd... or maybe 4th, game of puppet wars proper (having played through the intro scenarios), and then watch your money scamper off into other people's pockets. Should be good though, I'm looking forward to this.

Hi Folks, My shoebox is going to be: Lady Justice Judge Nino Executioner Death marshall Guild Hound Guild Austringer Ronin Moleman ....spot the noob (disclaimer: I'm not a fan of the word "noob", but "newb" just looks wrong)

I'd be up for some play by forum fun. Sadly my internet connection is somewhat archaic, and skype tends to be a dead end, but PBF would work well for me.

Hi Folks, The thought just struck me, has anyone tried "distance puppet wars"? This stems from me describing puppet wars as "kind of like chess, mixed with warhammer, mixed with magic the gathering", and then thinking "well you can play chess at a distance (I believe it's called "correspondence chess")...". I imagine it working by each player having a board and set of puppets where they are, and then having an email/messenger type conversation with moves etc (possibly with photos... though that seems like a lot of effort). Obviously it would require people being somewhat trusting (as you couldn't see the actual cards you're each playing etc), but that's all fine. Anyway, has anyone tried it?

I see all the currently limited edition puppets... except lucius. My malifaux knowledge is pretty much nothing, but is that puppet-perdita in the middle?... it might just be a death marshall. Anyway, looks pretty cool.

I had an awesome afternoon of puppetteering yesterday, with a good friend of mine, we're both extremely new to the game, but had some good times. He played as Seamus the whole day, and got really good with him (pop gun + Bete Noir = nasty combo). Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I played with Lady Justice and Marcus on and off through the day. Lady J is pretty good, and I like a lot of the red puppets (judge looked a bit mediocre on paper, but he's actually rather nasty.... especially if you get elite combat training on him and then pull out pins and needles...), however she doesn't really support her puppets as much as I tend to like. Also giving things powerful is all very well, but punk zombies kept power rotting me all over the place. Marcus on the other hand, is just amazing. He's not a push over in combat, but his roar ability is just amazing. I was using 3 razorspine rattlers, 2 december acolytes, a moleman, Joss and rusty alyce. The advantages he gives for stuffed animals are pretty cool, but it was definitely roar that won it for me. The only problem I found was that I needed tomes constantly, so I was milling through cards quite quickly (using the acolytes), however that was an inherent problem with not having many tomes pawns in my collection (and not having enough understanding of the game to use out of suit puppets to any great effect). We didn't try out Pandora, because as we're fairly new to the game she seems a bit subtle. I can see that there must be cunning combos to make her powerful, but I don't think we're quite at that stage yet. So in conclusion, I think my master favoritism probably goes Marcus-Seamus-Lady J (and then pandora is an unknown quantity). That being said, playing more games may well produce deeper insight, and thus a change of opinion.

Just a little update. I've completed the two toyboxes for the first 3 practice scenarios. I'm not very happy with how the rotten belle has turned out (though I'm not very keen on the model, so that might be why), and lady justice was an uphill struggle from the start. I'm not very good at painting hair, and as lady j is pretty much entirely hair, it really wasn't much fun. Seamus on the other hand, was one of my favorite models so far. This is somewhat irritating, as I tend to use lady J as my master. Anyway, next up it's going to be Rusty Alyce, executioner, guild austringer, and malifaux cherub.

Hi puppet fans, I've got another update for you. None of them are finished yet (still), but they're all getting a fair bit closer to being finished, and in another moment of distraction, I started on my first 2 masters (seamus and lady justice). I think the punk (pink) zombie looks a whole lot better now, when I started re-painting him I had absolutely no intention of making him pink, but that's just where I ended up. I was really happy with the judge's white coat up until the very last layer of paint, which I just did far too much of, covering over a lot of the lovely layering underneath (grrr). I'm happy with where the ronin is going. I guess the masters require a little bit of explanation. As I said earlier, my plan is to paint each puppet's skin in their suit colour, so I decided to do each master purely in their suit colour, just using different shades. With Lady J I've just painted her red and done a little bit of shading on her clothes. Seamus is coming along a bit better though. I'm not quite sure how I'll do his blade in green, but I'll face that problem when I come to it. Thanks for all the comments. It's good to hear that the painting looks ok to everyone else too. Now I really need to do some work, but hopefully there'll be at least one more update before the end of the weekend.

So I got a little distracted and basically made a start on all of the game 1 puppets. As you can see, they're all highly work in progress. I started painting both the death marshall and the punk zombie in earthy colours (greys and browns), but I thought, as these are supposed to be toys which come to life, they should use the sorts of colours which you see in childrens toys. Therefore the death marshall now has a lovely yellow cloak, and green trousers (which I'm not totally convinced by), and the punk zombie is going to get re-painted. The silurid is probably the best example of my skin painting plan. Hopefully I'll have some of these finished over the weekend, so we'll see how I get on taking them from the mess that they currently are, to something a bit better. Hope you enjoy them

So I've finally got the gunslinger and rattler finished. I think they're looking pretty alright, though I'm not convinced by the blue plates on the rattler, so I may have to tinker with those later. The non-metal-metal on both models seems to have come out pretty well as a first try too. Next up is going to be a punk zombie and a death marshall, though I'm not quite sure on the colours I'll use for the marshall, so he might get replaced with a silurid. Any comments are welcome. Oh, and the bases will be tackled in due time... I have a cunning plan...

Hi folks, I've decided it's time to paint up my puppet wars stuff (moving lumps of silver metal around the board just isn't the same), and while I'm at it, I thought I'd try and improve my painting skills, by introducing some new techniques I've not tried before (source lighting, non-metal-metal, maybe some blending, depending on how things go). I'm also trying to improve my photography skills a bit. Hopefully this painting log will be a good motivation to keep going (though the models are so dynamic, I don't think that'll really be a problem). My whole gaming life so far has been lived in GW stuff, but once I saw puppet wars I just had to get it! Due to a bit of an "ebay phase", I now have 2 of the starter set, the multiplayer expansion, and pawns pack 2 (and hopefully I'll get pawns pack 1 in the not too distant future), so lots of puppets to be painting. I figured I'd start from the start, and work through, so first up I'm going to paint the 8 puppets which are in the first 2 demo games in the pattern book. Here's what I've got done so far. It's the convict gunslinger and the razorspine rattler (very much work in progress!). Just for a bit of info, I've decided that the "skin" of all of my puppets is going to be vaguely linked with their suit colour (so for instance, the non-suit gunslinger is yellow-ish, the tombs rattler is blue-ish). Anyway, I hope you like them. Any advice/suggestions/constructive criticism/comments on either the painting or the photography would be great. I'm afraid this first photo was taken by lamp light just so I have something to show, but hopefully they'll improve. Thanks for reading/watching.

Awesome painting there, I really like them... all of them. If I had to pick a winner it'd be..... maybe the purple december acolyte?.... maybe.... They're all just so good! Did you paint the bases (in which case "bravo!"), or is that some kind of thin layer of patterned stuff covering them? I'm just trying to figure out how to base mine. I'm currently torn (pun intended) between some kind of wood effect, a layer of fabric, buttons, or painting. Whatever you've done here seems to work really well.

Hi Folks, This all sounds very positive. I've decided to take the plunge and buy puppet wars as it just looks imense. It sounds like there might well be a few opportunities for playing a bit of malifaux in the area, so let the pms (as in "pm" plural, not "PMS", which is a whole different kettle of fish) fly. While I probably won't be able to make it to a gaming club regularly, I'm sure I could do a few random "meet-ups" per month somewhere. In terms of malifaux, I'm really drawn to the guild in general. The gunslingers are pretty awesome, and the death marshall models are amazing (sadly I really like the alternative lady justice, but the normal one just looks a bit... not good). Anyway, thanks for getting in touch folks. Maybe I'll get myself a little crew at some point in the not too distant future. sssk

Hi folks, I'm sssk. I'm on the cusp of being 25, and I have a history in the world of GamesWorkshop (particularly fantasy), but at present I don't know anyone where I live (Sheffield) to play against, and I also have relatively little free time, so I find it difficult to attend any gaming clubs regularly. Therefore I started looking at branching out from my GW bubble, and was really attracted to wyrd stuff due to the unique visual style of it (it seems kind of like borderlands, one of my favorite console games, but on a board, rather than a games console) and the intreaguing card mechanics. I don't know anyone who plays malifaux, but I've been looking into puppet wars as it seems quite approachable to play with my non-"wargaming" friends. So I guess to get a bit of movement in this thread: A) is there anyone in/around sheffield who plays malifaux and might fancy introducing a complete novice to the game? What're people's views on puppet wars? I've heard a huge range of opinions, from "without knowing the fluff of malifaux, the game is a bit hollow", to "it's a fun and very approachable game". I'd be very interested to hear from people on either of the above. Thanks for your time sssk