Killjoke

Thanks for the reassuring comments, guys. I'm so skeptical while painting and taking pictures as I know what shortcuts I've taken and where I found myself lost, but every time I see these comments it helps me see the bigger picture and appreciate the feel of the whole model. How the poncho came to be is a bit random which is why it's fun to see that some of you found it inspiring. While checking the product pictures on the Wyrd store I thought the gunslinger would look hilarious in a huge sombrero and was actually considering sculpting one. With the model in hand however I figured he would be better off protecting his bare chest and pot belly from direct sunlight and went with the poncho instead. I read up on the various ponchos used in different regions and in the end I fell back on my love for Red Dead Redemption. That is where I got the style and initial colour choices from, though in the end I didn't steal the idea wholesale but rather went with something I can actually paint with my worn out brushes. I'm not sure what to paint next though I am considering one of the Viktorias as they, together with the gunslinger, tend to stay on the table the longest. I haven't decided what their primary colours should be. Red (like in the V1 book story), purple (like the later alt/avatar sculpt artwork) or some other colour like outcast gold/yellow or blues. The V2 art as seen in the stat cards is also a tempting idea, though I prefer to avoid going all browns and greys as I'm trying to embrace vibrancy and romanticism over "grimdark" as I'm maturing into adulthood and fatherhood.

The gunslinger is just about finished! I will probably touch up on some details in the future and I will add more details to the base once the whole crew is coming together. Malifaux as directed by Sam Raimi. These are some selected pictures. There are a few extras if you click one of them to open the album (with the ability to view them at full size). I'm particularly fond of the face and the dark revolvers with pearl grips. The pictures turned out quite dirty as the light source is unusually warm (yellow) for a flourescent light, but it is close enough.

Your painting style is crazy attractive. Clean lines and smooth blends. The miniatures pop. With minor photo editing you could easily mistake these for digital concept art. The flames look fantastic in that one photo, not in a realistic sense but in a magical artistic sense.

For the lack of being able to regularly and intensely practice the game (at most I'm able to get one or two games in a GOOD week) I'm throwing this question out here. I'm liking the Desperate Mercenary thematically a whole lot and want to have at least one for my Viktorias but finding myself adding more at all game sizes (in theory, that is). Assuming they are not going to be used for summoning Killjoy or manifesting the Avatars of Slaughter, how many is too many? I only have a couple of games under my belt but this is an alternate activation game and I think a couple of cheap models help establish some initiative over the flow of a game turn. I guess using one to trigger a whirlwind isn't impossible nor too wasteful either. I know I'm definitely going to get one model purely because of the theme, and possibly one more because I think three ronin are plenty enough already and I don't want to have to dig into the SS cache even before the start of the game. Should a Ronin drop to 1 wound before it activates, I like the narrative of Seppuku + Make Ends Meet (sacrifice ronin and gain two stones, spend two stones to make desperate merc significant). "Hey, new girl! One of our regulars are down and out, the job is yours". Mind you I'm not looking for tournament winning combinations, the most efficient synergies and 2nd edition speculations. I only want to avoid investing in a really wasteful amount of desperate mercenaries (which I can't playtest regularly enough to stop myself from starting a thread about it).

The poncho is giving me a whole lot of headache. I'm still struggling with the pattern and I did some further modifications to make it look less like a t-shirt. I'd rather it look like a dirty rug, so I made ALL edges ragged and painted them white. The photos didn't turn out too flattering, the paintjob looks awful messy this close up without shading and contrasts. It did help me spot some problems with proportions, especially the larger chevron pattern over the lower chest. By repainting the pattern and adding another small pattern on the upper chest area I think I can finally start working on making the colours and lines come together and start doing detail work on the rest of the model.

This stuff is popping! I'm really liking the strong colours because they still harmonise together and have been given the full treatment, ie it's a serious paintjob. Usually when I see daring paintjobs like these they are just flourescents picked at random with no layers and harmony. I'm also new to the forum/game and I'm painting Viktorias backed up by ronins and the gunslinger.

Seems I'm on a probationary period where I can't post hyperlinks without moderator approval. I've been attempting to update this thread with pictures for almost two days straight now without my messages being approved. Makes sense, though I never found this information in any of the stickied threads so I've been scratching my head more than I probably should have. Anyways, I'm working on the poncho and if you click one of the posted pictures and browse that gallery you will see some new shots. This post will have to do until a moderator approves one of my posts with hyperlinked photos. Thanks for the comments, everyone. It's fun to see this conversation about the sculpts coming about as well. I'm not anti-boobage, I just wanted my girls to look more serious and physically able to move about without stuff falling out. That, and to defuse some jealousy from Mrs. Killjoke. EDIT: Trying out linking the pictures I'm only blocking out the basic colours right now to see how they work together. I'm going to detail the poncho with smaller darker patterns to make it really look like less of a lame t-shirt. Of course, making it dusty and dirty will make it a lot more bad ass looking. You might notice the left shoulder has been trimmed down a little to show more skin and muscles, and the lower front and back edges of the poncho are more ragged and torn since the pre-paint photos.

*tap tap* Is this thing on? Hello fellow newcomers and whoever else is reading this thread. You can call me Killjoke. I've been wargaming since 2007, initially very sporadically as I was lured into 40k but never really getting into it much. It did teach me to appreciate fluff vs must-win aspects of gaming however which has marked my attitude towards wargaming forever. Flames of War is my main game and I'm big on authenticity at the expense of writing lists that work well with the game. I'm also somewhat into Firestorm Armada though it isn't exactly setting my heart on fire with it's complete lack of personality and flavour. Then came Malifaux. Browsing miniatures and reading the story material on the website nearly sold me on the game. This really is my kind of setting and art direction. Luckily the game itself does not seem to punish hobbyists like myself who want to put together fighting forces that make sense and are interesting in their own universe. After browsing pullmyfinger for two-three months I eventually decided that I'm going with Viktoria and her doppelganger for a first crew. I have this weird fascination with mercenaries and their hard to fathom life styles (at least in this century). People that are treading the grey areas of morality and risking their lives and sanity trying to rationalise their line of work just draw me in somehow and I think Viktoria is that kind of woman and she probably tend to spend most of her time around people in similar life situations. Could Malifaux finally be the game where I can go all out with the authentic story feel and still have competative models on the table and actually win games every now and then? I'm bursting with excitement to find out.

Thanks all for checking out my thread. I'm super pumped to start painting these figures. I played my first game today, 28ss vs 28ss against a Leveticus crew based on the starter box (Leveticus, Alyce, a waif and some abominations). He rolled "Supply Wagon" and announced "Breakthrough" and "Steal Relic". I rolled "Distract" and announced "First Blood", while keeping "Thwart" a secret scheme. We set up a board that looked like overgrown ruins with rubble, hills and woods scattered about. I suppose the Viks were hired by someone to stall and sabotage Leveticus smuggling run, waiting in ambush out in the wilderness. It was glorious. The Viks leapfrogged into action and whirlwinded two abominations, scoring "First Blood". The Swordmistress ate a bunch of soulstones and almost emptied my control hand in one turn dodging Alyce's gun, and in the next turn she promptly set the kid straight with a souped up dual blade attack. Up the center the Gunslinger along with one Ronin pushed through Leveticus spells and quickly trashed the wagon. The other two Ronin pushed through some woods while taking some hard hits from Leveticus spells. They fought a guerilla war attacking out of the woods and pushing back to relative safety. I got real lucky after killing one abomination: Leveticus had killed himself earlier in the turn, and the one waif was within 6" of my currently activated Ronin, who thanks to Melee Expert had one more attack to deliver. "Next Target". She pushed into melee range with the Waif and sliced her in two. The one remaining Abomination at this point managed to kill the Ronin and turn her into a new abomination, though the other Ronin chopped them both up real good. In the end, I wiped his crew off the board before the end of turn 4. I got First Blood and I had fully thwarted all his schemes for a full 8-0 victory. "Beginner's luck", he said. Could very well be. We didn't know eachother's crews but obviously my portable nukes/swords are far easier to use than anything he brought to the table. I had an amazing time either way, it was great to see my plans actually working thanks to some judicious card cheating. My kind of game! By the way, what are the odds of both players drawing red jokers in the same combat/defense flip? Yeah, that actually happened and it was the only time we flipped those.

Hello, reader. These past two days I've recieved my first Malifaux figures. I've been reading about the game for months and some people at the game club have started playing the game already but only now have I been able to start myself. I've been wargaming for about five years, starting with WH40k but never actually progressing past building and converting figures and vehicles (Orks, what else!). I never really enjoyed the game nor painting for the scale, but quickly moved on to Flames of War, a 15mm WWII game where I've painted a handful of armies (and am enjoying the game a whole lot). Tomorrow will be my first game of Malifaux so I've been rushing to get my figures cleaned up and mounted. Being that I can hardly never build anything straight out of the box without adding, reshaping or kitbashing stuff I brought out the green stuff to fix some things I didn't like about these sculpts as well as adding a poncho flapping in the wind for the Convict Gunslinger. I chose the Alternative Viktorias sculpts, partly because they are great looking but also because the starter box was not very appealing to me. You will notice I added some greenstuff because I didn't care much for some of the fan service. The separated boobs on Bounty Hunter Viktoria looked silly to me so I bridged them together. Swordmistress Viktoria rubbed me the wrong way even more with the very low pants that looked like they would fall off if she started running and whirlwinding, and the vest appearing open without a bra seemed to defy physics so much that I bridged it together as well. I think these sculpts are awesome otherwise, and now I'm very very pleased with them. The Ronin with the revolver had a rather bad looking sword which I understand is a common issue with this sculpt. I managed to trim and shape it into a decent looking japanese sword and I'm liking this figure a lot. The Ronin who is about to draw her blade had a way too big cleavage for me. I added some more clothes to cover it up and make her look more ready to actually fight without her boobs falling out of her loose fitting clothes. The Convict Gunslinger was my biggest undertaking. I've never sculpted anything this substantial before and I don't know how it is going to work out in the end. I wanted to sculpt the poncho much like Clint Eastwood's character in the Dollars trilogy, slung over the shoulder. After four failed attempts I decided to just have him wear it plain and boring. By accident I bent the lower front half of the poncho and it looked like it was dancing in the wind. I quickly adjusted the back, shoulder and neck parts of the poncho to get that windy look. I'm probably going to paint it up with yellows, oranges and dirty whites to get that bandito thing going. I'm already imagining the Gunslinger having a thing for the Ronin with the dreads. She will of course never acknowledge his verbal advances. A man can dream.. In the future I really can see the male Desperate Mercenary going on a job with these wild warrior women going "You women are maniacs. I'm outahere!" by turn three. We will see later in this thread how an inevitable expansion of my collection of mercenaries will plan out. Looking forward to painting these figures up and will be posting more as that happens!