Ferossa

After playing a few games with Misaki, I definitely vote for her. She's very agile and can swoop around the board and surprise you, but she's more of a scalpel than a cleaver. Your girlfriend has a good chance of taking her out with a few lucky shots, which is always a positive experience for a newbie. She also plays dramatically differently from Lilith, so you two can switch boxes and have a completely different play experience.

Craft stores should sell mirror foil for scrapbooking and dollhouses. Try to find the kind with the adhesive back; it's usually near the wedding supplies and foil paper (which you could also use, but the edges don't cut as nicely).

I too shall accept puppy pictures in lieu of product. (They look great though. I love the Arcanist ones.)

All these men talking like you need to be tall to be imposing, smh. Friendly reminder that 5'8" was tall for a dude in the 1920s.

I've painted 19 models and purchased 29. Not bad, considering I only started in October. And we're not counting the Black Friday models, which are models for next year, of course, not this year. That would be silly.

Evidence the speaker is terrible in bed.

I'd play a few Henchman Hardcore games over Vassal with the sets you're thinking about. The highest barrier to entry for new players is the time and money investment in assembling a painted army. It can be a huge disappointment to spend hours putting together an army only to find out you don't like how it plays. (Plus on Vassal you can play Lilith versus Lady Justabouttocomebackinstock.) I think if you play McMourning as Guild and layer in the conditions as she learns, you'll both have a good time. You can take the Guild models you want to use with Lady J and expand into Resurrectionists as models catch your fancy. When Lady J comes back in stock, you'll have a decent set of Guild models for her and you'll be in an excellent position to pick up a new Resurrectionist master.

You'll want to trim the mechanics down a bit, since that's where you'll have the most specialised vocabulary, and thus highest barrier to entry. You can pick up Fate Core for pay-what-you-want, which has a bare-bones version of Fate in simple English. I'd start with that, and layer in TtB material as players level up. Like Omenbringer, I'd focus on the story parts over the mechanics. If you want to prepare for a Fate/TtB game, rent a few movies in different genres and pay attention to the rules of narrative. Who shapes the story? When? How? Why? Those moments are what your players will be focusing on, and it's easier to get people to go along with role-playing if you frame it as interactive storytelling where each person controls one character. As the GM, you'll be responsible for setting up "cool moments" that players can take advantage of. With the danger level of Malifaux, you could let the players crawl on scenery (fire! building collapse! 10T/M&SU/Guild raid!) and explore (abominations! neverborn! zombies!) until they get a feel for the game and the setting, and then you can let players and their goals drive the story.

It's fearless, and English has trouble with things it can't conquer. German is far more polite than French. German manners are for making sure everyone gets along. French manners are for making sure everyone knows just how badly they let you down.

I love your painting. Thank you for providing your intuition and logic for your paint schemes. Not only does it help your audience see what you were going for, but it helps flesh out the world of Malifaux through other people's eyes.

I don't know when the Through the Breach character sprues are coming out (sometime in January?), but those are what I'd recommend, especially if you want to proxy more models or do an all-female Latigo posse. They're mix-and-match, so you can try a few combinations to see what you like best. (PS: Post it here when you're done b/c that sounds awesome.)

If I'm planning to buy a crew, I just use folded paper models as proxy. I photoshop the character art into the right dimensions, then glue two together, back-to-back, leaving a paper tab on the bottom that I can sticky-tack it to an empty base. It's not tournament legal, but nobody really cares when they know the box is coming out in a month or two. (Besides, I'd rather save the money I'd spend on a proxy army for more stuff from Wyrd. I don't have a problem. You have a problem.)

I do. Malifaux is a multicultural game, and the fluff and crews make it clear that it's a world inhabited by people from all countries and walks of life (Spanish/Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Prussian, and British - just to cover the crews I have). Proper pronunciation is important, especially if you're learning the game or playing against someone for whom English is an ancillary language. ("Francisco" only turns into "Frank" if you speak English, otherwise it can be very confusing.) Good manners and professional courtesy cost nothing, after all. If people mispronounce a model, I correct them. "You mean Kir-EYE, not Kir-AY." Most people are happy for the correction. (Two disclaimers to this: 1. I'm dyslexic, so I need to know when I mispronounce something! 2. You can take the teacher out of the school, but you can't take the school out of the teacher.)

Don't neglect the psychological impact of having two radically different masters you can choose. If your opponent knows you only have Rasputina and Kaeris (unlike a tournament setting where your opponent theoretically has everything), you're forcing them into a gamble on which master they can most effectively counter. My partner plays Von Schill and the Viks, and trying to build a list that counters both of their strengths is... an interesting tactical exercise. But that's my logic. I ordered the Rasputina box during the Black Friday sale and I'm waiting with bated breath for the release of the Kaeris one.

AR-can-ists. The suffix "ist" doesn't lengthen the vowel (or else it would be ma-SHINE-ist instead of machinist). The emphasis on the antepenult you can blame on my years of Latin scansion.