muraki

Awesome, was wondering if they'd be released today (I should of made a bet on it!). Anyone get the files downloaded that could repost / send a link to me? The dropbox is getting beat up (Understandably!) and is currently down.

Agreed. I bought a second set of that group so I could use him as a proxy Alan Reid (and the camera guy for a undercover reporter). The hands in the pockets pose makes him look like he's either just done, or just about to pull em out and strangle someone, ha.

@Wintergloom love the vest on the first back ops guy. I love that model and need to paint him.

@lusciousmccabe the flagstones came from the fact that I started with the Easter Bunny viks and was going to have em as a 1 off with a hardcore pastel theme... But then was like 'actually this looks pretty good' ha

Finished the last Mercenary Model for a total of 50 stones this month. Pretty psyched cause that means I can finally stop painting Mercenaries and switch to something else. Here's the full Merc Crew

One step closer with another 9 from bishop. Surprisingly hard model to get the way I wanted with all the straps. Also tried to base in a color change paint for something a bit different. So not perfect, but let me try a few things. So now Im at 46 stones and I just got to get the student done... after that I should probably take a break, ha.

Awesome work @Wintergloom! I'm not surprised, your ToS stuff has been super impressive.

That makes sense, and the parts on the infinity mini that are painted with the contrast paints look good. I definitely need to play more to find out where they fit in my painting style. I have so many new painting tools / toys to play with (color shift paints, a airbrush i'm still breaking in, and these paints), add in the desire to just get better at painting and there's a lot of stuff to try out. I'm wondering if they'd be good for brighter washes and highlight transitions, I'll have to play a bit. Here's my quick trial paint job Greens are warp lightning (with the ghost getting a little drybrushing), blue is Talassar, left vest is gryph charger, right pants are snakebite leather It's funny, after painting them I was 'these freaking stink!' but now that they've been sitting on my paint table for a day I'm starting to get into the 'eh, if i just cleaned em up a bit, they'd be fine' One thing I did find out, if you spill some of it on you and don't clean it up fast, it gets super sticky / hard to remove compared to regular paint, haha.

I know I thought I only had 2 mercs left, then I found a metal desperate merc on my paint table and couldnt resist. I had fun trying to paint some camo pants on her, and I think they turned out pretty well. So now I'm up to 37 for the month and really just need to do the student / bishop now to finish up, ha. @Wintergloom love the Adeodatos. That purple / teal combo looks really nice. I never would of thought to pair those colors, they look awesome together. @wobbly_goggy Good work with cooper. I like the delicate colors on the flame and the frills on the dress.

Looking good @Clockwork_Fish . I picked up a bunch of them this weekend and tried them out on some TTB multiparts I had lying around. I also enjoyed the bloodangel red. Additionally I really liked the Talassar Blue (if you want an electric blue) and the warp lightning. Skeleton horde was also nice for a first wash of old bone. I was less impressed by the snakebite leather (too yellow for me), the volupus pink (really didnt cover well) and the gryph charger grey (fine, but really needed to slather it on for it to feel more than a wash. In the end they're not really my painting style, but the do work really well with first pass + some dry brushing. I can definitely see them used for some quick table ready models in the future.

Thanks! I was able to go pretty quick since I already knew the colors I wanted (since I want them to match the viks). I'm also trying to speed up a bit / see how long it takes me to paint cause I signed up for one of those wyrd speed paints during gencon, and want to see how much trouble I'm in (though it didn't really work with these guys as i was painting 3 at once. I'll see with the student or bishop). I really want to paint the metal bishop model (cause I think it's super cool) but I'm kinda at a loss on how to paint him... so he'll probably be another few days of looking at it before I can start putting paint down.

@Purple Mist That riotbreaker is awesome. I have one to paint (and another to assemble but I'm trying to forget about it, since it's such a terrible model to build). I may have to steal your method and try the colorshift paints I just got. Also thanks for the praise... I did try my first crack at osl with her (since I wasn't a fan of her) so hopefully I didn't ruin it too much (it isn't as white as it appears. Darn lousy lighting ha). Also I finished 3 Ronin today which I am pretty happy about. Which puts me up to 33 for the month and only 2 more mercs (bishop and student) before I have the whole keyword painted!

Finally finished this Vanessa. Maybe it's cause I didn't build the model, but I hated painting this one. Just seemed there were a ton of things that didnt work right, so just calling it done and wait for the m3e version. That puts me at 18 so far.

Depends if it's a reluctant player or not most of my buddies are a bit reluctant so I'm still waiting for them to hit the pt where they want to play / buy models / etc ... Which I put as a prereq for stage 1, haha. That said I think there's a few general stages 1) player basically needs you to demo the crew + build it for them. You feel bad if you bring new crews against em and stick to a small subset of schemes / strats. You try not to scare em off Figure it's 2- 4ish games there. 2) player can build a basic crew on the schemes + plan out a mental plan on a random gen pool. Figure it's 2-6 games here.... Less if they own fewer models. 3) players remember more difficult interactions (stones, focus, activation order tricks for their crew, etc) for their crew. This starts in the middle of step 2 and again depends on how difficult a crew is. This one is hard to track cause in some ways it's an ongoing process as you introduce more models to your pool / gg changes. 4) player can think more about the meta / wants to introduce new masters for fun / sees scheme opportunities they may not be optimized for. This is more of a 'wow. I'm not overwhelmed anymore' point than a physical number of games (tho it'll prolly take 2-3 months). I put it at step 4 cause if someone is super invested with one master and only sees a couple across the table they may sit at 'sure I can play, but if you tossed me a new master we'd be back at step 1)' for a while. Other people who have collection addictions may be on their 4th faction by month 3, and while they aren't masters of any, they're not worried about getting tossed into something new. 5) they want to be involved with the community. Whether that's posting advice, teaching, henching, etc. They like the game enough to want to give back. Figure this usually hits around 3-6 months of semi regular gaming, but is prolly faster for those who were/are involved in gaming communities and slower for those without them (where I fall tbh). This is a bit different than the 'i just bought my first crew! I wanna get a malifaux tattoo!' stage, cause we all know most of those guys disappear a week later and are never seen again ha. 6) (semi joking) they're disgruntled. Still posting but now it's all about how x model is broken and how wyrds new sculpts are trash. For some this starts day 1 :). (Less joking) people will eventually hit burnout and either drop or get negative. May be stuff with life, or a run of bad games. I'm not sure the best way to handle people in this stage (cause it's different for everyone) but people should think about how to help people here + prevent a community from getting toxic. Aside note. Since im a fraternity advisor (in my other life) I feel playing a game like this hits people a lot like joining a fraternity. It's not something you grab once a blue moon with your family, but more of a community you get indoctrinated into (with all the pros / cons of that). As such new players will prolly hit all the 'new member' milestones I see with college kids. Separated out there's: 1) initial excitement. friend says game is amazing. Got their first crew just heard about the game. Can't wait. Got a shitty tattoo saying 'ours' 2) confusion/learning process. Yeah they got the crew, but now realize they have no idea what they got into. 3) experienced. Got some time, aren't worried but also aren't taking the lead. 4) gets lead positions + starts helping new people. 5) burn out. Turns toxic or starts to ghost. 6) either took a break and are back, or are just playing occasionally with a few close buddies. Usually aren't at the pt they were at 4. Sure these aren't as important as the technical skills steps... But as people go through these their attitudes will change and the experience for those around will be changed accordingly, I think it's something to think about for anyone building / involved in a community. Cause we all know those players / stores / henchman that we just don't like / aren't involved anymore but still around / are bitter... And it changes the way you look at the hobby.

It's kind of up to you on how you want to start. I've been buying a lot of the M2e sale items since (as others have mentioned) a lot of the starter boxes aren't changing much, so they're still good for me to give / sell to my friends to try and get them in. And even the ones that are changing, aren't changing that much, so the models are still useful. They won't have m3e cards, but I can always grab em a faction pack to get them up to speed. That said I wouldn't get masters whose boxes are changing a lot or getting new models (Somer, Ironsides, Wong for instance, because then you'll have to get the new models or rebuy the box). As for what to buy, Wyrd has stated that they're moving away from the 'you must buy x to know what x does' mentality, and the M3e faq says rules / cards will be up on their site in PDF form at launch, so you can always just print your own copies of the cards / rules and sleeve em until you get the official cards from a faction pack or from drivethrurpg for print on demand. So with the statement that all you really need to buy is some models and print the rules / cards (and of course get counters / rulers / etc)... I would buy the faction book for the faction you like and probably the faction deck. I'd buy the faction book because sure it has lore (which is nice) but it should also have all the cards for the models and descriptions of them (like the Wednesday preview for torakage this week). If you're a print guy, this would be good to help plan what you want to buy next / what is out there. Course, since cards will be released you could just flip through the PDFs, to each their own. As for the faction cards, even if you wait till M3e models start coming out, there'll probably be a few things you may want to get that aren't released yet (and you find in the m2e box) or you could hit the resell market either here, on the wyrd trades facebook group or ebay. If you do any of those options, you'll have to print the cards or order them on demand, so I'd personally rather just buy them in 1 fell swoop. If you don't buy the faction cards, you'll have to get the general upgrades as those won't be in the m3e boxes (I assume) so you'll need to get the general upgrades card set (or again, print them yourself / on demand). As for newbie friendly boxes. I would stay away from summoners (both because they can be hard to play against for new players, and because they usually require a lot of buy in for best results), masters that rely on a lot of unreleased models (lucius and mccabe) and ones that aren't as straightforward (nellie with her low damage crew can be a headscratcher for new players). I would also probably stay away from the heavy card draw / cycle / discard masters (like lynch or maybe molly) until you get a grasp on how often you should cheat, though if you're coming from Magic it may not be as hard to get your head around. I would also proxy some games. As for 'simpler' masters for new players Viks, lady justice, misaki, mah tucket, sonnia, seamus, titania, parker, von shill, shenlong are on my list, but to each their own. I would also look at this list: https://www.wyrd-games.net/news/2019/4/29/wyrd-retailer-newsletter-launch-plans As anything with an asterisk is getting some kind of new sculpt (may be a single model, or the whole box). Course if you like the old box (and there's not a ton of changes), go for it. As I'm currently buying m1e metal models to field, it's all in what aesthetic you like when it comes to sculpts.

Started playing with some new paints i picked up so took a break and did 2 quick sorrows for 10 to start off the month. @Caedrus The painting spreadsheet has me at 5 for May, I'm actually at 23.

Those models look super cool can't wait for the render / new box!

What's the difference between the 'Dash of Color' speed painting challenge versus the Wyrd Miniatures Speed Painting Contests? Are they the same models? I wanted to sign up to paint some Wyrd minis but I have limited time, so I'd like to go to the one with cooler models

Thanks for the heads up Kyle! I got into all the stuff I want. It'll be a busy wyrd filled gencon!

@Caedrus think I'm done for the month as I don't think I can finish the Vanessa I'm working on, so I'm at 23 for the month.

Saw this in the slides from that convention, and figured we'd be seeing him as the undercover reporter. I'm a bit disappointed, because it doesn't look like there's much of a body to paint outside the barrel. Also kind of wonder what is going on with the monday preview from ages ago with the horse? I liked that one a lot and was hoping it'd be the undercover reporter. Hopefully it's still in the pipeline for something, cause it was a great concept.

@Viruk thanks for the positive comment as always. Your marcus crews are seriously impressive, I still love those cereberuses. I'm also jealous that you get to paint some unreleased modes (and see what they look like). I'd be more annoyed if I didn't know you'll do way better with them than I could, ha.

Nothing so far, I've been checking, but there's also no steamforged / corvus belli events up, so think gencon is just taking it's sweet time putting up tourney events.

Finished another Merc, this time Big Jake.

Thanks @lusciousmccabe @Caedrus @Nikodemus I wanted to make this keyword bright as they're all kind of Jem'ey to me (specially with the avatar / easter viks).... but I'm getting a bit burnt out on bright colors (surprise I know), so I think I'll have to go do some browns / greys next month.