New Art for Malifaux - Your opinion

[Ludvig]

I've always had a weird liking for many of the static poses. I was also a huge fan of the m1e metal line where many humans looked a bit weird and had character instead of the smooth blandness of m2e. Nicodem, Marcus, Myranda, Rasputina, Lady Justice, Sonnia and Ramos are a few examples where I vastly prefer the old metal models.

I think any change from what you are used to will feel weird at first, I've eventually sort of settled into the m2e aesthetic. Not sure how I will feel about m3e, I love the "boring" masters posted above except for Raspy who feels wrong to me. I think it's her bulk, in my head she is supposed to feel mentally ill from her struggle with December and have a sickly body.

[yool1981]

2 hours ago, Saduhem said:

As I paint them, I can't stop thinking of Beginning M2e ressers art and I just want more of it. Definitely prefer it to the Malifaux trend over the past year or so.

I'm not much into the Cult's trend towards body horror but I can understand the appeal. And ECB Black Ops' art & concept are awesome! It is my favourite unit aspect-wise in TOS (with the motorized scouts of Abyssinia).

The art for TOS is great imho. Even "standard" steampunk stuff like King's Empire looks very sweet in a certain way (although Edmonton definitely has something he tries to compensate for with this big rifle of his ...). When I look at the art I just want to buy everything :D. It used to be the same with Malifaux.

[Michael Curran]

I really love the art design of Malifaux, just incredible.  I am pretty good myself, but this stuff is incredible.

[yool1981]

So, after the previews we have seen from the art direction of the M3E, I am now sure that I hate the new arts & sculpts with a passion.

I find them boring and unimaginative. The lack of ambition in the art and sculpt line is blatant. There is nothing special to Malifaux anymore, it is just a steampunk game among others.

I am really down on the game right now. I don't think I am in line with Wyrd's artistic choices anymore and artistic choices are very important to me when I chose a mini game.

I still have M2E minis though so I have a lot of painting on my plate but it is very likely that my purchases for M3E will be limited to books (I still like the game and fluff) and perhaps a few minis to complete some keywords and/or some that avoided the vanilla effect.

None of the resculpts interest me more than their M2E version. 

[Math Mathonwy]

Tastes vary and that's OK but I must say that for me the real low point was Wave 3 and 4 and now they've been getting better again. I've been around since before the 1e beta and the original stuff had a certain charming quirkiness to it. Then came the more bland and stylistic 2e that then got super bland with Wave 3. The final Wave of M2e was well along the way of digging them out of that hole and now they have an identity again and there's stuff happening and models look interesting.

 I disliked the 2e Lady Justice sculpt and though this new one isn't superb I still think it's better. Scales is better, too, IMO and there's no giant Death Marshall so that's a plus. The DMs themselves are IMO about on par with the old ones with surfer being a bit meh but the lanky one dragging the coffin is probably my favourite DM of all time. Judge is fine though the 2nd edition version was better.

As for the Marcus box - well, Marcus himself is a clear letdown. Miranda is better than before but still not great. Jackalope is lots better and the new Initiates are nice, IMO, especially the bird lady is awesome. The snake dude looks a bit imbalanced, but I'll reserve judgement until I see the sculpt.

Colette's box is completely top notch. Not a single dud and finally Colette looks her part. An excellent box.

Somer is nice but the gun is ludicrous and not in a good way. Skeeters look the same as before? Good Ol' Boys look amazing! Probably the best of the whole lot. Lenny is a huge disappointment, though the Pig is sorta funny.

Hucksters look great, though some of the faces look a bit weird in renders - I wonder how they look on the models.

So yeah, a solid set of releases. Not the best stuff ever but certainly way better than the blandness of wave 3.

[yool1981]

10 hours ago, Math Mathonwy said:

Not the best stuff ever but certainly way better than the blandness of wave 3.

Yep I was not a fan of Wave 3 either except for some emissaries. I really like the NB and Outcast ones though. I have painted the NB one and I reallly like this mini.

The changelings are nice also but the sculpts are much too similar for my taste.

Didn’t you like Wave 4? I really liked the NB stuff and I thought Zipp’s box was cool. Nelly was also interesting. I thought new concepts or revisions of old concepts were nicely brought into the game.

What did you like in Wave 5? I have got the NB, the Gatreauz bokors and arcanist stuff and I was disappointed when I saw some of the miniatures assembled (the bokors are nice but very big and bulky imho).

The Adze was not great but the worst was the Grootslang imho.

[Math Mathonwy]

23 hours ago, yool1981 said:

Yep I was not a fan of Wave 3 either except for some emissaries. I really like the NB and Outcast ones though. I have painted the NB one and I reallly like this mini.

The changelings are nice also but the sculpts are much too similar for my taste.

Didn’t you like Wave 4? I really liked the NB stuff and I thought Zipp’s box was cool. Nelly was also interesting. I thought new concepts or revisions of old concepts were nicely brought into the game.

What did you like in Wave 5? I have got the NB, the Gatreauz bokors and arcanist stuff and I was disappointed when I saw some of the miniatures assembled (the bokors are nice but very big and bulky imho).

The Adze was not great but the worst was the Grootslang imho.

Emissaries are fine (there are successes like NB and Gremlin ones but also lows like Guild and Arcanists) but in general there was this blandness to the whole wave. Survivors, for example, are probably the worst of the Gremlin models quality-wise. The cybernetic parts are super un-inspired, the detail is all weird and the poses are boring.

Wave four I disliked Sandeep and Reva (again, super bland designs). And then stuff like Draugr and so on. 

Zipp was great, though.

But Wave 5 finally started doing interesting things with basic minis. Smugglers are amazing while I feel that in Wave 3 they would've looked like generic low-lifes. And the same goes for Domadores, Investigators, Steamfitters, and even stuff like Medical Automatons. I feel that they are seriously imaginative and break basic expectations and are as far from bland and generic as you can get.

Grootslang - I'm sure there was some kind of a mistake as the size doesn't make any sense at all. I love the Wisps and Adze.

[yool1981]

2 hours ago, Math Mathonwy said:

But Wave 5 finally started doing interesting things with basic minis. Smugglers are amazing while I feel that in Wave 3 they would've looked like generic low-lifes. And the same goes for Domadores, Investigators, Steamfitters, and even stuff like Medical Automatons. I feel that they are seriously imaginative and break basic expectations and are as far from bland and generic as you can get. 

Grootslang - I'm sure there was some kind of a mistake as the size doesn't make any sense at all. I love the Wisps and Adze.

I understand your point.

I have only assembled the arcanist & NB minis you list and I find them very nice except for Adze (average) and Grootslang (aweful, only the Blessed of December is uglier in the whole range imho).

For Smugglers, Domadores & Investigators, the artworks are fine indeed. Are the minis equal to the art? I have not seen them on a table actually.

I found that more of Wave 5 arts (not all, steamfitters are indeed very nice minis imho) were lost in the sculpts than the previous waves. Some details were lost and the minis were too bulky for my taste. Don't you think?

On 5/18/2019 at 10:29 PM, Math Mathonwy said:

I disliked the 2e Lady Justice sculpt and though this new one isn't superb I still think it's better. Scales is better, too, IMO and there's no giant Death Marshall so that's a plus. The DMs themselves are IMO about on par with the old ones with surfer being a bit meh but the lanky one dragging the coffin is probably my favourite DM of all time. Judge is fine though the 2nd edition version was better.

As for the Marcus box - well, Marcus himself is a clear letdown. Miranda is better than before but still not great. Jackalope is lots better and the new Initiates are nice, IMO, especially the bird lady is awesome. The snake dude looks a bit imbalanced, but I'll reserve judgement until I see the sculpt.

Colette's box is completely top notch. Not a single dud and finally Colette looks her part. An excellent box.

Somer is nice but the gun is ludicrous and not in a good way. Skeeters look the same as before? Good Ol' Boys look amazing! Probably the best of the whole lot. Lenny is a huge disappointment, though the Pig is sorta funny.

Hucksters look great, though some of the faces look a bit weird in renders - I wonder how they look on the models.

So yeah, a solid set of releases. Not the best stuff ever but certainly way better than the blandness of wave 3.

Don't you think the Guild releases are very bland, especially when looking at the renders instead of the art?

Don't you think the poses of the DMs and Judge are very odd?

Basse does not look very impressive in terms of creativity either.

Regarding the Arcanist boxes, I actually like the Marcus box (the only new box I am considering picking up) and Colette's is OK, except for Colette herself (I find her chest strangely built and her body too bulky) and Cassandra is less how I picture her than her previous incarnation.

However, I find the Elijah & co box very bland. I ordered doomseekers to use them as proxies (even if it will end up being more expensive, I like the sculpts of the doomseekers so I don't mind).

Hucksters for me suffer from the same issue as Elijah & Co, their art could be in a D&D book but I find their arts odd in a steampunk setting (perhaps it is because of the clothing).

Regarding Somer I liked the previous box and I am not really into Gremlins (except for Zipp) so I have no opinion.

I find M3E's renders inferior to Wave 5 imho.

[Math Mathonwy]

On 5/21/2019 at 11:46 AM, yool1981 said:

I understand your point.

I have only assembled the arcanist & NB minis you list and I find them very nice except for Adze (average) and Grootslang (aweful, only the Blessed of December is uglier in the whole range imho).

For Smugglers, Domadores & Investigators, the artworks are fine indeed. Are the minis equal to the art? I have not seen them on a table actually.

I found that more of Wave 5 arts (not all, steamfitters are indeed very nice minis imho) were lost in the sculpts than the previous waves. Some details were lost and the minis were too bulky for my taste. Don't you think?

I dunno, the ones I've seen from Wave 5 on tables have IMO been good but I have seen a somewhat limited selection as well (no Domadores, for example, that might be a prime candidate for too bulky details).

On 5/21/2019 at 11:46 AM, yool1981 said:

Don't you think the Guild releases are very bland, especially when looking at the renders instead of the art?

Don't you think the poses of the DMs and Judge are very odd?

I don't think that the new DMs are better or worse than the original M2e versions (I have a soft spot for the original metal ones as they were the first things I bought from Wyrd long before Malifaux even existed). The lanky one dragging the coffin looks to me like it'd be the best plastic DM. The surfer is indeed silly but still less annoying than the giant version.

On 5/21/2019 at 11:46 AM, yool1981 said:

Basse does not look very impressive in terms of creativity either.

There I agree and I hope that the new faction won't just be a "lazy steampunk amalgam of Guild and Arcanists" faction. That said, I think that the quality of the sculpts themselves is really good - there's lots of interesting detail, the poses are fine and even the billowing cloaks aren't the "Guild billowing cloak clone"-type. I think that these are on par with Wave 1-2 stuff easily.

On 5/21/2019 at 11:46 AM, yool1981 said:

Hucksters for me suffer from the same issue as Elijah & Co, their art could be in a D&D book but I find their arts odd in a steampunk setting (perhaps it is because of the clothing).

I think that they are fine and are on par with what we've seen before. They are not Wyrd's greatest minis ever but a solid entry, IMO.

But really, I think that my point is that I find that the quality is on the same level as before but there's more details and less blank and Wyrd is IMO on the right track climbing away from Wave 3 style. Individual minis vary but that's how it is and I don't see any noticeable drop in quality between Wave 5 and M3e. YMMV and that's fine as well.

[Ender101]

So I'm making the jump back into Malifaux after a long hiatus, after my gaming group moved away from Malifaux during early M2, but are getting back in to give M3 a fair shake.

I also want to say I'm not trying to strike a negative tone, this is simply my opinions and why I think that way.

I was generally a fan of the original artwork for Malifaux, I thought it was unique and had a very distinct flavor. I don't think it was always best quality, but overall I thought it was alright.

During M1 through M2, there was a major shift in art direction, and what I've found is that I either love or hate each individual piece, with very few that fall somewhere between. I think it runs the gambit between, say:

'Man those emissaries all look fantastic!' or 'the new mechanical spiders look amazing!'

to 'Marcus wtf is going on with this picture's proportions... and is that pixelization around the edges I see?'

to 'why is the hanged so goofy looking, its supposed to be scary isn't it?'

The models overall had a huge improvement between M1-M2 in terms of quality, and looking at M3, I'm excited to see what comes next.

Speaking of sculpts though, I actually prefer more relaxed poses to super action fighty ones. I think they often convey more character than if you have to stare at the model to try and figure out what's even happening. I like OG Sonia because she seems so cocky, she's going to finish that cig and burn you to a crisp, so run while you can. OG McMourning really conveys his insanity and cruelty, he's going to rip your organs out and put them in some mad experiment, probably while you watch and bleed out. M2 Seamus is an improvement over the original tipping his hat while hiding his gun behind his back shows he's both funny and will certainly stab you. Original Hoffman was very static, I think his redux looks really good, that is one determined looking dude, its such and improvement I'm planning to buy the crew box to update my old crew. But the new Lady J? I'm not feeling it from the render, she looks like a screaming lady swinging a sword, but at least her hair isn't magically disobeying the laws of physics.

The game and its art, and models are going to change as time goes by, sometimes for the better (new Rasputina art and box totally beat the tar out of the original for example), sometimes for the worse (Original McMourning box vs M2, OG totally wins out for me, even with the silly Flesh construct), or sometimes they are just 'different' like Colette and her showgirls.

Malifaux has seen a lot of changes over the years, but even coming back from a long hiatus like I am, it still feels like Malifaux.

[Hagisman]

I like it when art has more color to it. A lot of the M2e first wave for Guild was very Brown and Grey focused. The color red popped a bit with Lady J, Perdita's sash, and Sonnia's hair, but there were a few models that broke that mold. 

[Stonewall78]

I think all this thread has shown to me is everyone has a very different taste for art. I tend to think wyrds new artist is really good. Some more "static" poses fit in nicely with models from the past versions. Most of those are considered "static" if you go back and look at them too. I still think the Malifaux line as a whole is very unique and looks great on the table. I am sure a lot of the complaints of being hard to put together and highly breakable on the table pushed some of the new designs to what people are now calling "static". I have a feeling a lot of playablity went into the new mini designs.