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Argentbadger's Malifaux Miniatures


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I painted an Exorcist for my Malifaux crew; I'm a little surprised at how rare these appear to be on this forum, but perhaps I'm not looking in the right threads. I am very happy with the painting on his face, which in some ways is a bit of a shame as it is almost impossible to see on the tabletop thanks to his wide-brimmed hat.

It’s pretty remarkable what a flat sculpt this is, even compared to other similarly two-dimensional miniatures in the range like Sonnia Criid.

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  • 2 months later...

@Viruk - sorry for the slow response, I haven't checked this subforum in months. Thanks for the kind words. I can certainly see what you mean about the hat (and the crossbow, to a lesser extent).

I painted some more Malifaux miniatures a little while ago, but never got round to taking pictures. Here is Francisco Ortega. In the story, he’s a righteous bad-ass, second only to his sister, Perdita in the ‘hard as nails’ stakes. However, in the game he is somewhat overshadowed by his brothers (or maybe cousins) Nino and Santiago. Still, I’ve had some luck with him as a deterrent to charging Nino or Santiago as, while neither of them could fight their way out of a wet paper bag, Francisco is pretty stabby with his sword as long as he doesn’t get killed first (which is depressingly easy to do).

I love the miniature as it just oozes menace and it was a joy to paint, though it does suffer from the Flat Stanley stylings of many other Wyrd models. Handily, the Ortegas fit quite nicely into the colour scheme I’ve been using for the rest of my Guild force.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Here is Santiago Ortega, the shootier brother (or cousin, who knows?) of Francisco. He’s really nice in game, as his shooting is excellent and he even gets better if he’s injured. I’ve heard of people deliberately shooting him in the back on turn 1 to get this effect, but never tried it. My experience has generally been that he gets taken out in one turn so I never get the benefit, or he gets stuck in combat with something and never escapes. Partnering him with Francisco helps to mitigate that a little since the latter is actually competent in melee, but neither is exactly robust.

As for the miniature, I love it. So much character and such a lovely pose. It was like it painted itself. Santiago is meant to be some sort of Mexican gunslinger (so presumably should have dark hair) but as soon as I took him out of the box I knew he was going to get ginger hair. I think it fits him quite nicely. And apparently at least one other person did, as I won ‘best painted miniature‘ for him at Skirmish Showdown, an achievement which makes me a happy geek.

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It's a great mini indeed and looking at it I immediately want to start working on mine. It'll have to wait for a while though as I have several other hobby projects that kind of got in the way ;)

I like the bright coat as it goes nicely with the other colors you've chosen for him. The painting is very clean and while I'm not a fan of glossy varnish, I have to admit he does look nice.

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Thanks for the kind words and inspiration. It is certainly easier to paint a miniature that you like rather than grinding through those that are just 'ok' (though I am a bit of a fanboy in that regard and generally like much of Wyrd's stuff).

It's funny you should say about the varnish as, although I do use varnish on metal miniatures for protective purposes, these photos are taken before varnishing. I guess it may be an effect of my poor photograph.

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The last of the younger Ortega boys, here is Nino Ortega. Popular opinion seems to be that he is amazing on the table, but my experience has generally been that it’s either feast or famine. In a recent game I did manage to get 5 shots out of two action points, both ‘ending’ shots being headshots to boot, but that’s an exception. Headshot in general is not likely to be a kill as most turns there will be a couple of low cards in hand to discard. On the other hand, milling cards away can be effective under some circumstances.

By contrast to Francisco and Santiago, I really dislike the miniature itself. The pose is really wonky – I don’t know much about guns but I imagine that shooting a massive rifle like that while standing on one leg is not ideal if you want to hit anything. I tried to make it so he looked like he was resting the front foot on the kerb of his base, but it’s not really come out well. Nino’s face is very blandly sculpted, with almost no detail, and the whole thing is supported on one very spindly ankle. It’s only a matter of time before that comes off and I have to pin his leg back together, but I’m putting it off for now. Something weird has occurred with his face in the photo, as the ‘just finished eating chocolate’ look isn’t there is real-life.

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I'm not a fan of his pose too and spent a lot of time making it work for me. Still, the gunslingers are way down the line on my backlog list so he'll have to wait a bit longer for painting.

The painting is very nice, again I like the look of the duster - simple yet effective.

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@Viruk: Thanks for your continued kind words in this thread. Nino is one of the few Malifaux miniatures that I really dislike. It’s a shame that he’s so good on the table, although everyone else (particularly my opponents) seems to rate him much more highly than I do. I’d like to see what you do to make his pose less ridiculous.

@Bobzilla: Thank you for the compliment. As you can see, my attempt to fix his pose was less than successful. I think your Death Marshalls look really good. To be fair, they’re (not quite) undead cowboys carrying coffins around with them, so anything to make them less silly is going to be a long shot.

Anyway, Nino’s ankle finally broke, so I’m going to pin him back together, Milliput the join for strength and then sort out the painting on his leg. I’d actually held off varnishing him because I knew that would happen and I didn’t want any issues with the tidy-up paint job.

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To be fair, they’re (not quite) undead cowboys carrying coffins around with them, so anything to make them less silly is going to be a long shot.

Fair point :)

The best pose I've seen for him has been where someone built up a base that had a tree trunk/branch lying down that fitted the models foot height perfectly. Only problem I had with it was that they had themed it for woodland and the rest of the crew were on deadland style bases.

Edited by bobzilla
dyslexic and fat fingers make typing fun
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My second Guild master is Perdita Ortega. Like all masters in Malifaux, she has a ridiculous list of abilities, most of which come in useful at various time, but the one I always fall back in is just shooting people in the face repeatedly. Presumably she has more depth to discover, but after only a few games with Perdita leading my crews I’m very happy with the way she plays.

Initially I wasn’t very keen on the understated pose of the miniature but it’s really grown on me lately so I like the idea of just waiting to quick-draw someone and put them in the dust at high noon. The hair, which is something of a focal point of the miniature, is a failed experiment for me. I tried a highlight in purple to try and give it some ‘lustre’ (which is something people apparently look for in hair; I wouldn’t know – no-one advertises products to give a lustrous beard) but it turned out to be too light and it just looks like she has purple hair. I only finished painting it just before a tournament and didn’t have time to fix it, but since then I’ve grown to like it so I’m not going to change it now. I have, however, fixed the chips in the hat.

These pictures also feature a guest appearance from my assistant, Argentbadger junior.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Finally, here is the last of the Ortegas from the starter box, Papa Loco. I’ve never actually put him on the table (which is pretty odd I suppose) since the main thing he does is blow things up, and then blow up himself. If I need that then I just reach for Sonnia Criid, who does all that and more (and critically is not going to be Obeyed by Zoraida to blow up half of my own crew on turn 1).

Much like Perdita, I was initially underwhelmed by the sculpt but it really came to life as I put paint on. The colours are selected simply to match the rest of my Guild crew. As Papa Loco is supposed to be dangerously insane I reverted to my early days of painting when it came to the eyes, hoping that the wild-eyed look I had achieved on every single one of my first forays would finally come into its own. Sadly it doesn’t work at photography scale (though it doesn’t look too dreadful at table top distance).

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  • 3 weeks later...

Here is the Hungering Darkness. He’s an evil demon thing who lives in the basement of the Honeypot, the casino owned by Mr Lynch, eating the souls of various gamblers. In game, he’s hilarious as he gives people the Brilliance effect, uses them to do his bidding, then pops back out of them when they finally die (if anyone has been able to kill him in the meantime). The miniature, while looking reasonably like the artwork, is difficult to paint well as it looks like a giant tadpole. I opted to paint the legs a different colour from his body simply to make the Hungering Darkness look a bit less like a big black blob. I’m still unsure on the eyes, which are plain white at the moment. The rest of the Brilliance-infected crew will have pupil-less eyes to show their inhumanity but it doesn’t look great at this size. On the other hand, my other thoughts (e.g. slit pupils) would be hard to pull off without looking even more silly, so I’m going to leave them for now in case I get inspiration.

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  • 2 months later...

The hobby challenge for the last tournament I went to (the St Valentine’s Slaughter) was to bring along a treasure marker themed to the event and your chosen Master. In my case that was Sonnia. I decided to make my theme instead be ‘a marker I’ll actually use again’. The Henchman, DavidKerrSmith, did generously suggest that the locked box could be symbolising Sonnia’s quest / penchant for forbidden lore, but I think he was just being nice. Anyway, of a public vote I rightly came in fourth (of four entries) with zero votes; the other three were really good and can be seen here.

The marker itself is a treasure chest from the Games Workshop Ogre Kingdoms Ironblaster kit.

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@ Lord Shaper, Bobzilla and Viruk: Thanks very much. I have no compaints about the other entries to the marker competition being voted higher than mine, as they were better both in execution and theme than mine. On the other hand, I've already used my treasure hunt marker again, which I think will be rare for Valentine-themed, master-specific tokens in general.

Here are my versions of the Illuminated. In the fluff they’re souls who’ve been corrupted / subsumed / addicted to the Brilliance, the game effect / addiction metaphor purveyed by the Hungering Darkness. I find them a trifle pricy for what they do at 6SS, but I think it’s because you’re paying for a tool box of abilities, not all of which are going to be useful in every game. I certainly enjoy using them, but I don’t see that I would care to put all three in many crews.

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This crouching chap had a choice of left arms, either a claw to match the right arm or these tentacles. I opted for the tentacles to show the chaotic mutation he’s undergoing, rather than the symmetrical option of two claws. I chose to paint the hardened Brilliance (i.e. the mutated bits) in a very non-naturalistic style, which hopefully emphasises the difference from the normal skin. Also, and more importantly, I like painting brightly coloured miniatures.

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The second Illuminated is being eaten by, or possibly vomited on by, a miniature version of the Hungering Darkness. He’s floating up with only his tiptoes on the ground, which of course made him a total pain to pin onto his base. Like the real Hungering Darkness, this one had outrageous gaps which required copious Milliput to fill. I painted it the same colour as the big one to link them in my mind.

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The final Illuminated is normal apart from having tentacles instead of a face. This is also the ‘alternative’ head, the other one having a distended maw which I didn’t think looked very good to paint. This model really shows up how smooth the Malifaux plastics are – I didn’t really manage to achieve much depth on the skin in particular. My first attempt had the bodice in yellow but it didn’t look right so I went over it with red; a much easier colour to work with.

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Very dark, the contrasts work really well here. Really like the colors you've chosen. While some areas seem to be a tad flat (as you said, the plastics are unforgiving and giving those surfaces more depth is a challenge) but overall the paintjobs are very clean. Keep up the good work !

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  • 2 weeks later...

@Viruk: Thanks very much; that is high praise coming from a painter of your talents. Regarding the plastics, I think that they probably affect the middle ground painters most. Those who are very skilled (yourself, for example) can work around the lack of depth. Meanwhile, painters who only do so to 'put a painted crew on the table' (with a comparatively low skill, like me) don't feel the difference so much anyway. However, those who try very hard to get the best quality paint job, but don't quite have the skill to get it, will find the frustration most.

Meanwhile, here is the final member of the Dark Debts boxed set, Mr Jakob Lynch. He is the owner of the Honey Pot casino in Malifaux and general pawn of the Hungering Darkness. His crew is themed around the Brilliance mechanic, but he doesn’t have anyway of handing it out himself, nor can he get it (thanks to his Never Touch The Stuff rule). In practice, I don’t find that he does a great deal apart from hide at the back and try not to die so that the Hungering Darkness doesn’t disappear at an awkward time. A local player (who is much better at the game than me) seems to have considerable success using him to interact with markers in strategies like A Line in the Sand or Destroy the Evidence, so perhaps that is the route I should take.

He is meant to have some sort of weird magic skeleton thing coming out of the palm of his hand, conjuring trick-style. But that looked weird so I resorted to the Wife Test, which showed that it looked better with the open hand. Overall, I think that this is the miniature where I am most happy with the painting job. It is still somewhat lacklustre compared to other local talents of course. I decided early on that I wanted him to wear a cream coloured suit, and after a bit of thinking about it, I realised that the dark brown skin tone would be the perfect complement. Sadly, it does make his weakly-sculpted facial hair even more difficult to pick out, but in practice I only see the back of him on the table top.

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Really like the choice of colors on him, the cream colored suit goes very well with red vest. It seems like the paint looks a bit rough at a few places and I think the model would have benefited more from slowly built highlights of watered down paint but still, it looks very decent. I think your painting skills are improving so keep up the good work!

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  • 3 weeks later...

@SpiralngCadavr, Wings: thanks very much.

@Viruk: Thanks for the kind words. Playing Malifaux has tempted me to put a bit more work into each miniature (compared to previous times playing large army battles), but I am still very much aiming for tabletop standard. One of my aims in posting these miniatures is to show potential 'converts' to Malifaux that it is not necessary to be an amazing painter to put painted toys on the table.

Here is Mr Graves, the mighty bouncer of Jakob Lynch’s Honeypot Casino and birthday present from my geek friends. Unlike most of the other named characters in Malifaux, he doesn’t appear to actually have a first name (either that or his first name is ‘Mr’). He looks like he ought to be a tremendous monster in melee, but in the few games I’ve tried him so far he’s been shot without achieving a great deal. This is mainly due to my poor play.

I decided to go for the worlds simplest method of white for his shirt. I painted it white, gave the whole thing a black wash, then drybrushed it heavily again in white. It’s far from amazing up close but it looks surprisingly good at tabletop distance. In fact, so much so that he won an award for best painted miniature at the Bayou Brawl II (though partly this was because most people had already won awards for their painting and hence didn’t put an entry in).

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