Argentbadger's Malifaux Miniatures

[Argentbadger]

@Evilbleachman: Thanks for the feedback. I guess this is a matter of taste; I rather like the bold colour of Yan Lo's robe, and I'm happy with how much it stands out in a game. I bet if I'd painted it the same but with orange you'd have liked it more!

This is Yin, the Penangalan, another of my Ten Thunders miniatures. Unlike some of them, Yin is actually a proper Ten Thunders choice rather than being restricted to a single Master like Beckoners. Her main thing is to be supremely annoying to everyone, which she achieves by being hard to get rid of (negative flips to attack) and having the Anathema rule so she’s even scary to robots. I’ve found that Yin really hates it when people bring paired weapons, or remember that they can focus attacks to get round the negative flip on the attack duel. It all gets even more hilarious when enemy pieces can have their Willpower reduced, such as with Lucas McCabe’s Braying of the Hounds spell. Of course, this is all outdated information due to the new Malifaux rules, so who knows what will happen to the poor Penangalan with the update.

I painted most of her mass of organs in various colours then slathered purple ink liberally across the lot which appears to have had the desired effect of looking slightly nasty. To add to the scary look, I left out the pupils from her eyes which works well enough, though she doesn’t need much help looking scary.

[Viruk]

That's probably the creepiest model in the range. I really like the wet, gory look of her intestines

[Argentbadger]

@Viruk: Thanks very much. Yin's a pretty scary beast. It never fails to amuse me that she starts with Harmless. I guess maybe she starts the game with a bit sheet draped over her that drops away when she attacks for the first time.

This is Sidir Alchibal (and not Captain Nemo from the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as you might have thought initially), sidekick / bodyguard for Lucas McCabe. I only ended up using him once in Malifaux Classic edition (where he was shot to death by Perdita Ortega without achieving much) and his rules aren’t even in open testing for the second edition of Malifaux yet.

This is probably the most testing amount of white I’ve tried on a miniature because Sidir is a remarkably big chap (that’s a 40 mm base he’s sitting on) and I’m very happy with it. Even in the somewhat unforgiving medium of close up photography it still looks decent, and on the tabletop it’s very pleasing. I thought that the bright red turban and robes really set off the white, and then chose to make the rest of him (beard, weapons, accessories) darker to pop the white as much as possible. I declare myself satisfied. Now, when can I get him back to the gaming table...

[Argentbadger]

Here is a single Oiran to run with my Malifaux Ten Thunders crews (or other crews since Oiran are mercenaries). They actually come in packs of three but Aramoro theorised that (being Showgirls) they would work well with his Colette du Bois crew so we split the box. As is a common theme in Malifaux Oiran are ‘ladies of negotiable affection’ though amazingly they aren’t dead, demonic or anything else horrible to go with it. In general I’ve found the Oiran to be pretty handy supporting my own crew’s willpower and occasionally Luring someone in to be beaten to death, preferably after they’ve activated for the turn.

Painting-wise I don’t think that the photos are doing this one much justice as there are a few highlights which are washed out by the pictures. Still, blowing up to huge size does show I’ve been particularly sloppy with line matching on the front of the sash. It’s not a bad miniature, but I’m not likely to go back for one of the cheapest minions in my collection.

[Argentbadger]

This is Luna, the totem for Lucas McCabe. There’s not really much to say about her. In game, she’s like a slightly better Guild Hound who can also cast McCabe’s spells via Magical Extension (at least, this was the case for Malifaux Classic edition). Combining the Braying of the Hounds spell with Yin the Penangalan was exactly as amusing as expected (i.e. hilarious) in the one game I tried it out against Furycat, but otherwise I’ve not really used Luna or her master.

I love the expression of sadness on the miniature, it conveys so much long-suffering love. And I’m not even a ‘dog person’. I’ve deliberately kept the miniature dark as I felt it fitted the style better, but left the eyes shining white without pupils to make them stand out more. The whole miniature is just a way to focus attention on that face. Who’s a good girl then?

[Viruk]

Your paintjob goes well with the emotions that this mini reflects. You may want to liven it up a bit by adding some static grass to the base but it looks very nice anyway.

[Argentbadger]

@Viruk: Thanks. I actually quite like it with the sparse base. The dark colours on Luna herself mean that if I liven up the base too much then it starts to take attention away from the miniature.

Here are two Thunder Archers (or Ten Thunders Archers, as they are called in Malifaux Classic edition); the third from the box was sold away to another local player as I didn’t think I’d ever want to field three at once. They were brutal in the previous version of Malifaux, fully capable of taking out two minions in a single activation at a huge range, or splashing damage onto hard-to-hit targets. Of course, they were terrible up close but Ten Thunders as a faction isn’t short on melee fighters so that was never a problem for me. Second edition Malifaux appears to have toned them down a bit (at least in the test ruleset I was using) which is probably for the best.

Assembling these guys was another task not intended for the clumsy or inexperienced. They are nothing like as bad as the legend that is Yan Lo‘s beard, but the head, hat and scarf are actually four separate pieces, and the individual arrows are very thin. The blue Archer is supposed to have a single arrow in his hand coming out of the quiver, but after snapping the first (of three) taking it off the sprue I decided it was more hassle that it was worth. I could have painted them both to look like they were part of an army or something but part of the charm of Malifaux in general and Ten Thunders in particular is the lack of similarity between miniatures so I decided to just go for completely different colour schemes. I didn’t intend it that way, but I guess that the red ribbon on the bows ties them together a little.

Putting this one’s head together was super annoying, and even after a lot of work it still looks like his hat sits too high on the head. It’s not too noticeable at tabletop range though.

I really like the dynamism of this chap, but I can’t help but think that this is not the optimum position for firing a bow if you have any intention of having the arrow go where you want.

[Viruk]

I always enjoy reading your thoughts on the in-game use as well as the hobby aspect of the miniatures you paint. I've read a lot about how hard are these to assemble so no surprise here. I think the one wearing bright robes should be holding his bow closer to the middle. Other than that everything look good to me

[Argentbadger]

@Viruk: Thanks a lot. I'm more of a gamer than a painter, but I see the two parts of the hobby as interlinked so I like to have the chance to write about the table top performance of my miniatures too. For the bow holding of the Archer, all I can say it that this is how it comes in the box. All three Archers are like that so I guess that it is intentional by the sculptor. Perhaps that is how this kind of weapon is supposed to be wielded.

This is the last of the Malifaux miniatures in the painting queue at the moment as I’ve been holding off buying more while I wait for the dust to settle from the arrival of Malifaux second edition. This is the leader of the Relic Hunters, Lucas McCabe. He was unique in classic Malifaux in that he started out mounted and then could be knocked off his horse as the game went on, swapping some mobility for an increase to his not-inconsiderable durability in the process. McCabe was also unique in that he could spend soulstones at the start of the game on various upgrades; evidently Wyrd liked the idea so much that it’s a core rule in the new edition. Anyway, I never really got to play with him much in classic Malifaux as I was having too much fun with the other masters, but Joe had a lot of success with him in a tournament paired up with Von Schill.

I’m not really sure why I decided to paint McCabe’s horse as a zebra, but the funny thing is that once I started applying the paint I saw this post from Jamesatlantic on the excellent The Red Crusader Rides blog. Of course, even if you can live with the stripes, it looks nothing like a real zebra as they have spiked up manes and less hairy tails. But, hey, if I’m going to suspend my disbelief and play this game with zombie prostitutes, magic and so on, then further suspend my disbelief by having a man riding a zebra then I’m happy to go one step further and accept that magical zebras in Malifaux don’t have the same manes and tails as normal zebras. These close-ups don’t really do the stripes much of a favour, but happily the effect is quite satisfactory at table top distance.

Once he’s off the horse, McCabe turns fully into Indiana Jones. There’s not much to say about the painting except that I tried to make it as consistent with his mounted incarnation as possible, which worked nicely. Strangely, he has a gun holstered which he can’t actually use in the game. The whip (which can be seen in all its glory in the first picture) is truly not designed for ease of transport as it sticks out hugely.

[Lussuria]

Already commented on your blog regarding these guys but I'll tell you agaaaaain

Looking impressive!! And painting the horse as a Zebra is such a cool idea and you did it really really well.

[Argentbadger]

@ Lussuria: Thanks - you post on Cappuccino Gaming, right? I love reading your blog.

I’m finally up to date with my Malifaux painting though I suppose that won’t last long. Anyway, Sho3box commented a while ago suggested that I should take a family photo of my Ten Thunders crews and here it is. Of course, this lot is nothing even close to a legal crew in either version of Malifaux, and thanks to the arcane hiring rules that govern the faction half of this lot can’t actually be taken in a crew other than by their thematic master. As of right now, a lot of these miniatures don’t actually have rules in the first half of the Malifaux version 2 release so I can’t even use them in that ruleset. Luckily I’m having a great time playing Jakob Lynch to work out how I can use him to most entertaining effect (against Euclid, who should probably become a Henchman and get some recognition for the work he’s starting to do to keep up the community) so I’m not really too worried about the rest yet.

[nagash13]

I finally figured out why i can't see any of your photos! you see on my screen they are all red "X"

i'm checking from work and turns out this govt agency has flagged wordpress as a source of malware/spyware and all photos and links to the site are blocked.

guess i'll have to try and remember to check from home another time.

[i_was_like_you]

I finally figured out why i can't see any of your photos! you see on my screen they are all red "X"

i'm checking from work and turns out this govt agency has flagged wordpress as a source of malware/spyware and all photos and links to the site are blocked.

guess i'll have to try and remember to check from home another time.

My work flags every other picture, regardless of source, it seems. They're definitely worth checking once you get home. A bit too shiny, but I like the colors.

[Lussuria]

Haha, yes! I am the caffeine addicted rambler *grin*

Ooooh they all look so cool together! So jealous that you have so many of them all nice and painted up! I still only have 4! They all look so cool together like that.

[ProximoCoal]

zebra=win

[Argentbadger]

It’s been a long while since I painted a Malifaux miniature.  First the advent of Malifaux second edition made me want to stop spending money on the system in case I didn’t like it, then the fact that I had all these new exciting rules to go with my old miniatures meant that I didn’t want to buy more, then the second wave of new rules came in and I played with them a lot too.  But while all that was happening, Joe decided that he was getting out of Ten Thunders and Resurrectionists and very generously gave me his unpainted Toshiro.  So, here he is.  I’m not really sure why I decided to give him a pink coat; it seemed like a good idea at the time (and was fun to paint) but it does seem a bit garish in retrospect.

 

In game I’ve found he’s lots of fun.  Of course, he synergises nicely with Yan Lo who can bring him back from the dead (again) with the Reliquary upgrade and brings the Soul Porter to push him round as needed.  But in fact Toshiro feels like a good fit in any crew with a lot of minions as he improves their melee attacks and can give them Fast or Focus as needed. Naturally, as I favour crews with a lot of minions this means that I can see plenty of opportunities to get Toshiro into action.  I’ve generally taken his upgrade Command the Graves as for a single Soulstone the ability to summon in an Ashigaru (or Komainu, though I haven’t actually done this yet) feels worth it for the threat even if I rarely actually get it off.  He won’t often take more than weak damage due to Hard to Wound 2 so his main worry is either a lot of incoming attacks or a small number with high weak damage.

 

 

At a recent event I attended, there was another, far better painted, Toshiro in attendance courtesy of Tattyted.  I am in awe of the freehand work on the trousers and jacket in particular. The comparison doesn’t show my effort in a great light!

 

[monkeyboy30672]

Your work is very nice! And I love all the added details in your posts, as well.

 

To rekindle a thought from earlier about the placement of the hand on the archer's bow... The sculptor actually has it correct. I shoot archery with a guy who uses that particular type of bow, called a Yumi Bow. Japanese, of course, and the top stave is longer than the bottom one. They do shoot, also, off the thumb of the bow hand, rather than Western style (like Robin hood) that places the arrow on top of the fist of the bow hand. I don't shoot a Yumi, but I shoot a Mongolian Horse Bow, and I use a thumb ring to pull back the string (like traditional Japanese archers do). The way the string twists as it is pulled back, the arrow can be fired horizontally like that, because the torque of the string presses the arrow against the bow itself, preventing gravity from making it fall off.

 

Yeah, I'm an archery nerd. Just thought I'd clarify.

[Argentbadger]

@Monkeyboy30672: Thanks for the compliments, and thanks for the insight into the archery.  Every day is a school day!

 

Here is Mr Tannen, the other half of the ‘I can’t believe it’s not Neverwhere’ combination with Mr Graves. After only a few games, he’s quite tricky to use well, or at least well and for more than a single turn. The main thing you’re looking for is to drop that aura of hard-to-Cheat-Fate (from the Cooler ability) on a lot of enemy pieces at once, ideally without being killed in the process. I’ve found that he wants to move into position at the end of the previous turn, because killing him after he activates is very easy to do. Luckily, there is no particular need to activate him early in the turn as Cooler is passive, and in any case Ten Thunders as a faction are not short on excellent body-blockers, especially Illuminated and Izamu. He has some special synergies with Mr Graves that I haven’t fully explored yet, but they should mean that activating Mr Tannen early wouldn’t be the death sentence it normally is. Needless to say, Mr Tannen makes for an excellent option in strategies that force close engagement, particularly Turf War.

 

I painted him up in the same style as Mr Graves to tie them together thematically.  I went for the orange detail just to brighten up the otherwise rather dull colours.

 

[Argentbadger]

Here is Izamu, the Armour, the last of the (currently released) Ancestors, a keyword linking him to Yan Lo thematically. In the previous edition of Malifaux Izamu was a Resurrectionist model so I could only take him in Ten Thunders crew with Yan Lo leading. Happily, Malifaux second edition has lifted some of the most irritating hiring restrictions on the Ten Thunders faction and made Izamu dual faction into Ten Thunders for good measure so I can play him under any master now.

 

On his own, Izamu is pretty hard to kill and hits really hard; he is a simple piece with few options that don’t relate to either attacking or being attacked. Of note he’s one of few non-master options where I would routinely take him with an upgrade, in this case Recalled Training to make one turn an unholy killing spree. Needless to say, this puts an even bigger target on Izamu’s head, an arrangement I can sometimes use to my advantage. Yan Lo has the strongest obvious synergy with Izamu; an easy to cast healing power makes Izamu a nightmare to dispatch and use of the Reliquaries upgrade means that he can be brought back (again) from the dead. Not only that but access to the Soul Porter who can push Izamu around gets rid of one the biggest weaknesses, Izamu’s slow pace. Lucas McCabe can also speed Izamu up by passing him upgrades via Open the Stash, notably the Badge of Speed to give the big chap Nimble. Neither Mei Feng nor Jakob Lynch have much to offer Izamu, but I like him with the former (Mei Feng doesn’t synergise hugely with anyone apart from a handful of constructs) and not so much with the latter (as Lynch would much prefer a boatload of cheap minions with ‘discard a card to do X’).

 

I kept to a dark colour scheme with Izamu, mainly keeping to dark browns for the wood and dark blue for the cloth. Of course, my usual light brown was used as a contrast to the darkness for the ties on the armour. I’ve seen a few good paint jobs on Izamu with lighting effects coming out of the helmet, but I don’t have the skills or inclination to try it out.  The faceplate was left off as I like the idea of an empty suit of armour fighting in my crew.  The photography hasn’t been kind to the paint I put on the studding on the lower armour; it doesn’t look nearly that bad on the tabletop.

 

[Argentbadger]

This is Yamaziko, another Henchman in the Ten Thunders faction. She’s thematically linked to Misaki, who I don’t own (yet… there’s a bit of a story about that), but thanks to the less ludicrous hiring restrictions in Ten Thunders now she can appear in any crew. I haven’t played as many games with Yamaziko as I’d like, but my general experience is that she’s not too hard to dispatch for anyone so inclined, and therefore I try to keep her slightly back from the front lines. She feels like a good option in Squatter’s Rights where she can support my fightier models with her Brace Yari action covering two of the markers. Yamaziko’s melee range is huge too, so her survivability can be improved slightly by engaging enemies with shorter melee ranges and forcing them to spend an extra action moving rather than killing her. As a Henchman, she can of course use Soulstones to last a bit longer but since I usually only take the minimum number of stones anyway this isn’t that helpful. In cases where I do take a lot of stones, it is usually because I have a more detailed plan for them than keeping an old lady fighting. A final use of her is to cheaply carry the Smoke and Shadows upgrade so Torakage do their tricks; this would be particularly useful when playing Stake a Claim.

 

Despite much use of Milliput I still couldn’t quite hide the massive gap in the right arm of Yamaziko’s robes. I chose a fairly drab green for the main colour with the hope that the lantern she’s carrying around for some reason would brighten up the overall appearance. But I didn’t really note that the lantern is only visible from the rear, so it doesn’t really make much difference. I did enjoy painting Yamaziko as the robe in particular does have some nice texture to it. This is a strange contrast to the face, which I found rather soft and devoid of much detail.

 

[Argentbadger]

Many months ago, I put in an order for the Misaki box from a local store. Three months after that, I went in to remind them in person that it still hadn’t been received, and the chap was so mortified about the delay that he gave me a box of Metal Gamin to keep me sweet. Fair enough, though I might add that after another couple of months I still haven’t got Misaki et al. Oh well, it’s not like I’m short on dollies. I gave one of these unexpected bonuses to Aramoro and set about painting the other two.

 

With my Ten Thunders Malifaux crews I can only take Metal Gamin with Mei Feng as they’re actually Arcanists (she can Infiltrate them due to the Foundry keyword), so the number of possible interactions is pretty slim. Metal Gamin are cheap non-Insignificant Minions, and they’re hard to put down relative to the cost. That alone makes them worth some consideration for me. They’re also Constructs and therefore potential Rail Walk points of Mei Feng. They do have a couple of other tricks, but so far I have to admit that I’m taking them mainly to score or drop scheme markers; hoping that they’ll actually kill anything seems unduly optimistic. Putting Protection of Metal on something with a low defense seems like it should be a good option but in practice it is far to easy to end up with the two parties too far apart for it to work. Unless the movement is critical, the best option appears to be to take a pair and put Protection of Metal on each other as they’ll always be within range of a friendly Metal Gamin (i.e. themselves).

 

The painting was really simple. In the fluff they’re made of metal, so I painted one silver with bronze details and the other bronze with silver details. It’s hardly the most imaginative colour scheme but it works nicely on the table.

 

[NIGHTHATER]

Argentbadger,

 

Everyone's got something good to say and I don't always sigh....these are just my thoughts and I'll take the fallout later.

 

I think you do dirty metals extremely well (some of the best I've seen) the problem is you do it often over the whole gun and it looks kinda lazy. I think you really need to start working on guns with more effort on the wood stocks and wood or even ivory handles instead of the metal. Also your weapons like spears, and bows wood parts have little to no color variation to give you a textured look. A lot of your models I FEEL could really benefit from some stronger highlighting though you have good shading the highlighting is not very strong or bold.  As for the fleshy parts of the models you understand where the muscle and curves should be well (Even on the plastics...NICE) but the contrast to bring them out isn't there. The painting on the models appears very accurate so you got that down.

 

Even your gray basing stones could use a little light gray highlighting to bring a little more life to em.

 

It looks like your working with a limited color pallet. If you are I respect that, but it will show in your models..."It is what it is."

 

Anyway that where I'm at

 

Nighthater

[Argentbadger]

Thanks for the detailed feedback, I really appreciate it.  I will freely admit that I'm not particularly working to a limited pallette so I cannot hide behind that excuse.  You are totally correct that these are the things I'd need to take my painting to the next level.  The reason I haven't done these so far (and I'm considering how I will proceed) is that I am primarily a gamer rather than a painter and much of the fine detail work is lost at tabletop distance.

[Argentbadger]

This is the new plastic Malifaux Child I’ve painted for Malifaux (of course). I never owned the old metal version or used him at all by proxy before buying, but a cursory look over his card made me pick the little chap up for trying out with Sonnia. There are probably plenty of cool tricks that you can do, but for now I have found that 3SS is a nice price to pay for a second Flame Wall on the terrain-heavy boards we favour in our gaming group. I’m looking forward to testing how well this works in the slightly sparser boards I see at UK tournaments. The funny thing is I would never have considered the Malifaux Child for any of my Ten Thunders masters as thay all have excellent totems in their own right; I cannot think of any possible scenario where I’d swap Lynch’s Hungering Darkness for the Malifaux Child for example. Now that I’m back to playing Guild (more about that later), I have opened up my opinion. In Malifaux 1.5 the Malifaux Child was a byword for unusably bad (though I never tried him much) so it has been quite nice to enjoy the fruits of the highly-successful rebalancing in Malifaux 2E.

 

The painting was quite simple. I’ve picked a deep red for the ‘theme colour’ of my new plastic Guild so that went on the trousers, and everything else was just painted in the way that made most sense to me. So white shirt, brown shoes, metal knives (not that I’ve ever used them in the game) and light brown / blonde hair. The eyes are left withour pupils, partly because it makes him look a little creepy (as befits a child who can create pillars of flame) but mainly because the sculpted eyes are enormous and I couldn’t think of a way to paint them that wouldn’t make the eyes look crazy.

 

[Argentbadger]

Here is the first of my replacement plastic Guild for Malifaux after I cunningly/foolishly sold my old metals. This is Papa Loco, one of the models who has surely benefited most from the power level flattening coming from Malifaux 1.5 to 2nd edition. Previously he was something of a liability considering the huge prevalence (at least in Scotland) of Obey on soulstone users who would inevitably make him end up killing half of your own crew at an inopportune moment. Now he seems rather better, at least with a little help. Most importantly, he has ‘Hold This’ which gives a friendly model a positive flip to damage. Now with most masters this isn’t so important, but for Sonnia it is huge, as the difference between weak and severe damage isn’t so much the 3 damage points but rather the 3 blasts that can be put out. Added to her ridiculous Ca stat, this means that you’ll be able to cheat most damage flips and get those juicy blasts out. Thanks to changes to the Death Marshal’s Pine Box action, Papa Loco can then be safely stored and transported deep into the other crew where you can do most damage with his hilarious (self) explosive shenanigans.

 

I chose to put my Guild colour of red on his trousers, figuring that the strait jacket should be white/cream coloured. I think it looks nice enough, but it does stop the dynamite from showing up well. Of course I have no idea whether dynamite is really packed in red tubes (or even in tubes at all like that), but thanks to my childhood cartoons, it will always be that way for me. Edit: removed the original photos and added some slightly better ones.