After the slog that the Stormcast turned into, I dug into my Malifaux backlog for what I thought would be an easy win: I was right! These guys painted up very, very quickly.
It Came from the Lightbox: Arcanist Automata
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Tag Archives: Malifaux
It Came from the Lightbox: Malifaux Arcanists
I picked up some M3E models late last year and speedpainted them. They’re not worth getting too excited about, but they came out alright. The fire effects came out pretty well, I think. Of course, I’ve played the game once….
Gremlins, Batch 2
Well, I finished up the Gremlins I’ve been working on. (I’d have finished them last weekend, but I ran out of Bestial Brown and it took me forever to remember to buy more.)
Here they are:
And more fiddling with backdrop/terrain/HDR:
Gremlins WIP
Man, I really need to bang out a write-up about Dragon Wars (short version: had a great time!), but I haven’t had the time.
I have been working on some Gremlins: the guy who bought the Gremlin crew I put up for auction a few weeks ago asked if I’d knock out a few more models to fill out the list. So, that’s what I’m working on. They’re coming along much faster than I thought they would; I really need to just block out a day to wrap them up.
Anyway, here are the WIPs:
Buy My Stuff!
Or not, as pleases you. I’m listing the last of my Warmachine / Hordes stuff. If you’re into that, go nuts.
The only notable thing is that I’m also unloading what little painted Malifaux stuff I have: three Witchling Stalkers and a painted Gremlins list. I’m curious to see how well the Gremlins do, because I’m selling them as a lot and starting it at what feels a bit high ($90), but it is $75 worth of stuff and they’re seriously painted really, really well.
If you’re into this stuff, please take a look at my listings! Thanks!
Commencing picture dump… now!
Painting Progress – 20110112
Over the weekend, I wrapped up the Gremlins. So, they’ve been done for a little while.
Dropped the little bastards on the way to the spray station, which really cheesed me off: Som’er and the Slop Hauler’s hats chipped and the Hauler’s spoon broke off. Salty language was uttered.
Touch ups were done. Anyway, here they are:
Also, I blew through painting up the Dreadstone Blight. I’ve got a bunch of pictures of it, as well as some thoughts about the kit… enough that I’m giving it its own post tomorrow.
Now, I’m ramping back up on Skaven. It’s gonna happen, damnit! I’m starting off with ten Clanrats and a Doomrocket Warlock Engineer.
Painting Progress – 20110102
I’ve gotten surprisingly little done. Given that I’ve had two whole days in which I’ve worn nothing but pajamas, uninterrupted, you’d think I’d have annihilated anything and everything that crossed my painting table.
Instead, I’ve been reading (wrapped up Prospero Burns*, started Empire in Black and Gold), napping and time wasting.
I’m mostly done with the second batch of Gremlins. At this point, just a few things left to do. Should be an afternoon’s focus to wrap up.
I’m less motivated to knock them out, though, because I had the realization that my company’s holiday party is the night of the Malifaux thing at Huzzah Hobbies… that’s probably too much for me to try to fit into one day.
At this point, though, I might as well finish them. Be a shame not to.
Wanted to throw up another WIP of Som’er Teeth Jones.
God, what an ugly model. In some ways, that’s good; he ain’t suppos’d t’ be purdy. In other ways, it’s annoying: he doesn’t look anything like any of the other Gremlin models. It also looks like he’s not wearing anything underneath that coat, and that’s just gross.
Also, I finally took a stab at converting up some Pink Horrors (Blood Horrors?)
Nothing fancy: I don’t think it needs to be fancy. I’ve certainly learned that, for me, the more involved a conversion gets the less likely I am to finish it, much less paint it.
They’re basically Ungors with bow-hands removed and replaced with grenade launchers. Some green-stuff goes into gap-filling and making the two pieces “fit” together better.
I’m doing basically the same thing with a Gor for the Changeling.
I did do some extra sculpting around the heads: Ungors have a big gap between the torso and the head that I filled in. Also I smoothed things out between the shoulders and the back of the head to make things look more hunched over and less… weird.
Easy to put together. I’ve got another box of Ungors, but have to wait on some bits to show up before I can finish a second octet.
* Micro-review: Actually a solid enough book but utterly a failure as a book titled, “Prospero Burns,” billed as a book about the annihilation of Prospero. Also, I thought the end was cheap and disappointing.
Painting Progress – 20101228
Last one of these for 2010!
As I mentioned last time, Bill put a bug in my ear about a Malifaux event in January. (Seeing, now, that it’s 1/8, I’m less confident about actually making it, but that’s beside the point).
I haven’t touched or thought about Malifaux in a looong time. It’s not a fundamentally bad game or anything (though their tournament format is idiotic); I like some of their minis (but not others). Honestly, I’ve had Rising Powers since shortly after it came out… and haven’t been able to muster the energy to read it.
Ultimately, it just seems like so damn much work.
But, hey, I’ve got a bunch of minis for it (the Criid starter and a lot of the Gremlin stuff), so why not?
Bill suggested I take:
- Som’er Teeth Jones
- Ophelia
- Rami
- Slop Hauler
- Bayou Gremlins x2
- Bayou Gremlins x5 (to bring in via Git Yer Bro)
Sounds good enough to me; I can count the number of games of Malifaux I’ve played on one hand. So, I’m painting that up.
I just finished knocking out the Bayou Gremlins, all seven of them.
I’ve got a good start on the characters. Hopefully, they’ll truck along at a good pace.
Thought I’d take a closeup of Som’er’s face. Man, he’s got an ugly mug. Mugly.
Finally, it appears that they don’t have a model for the Slop Hauler. Normally, this sort of thing doesn’t bug me too much: no model means an opportunity to make a model, right? Except exactly how much effort do I want to put into building a model for a game I don’t really play? Not much.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to. A leftover Bayou Gremlin, an Ogre Kingdoms barrel with a bit of greenstuff and a paperclip with a bit more greenstuff was all I needed.
Anyway, hopefully I can paint these last few guys in the next week or so. Then I can worry about whether or not I have time on my schedule to use them (instead of whether or not I’ll have time on my schedule to paint them before using them).
Painting Progress – 20100602
Despite the long weekend, I got next to nothing done, hobby-wise.
I’d really hoped to bang out a lot of progress on my second quartet of Bloodcrushers… but it wasn’t meant to me. They’ve been basecoated Bestial Brown, but my drybrush of Shining Gold wasn’t as thorough as I thought it was; every few minutes while highlighting the gold, I’d find another spot that needed touching up. This would do a fantastic job of breaking my momentum.
On Monday (last Monday, not yesterday), I did manage to finish my Witchling Stalkers.
The brown is a bit more khaki than I’d like, and the red isn’t as deep, but it’ll do. Both sections of cloth got a glaze: my first attempt at doing anything more involved than a simple wash/watered down wash. This time, I threw in some matte medium (so it was 1:1:2 GW wash, matte medium, water). Looking at the models, I can see no evidence of the glaze… but at the same time it was quite obvious when I set a glazed model next to an unglazed one.
For the metal, I used P3’s Armor Wash, a favorite of mine that I’ve shifted away from lately. I threw in a little Leviathan Purple for the hell of it: I’m pleased with the result.
I also tried my hand at verdigris for the first time, using B.Smoove’s technique. It didn’t come out all that well: not enough Goblin Green, for one, and the consistency of the whole thing was off… either too thin or not thin enough; I’m not sure. It’ll take some more fiddling, I think.
I’ve also made some progress in how to do macro photography with my new camera; the short version is I’m going to have to build a lightbox, or these pictures are going to continue coming out funny looking.
Malifaux Card – Lamination
One of the other Malifaux players in the area, Dan, has had all his stat cards laminated.
This is, in a word, genius.
Malifaux stat cards suck. You use them to track damage so, like Warmachine cards, they need to live in plastic card sleeves. Unlike Warmachine cards, though, they’re not single cards: they’re two cards wide and fold in half… with all of the special rules and things that get referenced on the inside.
After three sessions of Malifaux, the sleeve I’d been keeping Sonnia Criid’s card in has torn open… something that’s never happened to me with Warmachine (where I use the same card sleeves).
So, lamination is (again) genius.
I stopped by Kinko’s last night to laminate my cards. Not too many Guild cards, but there are kind of a ton of Gremlin cards. Although I could have maybe laid out my cards more efficiently, I don’t think I could have reduced the number of lamination sheets I ultimately needed to use. The whole thing cost me < $12 and the frustration reduction will totally be worth it. Chris suggested that you’d get four cards per 8.5″x11″ sheet. Necessity drove me to fit five on one sheet, with the pattern:
I did most of my cards in 11″x17″ sheets (8 per sheet in pretty lose formation). What I couldn’t fit in those (5), I did in the single 8.5″x11″ sheet. That means I probably could have 10 cards per 11″x17″ sheet (but would have been left with one I couldn’t fit).
The 11″x17″ sheets were just a hair over $4 each and the 8.5″x11″ was $2.50. So, on a big sheet, you’re looking at 50¢ a card if you’re lazy and do 8, 40¢ if you fit 10. On the smaller sheets, it’s 63¢ if you only do 4 cards, 50¢ if you do 5. So, try to do as many as possible at a time and cram them onto the big sheets.