Line in the sand

I don't think that counts as a pun... It's the 'Always' strategy from the standard strats & schemes for Malifaux...
Anyway.

We've all said this before, and probably most of us have meant it, but I doubt very many of us have managed to stick to it - I don't want to buy anything else until I've painted up most of what I have outstanding.

After the big push to assemble and get all my guild miniatures primed, I said something similar, but then managed to get hold of the Wild Ones crew, got some additions to this in order to get the War Rabbit promotion & bought Titania for the Dufresne alt model. So I'm serious this time, I really want to make a dint in my huge lot of assembled & primed models as I feel no small amount of shame for how much I've spent, and then not even got game ready.

Without making the mistake of setting targets and burning out like I did with Hoffman, current hit list will be something like this:
Lone Marshall
Pale Rider
Bases (Ortega posse, Lucius & co plus DM Recruiters)

Let's see how I fair in the next few hobby sessions :) I have some models to assemble to keep me occupied should need be (Kamaitachi, Guild Hounds, Titania) and My friend at work is interested to see me actually do something with my Infinity, so I hope I'm able to get some colours down soon as a PoC for my army colours.

I believe the Malifaux Project lists are up to date so I'll keep altering them as I progress.

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Mother of Monsters - In The Flesh

I wanted to post all this on Wednesday night, but then the trains were a mess, so it's ended up being today.

I've managed to do three things to share today - 1 Finish my Lilith crew. 2 Use my lightbox  and 3 Have something other than WIPs to show :)

I've not photographed absolutely everything, mainly because I wanted to see how the lightbox turned out.

The only things I might change with these are some additional blood effects at some point in the future. I'm really pleased with the way they look, especially after how long it's taken me :p I might post a full crew shot at some point in the near future too :)

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Breached

Another new post category? Madness I tells ya!

Our group of Malifaux players have been batting around the idea of a Through The Breach campaign for a while now, and when the PDF bundle went up on Drive Thru RPG, I snapped them up even though I had the physical books, which my friend and soon to be DM also got at Christmas.
The announcement of 2e but a bit of a damper on things, but our DM friend has been playing D&D recently and has the RP bug again, so he train is ready to leave the station.

Briefly looking through the character creation rules etc looks a bit intimidating if I'm honest, and I've read some mixed reviews about the magic system being clunky. We have a date pencilled in for our first session including character creation, so that means that my wife and I have a target to have read and understood the game basics by (wish us luck!).

My initial character idea was a burly guard type character, armour under a heavy duster, shotgun & knuckle dusters kind of guy. This seems to be the kind of meat shield trope that I usually end up with in roleplaying games, so maybe I should change it up?
Idea the second is an arcane gun-slinger type with a plethora of pistols/huge rifle which they would presumably be able to augment through arcane buffs.
Lastly is the complete mage, with spells, a bit of madness and more of a contempt for humanity.

I'll base the final decision on what I learn from reading up on the rules, and how complex each character might end up being as a first iteration.

This also leads me on to having a model to represent myself in-game so I'm trying to resist the temptation to order the multi-part kit and create a character rather than just using one I have in my collection :p

I'll keep updating as this progresses. It will supercede my D&D plans for the time being, but will also hopefully allow some impetus to carry on into that from our Through The Breach campaign.

Thanks for Stopping by
Lofty

Back to Basics

I managed to assemble the rest of the Nightmare crew on Sunday, and everything went together pretty well except for one of the bikers.

 Elli Ramone is inside the wheel of her 'bike', the circular part of the bike however doesn't fit together as a complete circle for some reason. Of course I only discovered this whilst holding the rear part plus rider together while the glue set, in order to also get the handlebar in so that each part wasn't set and allowed be to adjust positions in order to line everything up. I wont go into details but after narrowly avoiding a high speed trip across the room, several loud and colourful exclamations seem to have made everything stick together just fine... If I'm honest, my heart was in my boots whilst struggling through that particular assembly after it costing so much. Not to dwell though, it's made now :) this is hopefully the last of my complaints and regrets about this kit as well so the future is bright!

As a bit of therapy after this last ordeal, I spent some time making the bases for this crew and Izamu

I'm going to add texture paste for a desert style base with some dry grass tufts, and desert style shrubs as well as dusty pigment on the base and some parts of the models when complete.

For Izamu I wanted to maintain his eastern aesthetic, as I will try to do with all Ten Thunders models I end up with rather than try and tie them into the biker gang theme of 'McCabe'. The idea currently is to do cocktail sticks as bamboo flooring on the raised parts, and try and recreate liquid greenstuff as 'water' (pre paint and gloss varnish) like I did for Hoffman's sewer bases, with the stepping stones, and some stiff bristles from a brush as reeds.

Lastly, I've made a bit of progress with the test woodgrain base I made for Abuela, and built up a more interesting base for Perdita.

There are a fare few bases outstanding for models I have undercoated, so I'm going to try and get some work put in on them, in order to make models usable where possible and paint them on their bases rather than having them sitting on corks WIP and not playable. This won't be possible for everyone though :)

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

In The Wilderness

We were away this weekend, so I guess this post is actually Sunday's post, but who's counting?

Great scenery, really relaxing, and an extra Monday/Sunday to boot!

I also managed to get some primer on the rest of the McCabe nightmare crew, in order to make assembly a bit easier and mold lines more visible.

On our way back from the Lake District, we stopped by Element Games in order to take advantage of the April promotion that they have going currently, which meant it would have been rude not to grab some friends for the newest bikers to roll through Malifaux...

Looks like I'll have to start a new section to the blog for Ten Thunders, or keep them under guild as an extension of McCabe... I suppose it depends how far down the rabbit hole my willpower allows me to go!

That's all for the moment, I hope to continue progress with McCabe and with my painting backlog and keep the photos going :)

Thanks for stopping by

Lofty

Transparency

So this happened

But then this also happened :(

I didn't know it was a translucent crew before I bought it or I wouldn't have done. After speaking to the seller, he also apparently didn't know, and it wasn't marked on the original sale post. To be fair I think Paypal would refund me here based on misleading product information...
I decided to ask around about people's experiences with the translucent plastics from Wyrd, and they all confirmed what my biggest worry was, which is how brittle the plastic is compared to the standard kits. I decided, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth that I would carry on regardless as otherwise I wouldn't have the crew at all :)
The plastic is very brittle, and there are lots of thin parts which I'd be worried about even in the standard plastic. The smaller parts are also very hard to align as of course they are transparent. In hindsight I should have not started this but here we are :p

I managed to get the dismounted Rollins made up easily enough and Cherry Bomb assembled apart from the hand holding the gun which I can't see well enough to attach on such a thin connection point. I think before I get any further, the rest of the frames need a thin coat of primer to make them easier to work with for assembly.

I can't help but worry though seeing how thin some of the pieces are after seeing how brittle this type of plastic is.

Sorry to be so negative but I'm pretty bummed out after this costing so much with customs and all the rest, and now it feels like it needs to not be played with incase i break parts off...

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

In Summery

You love puns, I know you do.

This weekend saw a lot of sun for us over in rainy old England, so I finally got a whole heap of models spraycoated. The only things I now have not ready to paint are the Titania box set that I'm still assembling. Including some of my wife's models I basecoated 30 or so models in the sun on Sunday.
As I was home alone, and had some family plans cancelled, I also managed to put in some time on my Lilith crew, and only have the lady herself and teeth/blood effects on the Nephilim before I can call them don and be happy (as happy as you ever can be when you finish a model i think)

I had started some basing ideas for the Ortega family, wanting to do something different from the cobbled streets of the rest of my guild collection in order to represent their remote frontier operations. I originally tried to do wood planking using coffee stirrers, but it's really not so easy to cut these in a way that allows them also to look realistic, and they all ended up with sharp corners and blunt ends on a round base. After deciding to make-do with the bases I had made, I stumbled across a great website detailing a good process for wood grain bases, as well as a video being released the same day for the same effect. Not being one to ignore such a huge hint, I stripped my handiwork off the bases and started a greenstuff replacement, using Abuela Ortaga's base as a pilot as it will mostly be obscured if it had not turned out well.

I really like the look, and will continue this for the other Ortega models :)

We played again on Thursday, and I took Lilith as we were playing GG17. I really enjoy Lilith anyway, but she seems far better suited to the new scheme marker heavy pools than Guild would be. I was considering a Sonnia list with stalkers/Handler combo and an arresting Daschel, but flight and sprint are fantastic for getting pieces in position and dropping markers. Personal highlight in this game for me was Nekima's grow upgrade letting me summon a Mature Nephilim from a heavily wounded Young Nephilim. I love me some Mature Nephilim!
Seems like this is the year of Neverborn for me :)

Lastly, I managed to snag myself a Nightmare McCabe 'Wild Ones' crew box which is currently in transit from the US, so more to follow on this as soon as I'm able. Excited isn't the word!

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty