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All right, signed up for the Malifaux events at Adepticon! Let's check the event rules!



Well, poop.

So, those who know me are aware that I am a...sporadic painter at best. Unfortunately I now have a 4-month window to paint the models I will be using when I fly cross country. Fortunately this is Malifaux, where a "horde" army is 12 models. Unfortunately I am both really, really lazy and playing one of the game's aforementioned horde armies

So that's the purpose of this blog: not only do you get to gape at the sheer mediocrity that might greet YOU when you sit down at a Malifaux table at Adepticon (or LVO, although currently there's too much poop flinging in the thread regarding the ITC vote to find out if they have a painting requirement for their Malifaux events as well), I'm aiming to try and update this blog at least weekly which in turn means I actually need to produce things to show off each week.

But first, let's set a baseline so that you can marvel at my progress/laugh at how utterly screwed I am. Here is what I have painted as of the start of this blog:



And of those, these are the ones I've completed as of the end of last week:


-Lucky Effigy
-Francois Lacroix
-Bayou Gremlin
-Two Piglets

And for some closeups:

Bayou Gremlin


Like many current Malifaux players I started playing at the very tail end of the 1.5 edition, which means that I got a bunch of the old metals and was just starting to put them together when 2nd Edition was announced and pretty much killed all local interest in the game. While I think 2E is overall an improvement that cleaned up a lot of the early Malifaux jank, my local meta is only just beginning to recover a couple years after the fact and so most of my Malifaux models have been sitting in a box unassembled because I had no impetus to paint them for a game.

On the bright side this means that I still have plenty of old metals to work with, because if I had to assemble more than one box of plastic Bayou Gremlins I might wind up killing someone in an assembly-induced rage.

All in all this guy isn't too awful as far as the plastic Bayous go, but I am taking advantage of the angle where you can't see the seam at the top of his hat (the hat comes in two half pieces for some reason), or where his feet are glued to his legs (whoever cuts plastics for Wyrd has a weird obsession with making the itty bit feet separate from the leg, presumably because they are in thrall to Satan). Half of the rifle barrel is also separate from the rest of the gun, and you can see where it didn't connect cleanly in the middle: however, as you can also see from the end of the barrel Gremlins have no concept of "weapon maintenance" so it's easy to play off as this poor rifle being abused by its owner.

Francois Lacroix


The old Lacroix metal models are some of my favorite metal models from any game: even if they're not doing anything particularly interesting from a technical perspective, there's something about Raphael giving the two-finger salute and Rami having a pig hung on the back of his rifle as a counterweight that I find charming.

I finally got around to painting Francois, who went from being decent in 1E to a literal Gremlin SCUD missile in 2E, so I tried to do a better than usual job in light of the fact that he's a common sight in many Gremlin crews. Unfortunately, as you can see I went a bit too highlight-happy on his right glove (the one touching his hat): my solution was to paint the "highlight" in all but the recesses, then hit it with some Agrax Earthshade to neutralize the highlight color a bit. Looks janky in the photo, but fine IRL.

Lucky Effigy


If your first question is "why is he not green?", then it's because he's actually not a Gremlin and I thought the human skintone would contrast sharply with the facial features to establish that this character isn't something natural. Also, thanks to the magic of photography I saw the green splotches on the knife hilt and the potting dirt on top of his hat, so I went back and cleaned those up after this photo was taken.

Otherwise this guy is weird: he has a bunch of fiddly little details you can pick out but he also has several cards stuck in the band of his hat. I guess the idea is that you can freehand some cards designs if you want, but my freehand skills can be charitably described as "garbage" so I tried to paint them with the cardbacks facing towards the viewer instead. I can't say I'm happy with the result, but this isn't a model I'm in love with so at the moment I'm content to leave it be.

Piglets

No closeup picture, because the old metal Piglets are basically tiny lumps of metal that were thrown against a wall until they wound up vaguely pig-shaped and so the details are hard to make out no matter how far you cram the camera up the model's snout. As you can see from the group photo above, I'm messing with several different colors because I have at least 4 more to paint, and I like using tiny swarm models as a test bed for schemes for larger models (e.g. warpigs) that I'll be painting later.

1. The one on the left was an attempt at painting a Danish protest pig, although the white stripe is too long and the fur is far too red (based on an image search the proper color should be closer to PP Bloodstone or a brighter orange brown). The snout shouldn't be pink either, but that was an indulgence to make the face stand out a little bit more.

2. The one on the right is painted gold, because canonically there is a solid gold piglet owned by one of the Gremlin masters (Ulix). It's a long story.

So that's my progress for this week. More to come, provided I don't open my Black Friday order and despair at the fronds all being separate pieces on the Bushwacker's hats.

I've been struggling to paint 6-10 Malifaux minis as well! Of the dozens of Ten Thunders I gobbled up once WHFB was nuked this summer

Anyway, rooting for ya!

- Salvage

You're making excellent progress, though.

 Warboss_Waaazag wrote:
You're making excellent progress, though.

Yeah, shouldn't be impossible if I keep my eyes on the prize and don't drown myself in minis.

Wait, what do you have for me today Mr. Postman? "The fruits of a life ill spent on poor decisions"? How dare you, I don't talk about your marriage like that!



So yeah, I picked up Aionus, Sammy Lacroix, some gators, Ulix's box and Trixibelle's box during Wyrd' Black Friday sale, as well as a faction shirt (XL size, AKA Aspiring Shametarp). Outside of the Pigapult I think I now have everything for Gremlins that currently has a plastic release, and at this point I'm just deciding if I want to go with the plastic kit or the half off metal Pigapult at one of my LGS. But enough about conspicuous consumption, let's talk something vaguely hobby related.



I picked up a bottle of Vallejo water effects a long time ago. It dries a transparent darkish blue, but I typically primer over it with the rest of the model: I then paint over it with battlefield brown and give it a wash as a lazy man's way of doing mud. Only bad thing is that it's pretty messy, so it's really only viable to apply to the base while you're still assembling the models (although when it's wet the models will sink into it, which ends up looking a bit more realistic).

This just in: two weeks is the new one week! Also I spent last weekend cursing at my graphics card for defecating in the bedsheets when it tried to run a game, so there's also that.

Anyway, I finally managed to get Ulix's box put together and painted, along with some remaining piglets:



Ulix


I have a bad tendency to fatfinger the highlighting, which is worse after washing because the original color no longer matches the washed down color. I honestly need to start doing the two steps in reverse at this rate.

In any event Ulix is cool. There's something fun about drowning your opponent in a horde of pigs, particularly when they're getting positive twists to their charge attacks and damage flips from:

Old Major


Old Major is a neat model, hampered only by having his head split into two pieces and so there is a massive seam on his neck where the two pieces join that's almost impossible to get perfectly filled/flush. This model was also a crash course for me in doing highlights on a relatively "soft" (e.g. few sharp edges) model: I eventually realized I needed to do broad strokes that followed the general shape of the body rather than painting one or two lines on the closest raised area: I think it came out decently.

And according to the art the thing coming out of the right side of his mouth is in fact a tusk and not a tongue, although you could probably paint it as the latter and nobody would find it too off.

Penelope


I honestly thought about doing a bunch of different fur patterns, but after painting Ulix and several other piglets today I was no longer in a creative mood and realized that a dog is a model where you can basically drybrush everything and the textured look isn't jarring because of the wonders of fur. I did decide to paint "socks" on the feet and paint some white on her chest for a little visual variety.

Wild Boar


References! Also, story time!

Back in the mists of time when dinosaurs walked the earth, my father was in graduate school and working part time as a tutor for college athletes. The school shall remain unnamed for soon to be obvious reasons, but let's just say its (American) football team is currently ranked in the top 25 nationally.

Anyway, one day all the tutors were gathered together by one of the administrators, who announced that the semester's average GPA for the athletic program was a 1.7. My father promptly began to panic at the prospect of losing his job, only to have the administrator follow up by announcing that this was the highest average GPA they had ever had along with a 30% raise for all the tutors.

Roughly paraphrasing my dad: "I have never gotten a 30% raise in any of my other jobs in my life." Keep in mind this is part time college tutor wages and so not a princely sum to begin with, but still.

The moral of the story is that American college athletics are a dumb bad thing, and we are dumb bad people for perpetuating the system.

Piglets


I have seven piglets, and after playing a couple games with Ulix I have discovered I might actually need more. Anyway, decided to paint two in standard pink, one as a Duroc, and the last one as a British Saddleback.

Love them red boars, tale of dumb bad 'Murican athletics programs not withstanding. Rocking job on the Major, Penelope and the rest as well

- Salvage

This just in: two months is the new...oh feth it.

Anyway, I painted some stuff in the interim, a decent chunk of it in a 4-day sprint to get ready for the LVO. The stuff I'm not embarrassed to show off:

Lenny

It says "GO HOG": it was supposed to be plural but I ran out of space for the last S and it seemed appropriate for the character so I decided to leave it as is.

Lightning Bug

The one Lightning Bug in Wong's box that isn't a post-assembly disaster waiting to happen. The color variation on the magical effect is washed out in this picture, but I probably went too subtle/too few layers regardless.

Gremlin buttcheeksLovely Assistant

IT FEELS LIKE I'M WEARING NOTHING AT ALL

Warpig

The old metal model, which joins the old metal Dreadnoughts and warjacks in "things to put in a sock and beat someone to death with". Another Duroc pig, partially for variety and partially because 3 layers of PP Bloodstone + a brown wash is less work than 3 layers of Khardic Flesh for coverage + another layer or two of Midlund Flesh + Flesh Wash + additional cleanup/highlighting with Midlund/Ryn Flesh.

Pigapult

Along with Lenny, first time using the PP guide for painting wood and ropes (although I just used straight Flesh Wash because I am lazy). Waffling on whether or not I want to use the Gremlin who holds the lever as a separate Bayou Gremlin, which is why he isn't on the base (and also because a 3-piece Gremlin head triggered my autism).

Sammy Lacroix

This is a model that I like but paradoxically was not super jazzed to paint. I think part of the issue is that I didn't have time to "warm up" to this model, since her ability to carry a master specific upgrade means that she's a strong component piece in a lot of crews (and arguably near mandatory for Wong, as taking her allows use of both of Wong's extremely strong Limited upgrades) and so I needed her to be ready in time for LVO. Such is life under a minimum painting requirement and mercurial temperament.

Gremlin ta tasTrixiebelle

Given the insanity that has reigned in Wyrd sprue design, I was shocked to find that Trixie was only 4 pieces, with the model cut so that the joins were either on a natural breakpoint on the surface of the model or not obvious: the worst offender is the top of the hat, but with the grasses stuck in the hatband it's hidden a bit.

But whatever, IRONIC GREMLIN BOOBS

Young Lacroix

One of the old metals: I ran out of time to paint all 3 of my Young'uns, so the one riding the piglet won out over the one carrying the large gun.

And a group shot of all my current painted Malifaux models on a tray at LVO, because why not:


I'm in a relatively good mood because I've hit the threshold where I can now run 3 masters fully painted with a decent amount of variety: now I have a little more flexibility to paint the things I feel like painting rather than the core necessities which is nice. Now it's back to getting some of the backlog assembled and primered:

Really nice, all of them, but especially Old Major.