sho3box

“My arm is tired”

—————–

A man walks into a bar with a gigantic, unusually coloured raptor on his arm.  

The barman says “Where the hell did you get that?”.  

“I won him in a raffle” replies the bird.

—————–

Austringers are effective in Malifaux games.  The bird does all of the heavy lifting, attacking foes, distributing orders to friends, capturing small mammals in its talons, regurgitating food into the mouths of its young, making loud “Raaaawk!” sounds, that sort of thing.  The guy in the coat just stands around looking grumpy.

Just like the Executioner shown a few weeks ago, this guy was painted in the run up to the Malifaux competition that I played in a while back.  I decided to attend the competition late and so some decisions regarding colours used for this figure were based on how quickly they could be applied, rather than necessarily on colour theory or inspiring movies recently watched or whatever.

The “Bayou Raptor” was initially painted the same way that I would paint a crow or raven (just like the guys that feature on parts of my graveyard terrain).  That approach was fine if a little drab, but perfectly good enough for use in games, which I did.

A few days later I decided that I wanted to make the bird look a little less dull.  What I came up with is shown above.  The bird is a little goofier looking than I had intended, partly due to the rather Muppet like sculpt and partly because the pattern of plumage that I tried to paint looks rather  fake I think, despite doing a bit of research into real bird of prey patterning.  Ho hum.

My lack of enthusiasm for the plumage plus the somewhat one-sided nature of the handlers relationship with the raptor has me considering using a more… esoteric scheme on my second Austringer miniature.  Maybe.  Im not sure that adding that level of goofiness to my Guild crew is desirable but it might be a laugh.

Filed under: Miniatures | Tagged: 2012, Guild, Malifaux, Steampunk, Western |