Salute 2012

Posted on 25/04/2012 by sho3box

I went to Salute last Saturday.  It was my second time at the event having also made the trip last year.  MT came along for some immoral support.

I pre-ordered a fair bit of stuff from various sellers in an attempt to avoid impulse overspending.  That plan had… mixed results.

After wandering around, picking up pre-orders, buying some bits and stopping to admire some of the cool tables on display I did a lap of the hall taking photos.

After that we played a pair of demo games:

  1. 7TV from Crooked Dice is a ruleset that I own that I had yet to actually play that I have plans regarding.  The beautiful 7TV demo tables made it easy to convince MT to give it a go too.
  2. Project Pandora (Mantic Games), a sci-fi dungeoncrawl not unlike Space Hulk in concept but quite different in rules and gameplay terms.  I had pre-ordered a copy of the game and MT picked up a copy of his own after the demo)

The snaps that I took feature below.  All can be clicked on for a better look.  The occasional snap can be enlarged much more: they are marked with a caption saying as much.

Above is the demo game of 7TV that we played.  As you can see, it was particularly nice to look at.  I played the Project Time Lift forces (including Darius “The Man from 2000” while MT played the zombie astronauts and psychically dominated human forces near the crashed rocket.

Matt our demo instructor was great and showed us what we needed to know without smothering us.  I have future plans for this rule set so it was cool to get to play it with such beautiful miniatures and terrain.  MT picked up some Blakes 7 inspired figures from Crooked Dice after playing this (he remembers the seventies a lot better than I do).

Above is a photo of one of the other 7TV tables.  This one had more of a Sapphire and Steel or Doctor Who vibe, with animated scarecrows getting up to mischief in a quaint English town setting.

Another 7TV demo table.  I didnt pick up exactly what was going on on this table story wise, but it looked pretty cool.

This last 7TV demo table was bigger by far and was surrounded by people the entire day (which is partly why the photo isnt very good).  Like last years “You Only Live Dice” table, I watched the log of its manufacture on the LAF, so it was nice to see the “On Her Majestys Crooked Service” table in real life.

From one snow table to another, less dramatic one.  Despite the uninspiring white sheet the rest of the items depicting an incident with mammoths and cavemen looked good.  In many respects this is exactly the sort of game that I want to see at a convention.  I dont imagine that any of my gaming buddies will ever get around to assembling and painting loads of mammoths and cavemen for gaming with, but I am glad that someone has and that they brought it to Salute to show everyone.

Some kind of bug hunt game was taking place on the table shown above.  What I liked about this table was that it could feasibly be made by any gamer with a little space and a little patience.  The internet and conventions like Salute are full of miniatures and terrain created to an exceptionally high standard, with cast elements and super detailing being the norm.  I think that the bar is set so high as to be discouraging in some respects.  The table shown here illustrates that a decent sci-fi complex can be created without it being a colossal time and money sink.  Speaking of which…

Click on the photo for a MUCH bigger version.

This table was for demos of a steampunk/VSF game, but I cant remember what it was called.  Something German I think.  The terrain and miniatures here were exceptionally nice.

Another table from those German VSF guys.  Lovely.

I dont know what game was being played on this table as I passed by, but the town looked good.

Click to photo for the big version.

This Western game was in 6mm scale or similar.  Check out the cute stampeding cattle.

Another Space Hulk-esque sci-fi dungeon here.  Its made from Ainsty Casting parts seemingly donated to the RAF.  Im not so keen on the colour choices but I would be very happy to have access to somehting like that to game on all the same.

Some little hoplites doing their thing, shouting “FOR TINY SPARTAAAA!” in barely heard, high pitched 10mm voices.

Click to embiggen.

This was another beautiful table that I saw being constructed on the LAF, this time with a samurai theme.  I liked it more the longer that I looked at it.  Lovely banners and detail on the troops too.

The flying battleship miniatures shown featured on a number of tables.  I think that the game is Dystopian Wars maybe, but I am not certain, I might be way off.  Nonetheless every time that I saw that flying aircraft carrier model I had to stop to ogle it.

Lots of Steampunk/VSF around this year.  I dabble a bit via Malifaux, but its not really my preferred setting.   On the other hand if I had local players who wanted to try a skirmish game in more or less any setting then I would be happy to paint up a handful of figures for it.  Above is the new Empire of the Dead game from West Wind.  The Victorian London housing looked great, as did the conservatory on the back of the house in the top left.

Some mad looking VSF vehicles on this table.  I quite liked the huts on the bottom right too: they looked to me like something Tatooine or where kroot or something might live.

This was a zombie game that appeared to be set in some sort of Tim Burton-y, Paper-Mario universe.  The bases for the 2D buildings seemed to mark out the shadows of the buildings, which was interesting.  I found the whole monochrome thing intriguing although I never got around to asking the guys running it what they were up to.  Oh well.

The first of a few Freebooters Fate demo tables shown above.  It was a really nice looking piece that I imagine would be fun to play on two or three times, after which it would become dull.  Ideal for demoing a game nicely I expect and the sort of thing impractical to make or game with at home (unless you have vast space and time).  Ideal for viewing at a convention in other words.

Another really nice Freebooters Fate demo table.

Another nice looking table playing a period that I know nothing about.  I took the photo to remind me about the explosion markers.  They seem to be cotton wool or something but they have been placed on battery operated fake tea light candles.  The flickering from the LED was surprisingly convincing.  I should have asked the guys what they used to make the smoke as my wife has boxes of those lights for use with her ceramics stuff from which I shall be purloining in the near future.

Click for a close up.

Another game featuring those flying VSF aircraft carriers.   While the ships themselves were again very nicely painted, the level of detail on the island terrain was spectacular.  One of the visual highlights of the show for me.

There seemed to me to be less modern era game going on than last year, but its not like I kept track or anything.  This was a Yugoslavian table I think, but dont hold me to it.

Gigantic Japanese monsters beating the shit out of each other has considerable appeal to me.  Therefore this table also had.  A brief chat with one of the creators revealed that the buildings were made from lengths of drainpipe with printouts stuck on to the sides.  The sum of the parts was considerably better than that sounds I thought.

My own kaiju stuff is 6mm, to go with my Epic terrain and miniatures so each kaiju is roughly 100-130mm tall.  The kaiju in this game were much larger being more about 200mm tall if memory serves.  I would have liked to have had enough time to try that game out.

One of the heavily publicised games for the show was the Captain Scarlet road battle game.  It consisted of a number of tables laid out to represent a Gerry Anderson-esque super highway.  As well as 28mm versions of the Spectrum operatives and the like the game also featured some nice sci-fi civilian vehicles.  I have a particular interest in those sorts of things for populating my Judge Dredd games.

I enjoyed the model elements of the Gerry Anderson shows as a child (as I am sure that anyone bothered enough to read a blog about toy soldiers probably did) but I was never a fan of the scenarios or storytelling.  Even when I was young I found the shows tedious but I couldnt look away because of the sumptuous model shots.

The upshot of this is that I think that I would enjoy gaming Captain Scarlet and the like.  I might be able to subject the characters to the sort of scenarios that I felt were missing from the TV shows.

Click to see the demons on the bridge a little closer.

Another samurai demo table, although this time populated with a bit of the supernatural.  More beautiful feudal Japanese scenery.

The first Gruntz table.  If I had my time again then I would avoid 28mm altogether I reckon and stick to 15mm like this.  But I always say that.

15mm is just so cute though.  Its a good compromise between 28mm (which is just too big for fielding vehicles properly) and 6mm (which is just a bit too small to field infantry properly).  Still, Im not going to touch it.  Whatever about not having the self discipline to restrain myself from purchasing too many more miniatures, having to start another set of terrain in a different scale would cause me to crack up completely.

Lastly I took a few photos of the Malifaux tables.  This first one is made from Terraclips sets.  It looks OK I suppose, although the clips holding the sets together are a bit intrusive.  The surfaces themselves are a little busy for my tastes too.  As far as I am aware I think that the point of Terraclips is that it can be assembled in numerous ways, like a Lego set.  I very much doubt that setting up and tearing down a setup like that shown above would be very quick though.

The other Malifaux table was more traditional fare.  It looked nice I thought, a set up that I would be happy to have at home.  In the context of the spectacular tables on show all over Salute it was somewhat lost though.

Those lovely Sarissa Precision buildings always look great.

So that was Salute 2012.  Discussions are already underway regarding Salute 2013 attendance.

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Malifaux: Santiago Ortega

Posted on 25/04/2012 by sho3box

Santiago Ortega

The first Ortega that I finished is this tough looking hombre.  Santiago is the Ortega clan beefcake.

The paint job came out fine, better than the Death Marshals, but not as well as either the Judge or Lady Justice.  The figure is quite cool looking but a bit fiddly to paint for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is one that is common with the majority of Wyrd miniatures that I have come across so far: its multi-part.

Multi-part miniatures can often avoid that somewhat flat, two dimensional look by adding an arm or gun or wing or whatever on an axis that the casting process does not allow.  Despite this, I generally prefer my human sized figures to be single piece as it makes them more durable and it makes painting easier.  Trying to paint Santiagos face behind his big ol’ right arm was a hassle, and it shows in the painting quality.

Santiagos duster came out better than those of the Death Marshals a few weeks ago.

Fiddly reason two is also a feature of the Wyrd style.  The figures are moderately heavily detailed (which is nice) but the detail itself while crisp, is very fine.  When painted well they look fantastic, but I find that miniatures with heavily cut detail suit my painting style (and my patience levels) better.

But I should stop moaning.  Santiago looks like a pretty cool alt-cowboy type and the paint job came out pretty solid anyway.

Lastly, here is a picture of Santiago with part of my next terrain sub-project.

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St. Craniums Cemetery

Posted on 04/04/2012 by sho3box

Following on from Mondays WiP post here are some close up shots of some of the finished graveyard elements.

A few meandering points:

  1. I wanted to avoid green plants.  Therefore I went with rusty red on the undergrowth to get the terrain to fit in with the rest of my wastelands stuff which in turn matches the bits of lichen that I attached here and there.
  2. I am particularly pleased with how the mausoleum roofs worked out.  I am also happy with the three crows that feature throughout the piece.   By using a different technique to the last time that I tried to paint black birds they came out much better.  Its a very minor thing, but satisfying for me.  Sometimes it really is the little things.
  3. The large skull-faced gates (one of two shown) are both magnetised so they can be removed as and when required for game purposes.  I considered leaving the gates permanently open, but adding the magnets was more fun.
  4. I went for a walk around a local overgrown graveyard and took some photos in preparation for painting this stuff.  As It happened I simply went for the easy, more theatrical approach to painting the pieces rather than trying to duplicate complicated patterns of wear and plant growth on the pieces.  The end result is more Scooby Doo than some might like.  Visiting the old graveyard turned out to be interesting in itself anyway, even if it had little influence on how the models finally turned out.




Since I finished these I have dug up a few more bits that will be getting painted up to go with this set, but for now I have plenty to game with.  In fact I played a game with COM on the brand new graveyard terrain within hours of finishing it, which was satisfying.

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Graveyard WiP

Posted on 02/04/2012 by sho3box

I have wanted a graveyard terrain set to game with for many years, but I never got around to picking up the many expensive crypt, mausoleum, gravestone and perimeter pieces required.

Then Games Workshop released the Garden of Morr graveyard kit last year.  It looked like a convenient and reasonably cost effective way to cover my toy soldier graveyard needs so I picked up a couple of sets last Autumn.

After some consideration I decided that I would prep the graveyard to fit with my wasteland terrain.  The classic movie graveyard tends to be a bit greener than that and for a while I was tempted to go for that more Transylvanian look.  I have a bit of an aversion to playing games on green, golf course like tables however and as I had already painted up some Renedra gravestones that I picked up at Salute last year to match the wasteland terrain, I went with that again here.

The Renedra gravestone kit is straightforward and very nice.  The Garden of Morr is fantastic.  It goes together very easily without need for clamps or rubber bands or anything fiddly.  It also looks really nice when assembled, even before painting.

The painting process took me a few hours each day for about four days or so. I tend to be slow at things like this so its possible that some time could be shaved off that I reckon.  Below are the steps that I used to prep the lot, which should give anyone interested an insight into how I approach projects like this, for better or for worse:

Parts were clipped from the frames, mould lines and the like were cleaned off and the loose gravestones were attached to cork tile bases.

Everything was sprayed with matt black acrylic car paint.

Next all of the pieces were lightly sprayed with grey primer spray from above.  I recently read somewhere that the kids call that “zenith highlighting”.  Who knew?  Cat provides cheerleading section.

All of the parts were then given a pretty heavy drybrush of white acrylic.  Note the Deadwood DVDs that were running on the laptop while I worked, helping to keep me in a cowboy frame of mind.

Some areas were tinted with washes of ink and/or thinned paint.  Detailing started in some areas.  Another cat provides aesthetic critique.  Note the DVD rental of Cowboys and Aliens which I had hoped would keep me in a Western frame of mind.   It didnt.  Dont watch it, its depressingly awful.  If I believed in souls then “soulless” would be an apt description.

More detailing. The most significant progress here was on the mausoleum roofs, although various other elements were also layered up.  This was usually done with a single tinted translucent colour so that the black through grey through white beneath showed through.  Painting GW Tin Bitz on the railings was the most tedious part of the whole job.

I am not really a GW basher: I have had plenty of fun with their products over the years even if I dont tend to have a whole lot of interest these days.  But there was a somewhat amusing element to this kit that I thought that I would mention.

GW products get a lot of stick about their propensity to stick skulls and skull motifs on any vaguely flat surface.   A graveyard seems to me to be one of the few places where its possible to get away with that sort of thing, but the GW designers decided to go berserk with skulls on the Morr kit.

Out of (morbid) curiosity I counted the skulls and skull motifs on the set.

A Garden of Morr features:

  • 244 “human” skulls
  • 115 skull motifs
  • Total 359 skulls per kit

I assembled two kits meaning that I quickly painted a staggering 718 skulls.  Hilarious.

A few skulls here and there is fine with me as I am not going for a realistic looking, architectural style piece.  The sort of graveyard that featured in Buffy or Scooby Doo is what I was looking for.  Even so, that really a lot of skulls.

If the vast amounts of head bone on the kit dont bother you then I thoroughly recommend it, its very practical in game terms and it assembles very quickly and easily.  I would not recommend buying the kit with the intention of removing most of the skulls and skull motifs as it would be a huge pain in the arse.  I am sure that some people would do it, but it would feel like a waste of time to me.

Photos of the finished elements of St Craniums Cemetery will be posted up on Wednesday.

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Mali-photos

Posted on 28/03/2012 by sho3box

I have been playing Malifaux since mid-February.  In that month or so (at the time of writing) time I have got seven or so games played, which is an awful lot by my standards.

The majority of the games have been at home, although I got an opportunity to play in another gamers house too (the games played on the green table shown below).

One of the things that I have enjoyed most about the process is digging around in the boxes of terrain that I own in an effort to make each game table coherent and unique.

After the effort that I have put in over the last couple of years I now have a lot of terrain, most of it practical and of pretty decent quality: I am happy to say that it is largely better than the majority of the terrain that I have seen in actual use (actual use rather than set pieces for shows or spectacular set ups for rulebook photos) over the years.  Its far from award winning stuff but its solid, practical and is supplied in volume.  Malifaux is finally bringing a lot of that stuff to the table for actual use, which is very satisfying.

I have been taking photos at various points during each game.  A selection of these quick snaps are shown below, just for fun really.  Lady Justice features a lot, seeing as she is the leader of my first completed Malifaux crew.

Lady J considers a game of Pooh-sticks swords during an away game.

The Judge leads his Death Marshals through the hazard strewn Badlands.

The Viktorias take on the Guild in an abandoned shanty town.

A ruined industrial zone is the stage for a three-way battle between Neverborn, Arcanist and Guild forces.

Ancient statues provide cover against flying lead.

Cowboy exorcists collide with twin psychic samurai ladies in a badlands canyon.

Ramos conjures up arachnid robots in the ruins of a factory.

Death Marshals attempt to encircle a Ronin.

I have some more terrain in the pipeline.  A few more post apocalyptic shanty type bits and pieces will be first in all likelyhood.

I also have plans for some cow town stuff, but it will need a little bit of wiki-wiki-wah-wah west-ifying before I will be happy with it.  I want it to look like something suitable for a Firefly/Malifaux setting as well as suitable for the Cursed Earth and the occasional frontier planet for 40k folk to show up on.  We will see how that goes.

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Malifaux: Objectives

Posted on 21/03/2012 by sho3box

Malifaux play is geared around “Schemes” and “Strategies”.  While there are a small number of these that are based on simply battering the opponents forces, most involve holding areas or moving certain items.  These objectives are represented in game by 30mm diameter bases.

The treasure chests above were purchased in Games Workshop, Oxford St, London way back in 1989.  I originally bought the pack of ten (or perhaps two packs of five, I cant remember) for use in Dungeonbowl, a Blood Bowl variant which was… wait for it… played in a dungeon.  The chests languished in the lead pile ever since, only to finally be given some love this year, a terrifyingly distant twenty-three years later.

I added the letters in case I will at some later stage need to randomise the chests for whatever reason.  A brilliant and much more aesthetically pleasing way to achieve this (that I was too lazy to copy) was done on Phreedhs Miniature Stuff a while back.  Unfortunately I cant currently find that particular post on the newly organised blog (Mattias, if you see this then put a link in the comments if you would like to show off your lovely work).  EDIT: that link is HERE.

The next objectives are trapdoors that were supplied with some GW LotR stuff.  PB gave me a lot of the accessories from those sets as he knew that it was unlikely that he would ever get around to painting them and that I likely would.  It looks like he was at least half right.  Ta-da!

The two above are my favourites.  I think that they both suggest a little story and playing miniature games is all about story.

The left hand one is supplied as a tiny two or three piece kit which I then stuck to a base.  It is another LotR bit from PB.  The lantern, scroll and book on the base on the right come from a Mordheim sprue (I think that it was supplied with Empire Militia figures for a while subsequently).

I like making/painting small miniatures to represent these sorts of things.  Fighting over a little model of a forbidden tome or briefcase full of diamonds or other all-important Maguffin adds a lot to the atmosphere in a game and is far nicer than fighting over a scrap of paper or similar.  Little bits of set dressing help with the narrative and to me the game narrative is the whole point of the process.

The fact that modelling and painting these items can be quite fun and a good change of pace from painting yet another guy with a gun means that I tend to finish off a lot of these objective based items.

A quick look through the blog archives brings up the following list of similar items if anyone is interested.  I had actually forgotten that I had modeled and painted some of these: I tend to consistently get motivated to finish these mini diorama type oddments.

Scrap counters, vultures, encampment, tents, gas cans, oil barrels and butane cylinders, zombie spawn points, mines,bombs and boobytraps, altars and tombs, distressed damsel, crows

Filed under: Miniatures, Terrain | Tagged: , , , | 6 Comments »

Oyumaru/Instant Mold Casting

Posted on 29/02/2012 by sho3box

While prepping some figures for my ongoing Adeptus Mechanicus project I decided to cast up a replacement head for one of the figures.

Way back in the last century I made more silicon rubber moulds than I could count.  I also cast very many items in various resins in them, as it was a large part of my old job working in industrial prototyping.

A lot of people seem to enjoy using those industrial substances at home in their workshops, sheds and hobby rooms and good luck to those people: I hope that they enjoy it.

I on the other hand have no desire to invest time and money in such horrible, toxic and messy substances for use in my house.  Therefore any casting that I do has to be clean, easy and effective.  No vacuum pumps, no multi-part moulds, nothing very complex.  Push moulds and simple two part moulds for tiny items are the limit of my casting desires at the moment.

So I got some “oyumaru” (also known as “Instant Mold”) and used it as outlined below.  I used nothing but basic techniques and I wouldnt really describe it as a “how-to” or anything, but it might be of interest to someone.

Firstly I selected the replacement part that I wanted to cast: its the hooded and masked head shown on the bottom right in the picture above.

Next I cleaned up mould lines and all of that, filed the underneath of the neck flat and stuck this flat area to a flat piece of plastic (a tiddlywink).

I attached the part to the tiddlywink as I wanted to make sure that I could get the mould rubber to cover the detail on the bottom of the part.  I found it easiest to stick the part to something flat to so that I could work the oyumaru into it while still maintaining a flat base to the mould.  I hoped that this would help to minimise distortion in the castings later while also making the part easier to handle.

Next I got a small bowl of boiling water and the oyumaru.  The oyumaru is the waxy looking long rectangle on the left.   In its room temperature state it has a similar consistency to a low melt glue stick

The oyumaru was submerged in the hot water for a minute or two at which point it became very pliant.  I quickly covered the part in oyumaru.  I ensured that I worked the material under the part and and against the flat plastic tiddlywink.  I also tried to minimise possible air bubbles in the detailed face area by working the oyumaru gently into those details as carefully as I could.

A few minutes later the oyumaru had cooled down and become rigid again.

I prised the part from the tiddlywink.  Then starting at the bottom where the part had been glued to the plastic I used a scalpel to cut through the side of the mould.

I went about two thirds of the way around the mould, gently cutting to the part as I went.  I didnt want to split the mould entirely in two as I didnt want the hassle of having to engineer some way of keying the two halves back together when casting.  Keeping the mould attached would help to minimise that.

Also of note is that I slit the mould from ear to ear across the top of the head, from the parts perspective.  As the head is hooded I figured that those areas would be the easiest to clean flashing and mould lines from later.  Obviously, splitting the mould through highly detailed or recessed areas would make cleaning up the subsequent castings far more difficult (as anyone reading who has ever had to clean a crappy mould line of the side of a miniatures head knows).

I then mixed up some two part epoxy putty (I used ProCreate, which is essentially grey coloured “Green Stuff”) and pushed that into the mould.

Like when making the mould itself, I was careful to make sure that as much of the detailed face area was filled as possible.  The part as it came out of the mould is on the left.  Note the flashing from the cut side of the mould.  Although it looks bad in the photo it really is only a fraction of a millimeter thick, so it took only a moment to remove.

Above is a quick snap of the newly cast head in its new home.  As you can see its a pretty huge figure (from Ramshackle Games) which is why I included the Servitor for comparison.  The size of the target figure isnt really releant anyway, the piece cast was a standard 28mm heroic scale head.

Like that head, the Adeptus Mechanicus cog on the big models chest is also made of ProCreate via an Oyumaru push mould.  That also came out pretty well.

My verdict on this stuff is that its brilliant.  It provides a very simple, low outlay and non-toxic way to replicate miniature parts.  I see this as being part of my hobby toolbox for good.

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Malifaux: Lady Justice

Posted on 26/02/2012 by sho3box

Lady Justice

Lady Justice is in charge of the Death Marshal elements of the Guild in Malifaux.  She is a blind, Buffy the Vampire Slayer type cowgirl who, judging by that massive hairdo, moonlights as an eighties rock star…

I bought my Death Marshals box before I had any interest in playing Malifaux.  I bought it because of the cowboy aesthetic that the other figures in the box have.  The Lady Justice figure was not originally a draw for me.

The sculpting is very nice technically but the subject matter and design initially left me cold.  In particular the massive amount of hair on the figure, which spreads left and right to span the length of her sword gives the figure a lozenge shaped silhouette, which doesnt really appeal.  From behind the miniature looks a little like Cousin Itt.

Click for image credit.

Lady Justices voluminous barnet also obscures her scabbard, the strap suspending her scabbard, bits of her fingers and elements of her pistols and holsters in a confusing way.  And I dont just mean confusing to paint (which it was).  I mean confusing in the sense that depending on how the figure is painted and the colours used it can be very hard to see whats going on.

This view is pretty much all that I ever see when I play games with Lady J.

And yet, despite my apathy towards the figure initially,  as I painted Lady J it all started to make sense.  To start with I had difficulty imagining what colours to use as I wanted to make sure that the elements somewhat lost in the hair would be visible and identifiable.  I also wanted the figures palette to tie in with the other figures in the crew but without making the figure too gaudy.

But, as I decided to embrace the (as I see it) eighties rock vibe I found the figure easier to work on.  As I painted my original attitude turned around 180 degrees.  I went for the vaguely Dick Turpin, somewhat Adam Ant and definitely Meat-Loaf-one-minute-into-the-video-shown-below look shown and ended up quite happy with it.

By the time that I finished painting the figure I was really quite pleased with both how it turned out and with the design of the figure overall.  I dont remember my opinion of any miniature altering so drastically during painting before now, but in this case it did.  And it all turned out pretty well I think.

Here is a group shot of my first completed Malifaux faction, the Lady Justice crew.

Lady Justice Crew

Incidentally, the three gravestones were prepped for use in the game when the Death Marshals “bury” opponents in those magic coffins that they lug around.  I dont know if they will be of any use when playing, but they were fun to make anyway.

Comments and criticisms all gratefully received.

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Malifaux: Death Marshal 3

Posted on 25/02/2012 by sho3box

My third Death Marshal.

I had a big painting slump last year and it impacted on my painting standard quite badly.  Although I am again starting to remember some of the things that were second nature last year, I seem to have forgotten some others.

This is visible in by comparing the coat on this figure and that of Judge.

I painted the Marshals before I painted the Judge and my treatment of the large smooth areas on their coats differed quite a bit.  I suppose it shows progress at least: the slow process of relearning what I have unlearned seems to be progressing.

The odd spirit flames in the coffin came out at an acceptable level, but after my more successful treatment of Judge Fire recently I had hoped for a better result.

Another issue with this area of the figure is that I was reluctant to try object source lighting techniques when painting it: I am afraid that the apprentice period required to get the technique to a decent level will result in significantly poorer miniatures in the interim.  Well executed OSL may have helped the painting on this figure, but I wasnt prepared to risk it this time.

The final figure from my first Malifaux crew is up tomorrow.  Its the Master of the group, Lady Justice in all her eighties rock glory.

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Malifaux: Death Marshal 2

Posted on 24/02/2012 by sho3box

My second Death Marshal.

These guys are quasi-undead, corrupted by the power that they wield.  I went with a blueish skin tone (like I might use for a ghoul, vampire or zombie) to emphasise that these guys are not truly human.

This figure is supplied with his hat unattached.  I stupidly glued it on before painting the figure, which made the face very hard to paint.  Not that it really matters that much, as the figures face will never really be seen.  I wont make that error with future cowboy hat attachment though.

The Marshal figures were the main reason that bought the Lady Justice starter set.  At the time I had no definite intention of playing Malifaux, but the Death Marshals looked like just the thing for my post-apocalyptic, Cursed Earth cowboy terrain and figures.  The poses are fun too, dynamic and comic book-y.

Another Lady Justice figure goes up tomorrow.

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