My first new Malifaux figure since November 2020

 Having started playing 'Faux again at Bad Moon, I've actually survived a few months before succumbing and buying a new model to add to my already ridiculously oversized "Arcanist" collection. 

This is - of course - one of the "new" cool pieces in the game, a "Reborn" version of the Arcanist Master Kaeris, who enables her crew to be played play in a different way as well as performing differently herself (as in, she runs straight through enemy models and sets them on fire, as opposed to "original" Kaaeris who shoots them from a distance and also sets them on fire). 

Of course, starting with a load of fire after a 3 year absence from painting 32mm one-off Malifaux figures is a bit of a challenge - especially as  my eyesight is not what it was when I started painting this range of figures back in 2014 (!), but for a first go at getting back into it I'm reasonably pleased with the results. 

The return of the Malifaux Painting Mojo

In a world of lockdown painting in which I'd already done a 28mm Ancients army (the Assyrians), a 10mm French Napoleonic army and also a 15mm Medieval Hungarian, I suddenly found myself in need of some additional variety

This was not because the other three were in any way similar topics, or uniforms - it was more about trying to paint individual figures rather than painting up and finishing a full army, with a 'full army' on table mass effect.

Prompted in the Lockdown Podcast to remember that I did have some Malifaux figures on the painting pile (although rather hidden in a cupboard) I dug them out and was pleasantly surprised to remember that there were more than I thought - I had forgotten buying Envy, from the Crossroads Seven, from eBay to add to the box-completing extras for the new Kaeris crew, Sparks (my first Gremlin) to go with Mei Feng and finally Neil Henry just to do some old fashioned beating

There are loads of pictures on the website, but here are a few tasters:

Hoffman the new Arcanist

Malifaux M3E has shuffled some of the Masters around, and the Arcanists now gain Hoffman and his menagerie of mechanical monsters.

That resulted in an eBay purchase of a based and black-undercoated Hoffman crew which I hastily drybrushed and fininshed off to add a master to the roster to replace the now-retired Ramos and his spiders.

Here they are:

I'm particularly pleased how an ink-wash has created a leathery look to the mechanical Watcher's wings in this shot

I also had a bash at the "light spillage" effect on this Mechanical Attendant by extending the dayglor green to around the 'eye' - it's a bit messy but is starting to get there ...

There's alsoa Guardian as well. 

Hoffman is a metal M1E version figure that I picked up when I was first dabbling in Malifaux as a solo figure, expecting him to be an Arcanist (with all the mechanical stuff on his back). 

Turns out I was right in the end !

More New Malifaux

A few more "wargaming standard" Malifaux models have made it through the painting pile. They are OK on table, but these close-ups are a tad unforgiving. 

First up are Joshua Fitzsimmons and his Saboteurs - M&SU agents who focus on the Union's more, ahem, "destructive" goals and are in the Backdraft box set thats now been sort of replaced in M3e. 

Joshua has a long scarf and a bit of a mad look about him, so a Tom Baker-style Dr Who colourscheme seemed about right. 

The pair of Saboteurs could easily have been quite dark, but I went with a green khaki coat to give them a bit of the "1984" about them. One is modelled with long flowing hair, so she's ended up with some radical anarchist style purple locks as well to keep the theme going.

Fitzsimmonds has a placard too - mine borrows the placard imagery from the seminal 1986 Billy Bragg "difficult third album" Talking with the Taxman about Poetry, drawing obvious parallels between Fitzimmons ideologically indistinct place in the Malifaux MS&U pantheon and the 1920's radical Russian Poet Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky's equally ambiguous and troubled relationship with the emerging Soviet state. Or something. 

Ferdinand Vogel and the Beast Within round out the set.

Unambiguously a rip-off of the Jeckyll and Hyde classic pairing, but with Wyrd Games own IP.

The Fire Golem!

A bit of variety now, with one of Malifaux's biggest models, The Fire Golem.

This one is from the M2e Backdraft box set, which means I'm short of a couple of apparently so-so extra minions but I do instead have Saboteurs and Fitzsimmons as well (which are all in the painting queue as we speak).

He wasn't the easiest model to paint as the flames go in all directions, meaning there isn't a clear orientation to allow you to start with pale white-ish flames and then shade it through to red and even sooty black

As a result I wasn't really happy with him until I did several more layers and more drybrush-style highlights than I might normally do on a flaming model.

The basic technique was to start with a series of very pale and thin yellow washes using watered down paint, and then start adding highlights in progressively darker oranges and even reds until I was happy with the overall look.

Managing to pick out all of the bits of brazier holding him together was also not the easiest as the metalwork does rather blend into the mass of flames in a way which makes black-edging it tricky.

In the end I ended up with a bit of drybrushing of gunmetal and pale grey onto the brazier elements, and then blacklining them where I could to finish it off. Here is the guy with Kaeris' totem the Eternal Flame.

This is from a dayglow orange Kaeris box that I won in a draw at a competition a couple of years ago. I had a metal Kaeris and so hadn't painted this guy as I wasn't really sure how he would work in M2e - but he's more useful (and free!) now so time to get him done.

All of the orange bits are the original plastic left unpainted

The rest is gunmetal and Peat Brown ink over a black undercoat, apart from the gears on his leg joints which were a pale sandy colour which I know responds really well to Peat Brown ink

I did also pin him underneath as I really wasn't convinced that glueing his very small feet to the base would be secure enough to hold him in gameplay.

The Golem is HUGE - he he is next to fellow firestarter Bansuva.

Festive (ish) painting...

In the absence of any competitions to report on over the festive period, I've managed to fit in a little painting and photographing (is that a word?) time.

If you follow Madaxeman.com on Facebook you may well already have seen some of this rather unusual mix of stuff, but if not - here you go!

 Malifaux's Union Steamfitter - one of three in the pack, the other two of which I sold as I can't see myself using more than one in any single crew. J

She joins my MS&U-themed set of models, which is why I have used a WW2 Battlefront Russian tank star to symbolise her support for the international proletariat in their quest to avoid oppression at the hands of evil undead magic using fascists.  And painting a Billy Bragg T-shirt on a 32mm figure was beyond me.

 A Dawn Serpent - after all, who doesn't need a flying japanese-inspired dragon that is on fire and spreads poison in their lives?

This is a "wave 1" Malifaux model so has been out for several years. It's been on my "buy if it is cheap enough on eBay" list for the same length of time, and finally one came up at a sensible price.

The January 2018 errata has literally just yesterday reduced the in-game cost of the model, making it even better value on-table. Many of these you can see online have been "floated" by attaching the model to terrain on the base, but I wanted to try for a "it's just floating anyway" look, so I pinned it with a think black-painted piece of brass wire by the tail and half-hid it with grass tufts.

 Kandara - another must-have cool new henchperson for the already overpowered Sandeep.

Painting her was something of an exercise in doing single-model painting over a number of days, rather than my more usual "only seen in a unit at tabletop distances" style.

The on-fire hair seems to have been worth the effort though.

On the ancients front it's been more about refurbishing and rounding out some armies.

These are some genric Essex Miniatures arab foot who have been based and painted as Medium Swordsmen/Spearmen/Javelinmen for L'Art de le Guerre

This is my first use of the Armypainter acrylic washes in a squeezy bottle - previously I have always used the big tins of varnish-based tint, which do tend to dry up and so I'l always reluctant to use them for small batch work. The squeeze paint bottle sized washes can also be easily diluted - these are a done with a diluted version of the soft tone.

I also refurbished another old Essex Ghaznavid elephant

Not as bright as the first one, but I tried to use different colours.

And finally, a very lazy "rearrange the riders" bit of work on some Essex Byzantine cavalry to get a mix of Bow and Lance armed figures on the same base.

I'm planning on putting all of the ADLG Byzantine armies on table at some point this year, so you will see plenty of these guys online.