Malifaux Quality: Be Careful What You Ask For

No, no.  Don't get up.

When I first got into Malifaux a year and a half ago I was amazed by the aesthetic of the miniatures but I was also stunned by the inconsistency of quality.  Some figures were great, with a good balance of design and execution.  Others looked as if they were made in a decade gone by and I was surprised to see that they were only a few years old.  Even Teddy, the first model that drew me to the game, seemed to be have been made with archaic tools as he was menacing to look at from the front, but completely flat when viewed from the side.

I've heard a lot of reasons as to why this was, but they all boil down to the fact that Wyrd has exploded at an amazing pace and as a result some of the models that for other companies might have represented stepping stones were current range for the young company.  That was fine by me, the models were dripping with flavour and I wanted them all (well, almost all).  Each one seemed to whisper a little story, for the first time in a long time I felt that the models were not game pieces as much as characters; fighting was not what the only thing they were for, fighting was just a thing that they did as part of a broader existence.  Still though, there was a great disparity between models like the Witchling Stalkers and Colette's Showgirls and I craved a higher quality of manufacture.

Last year, everything changed.  With the release of the Ten Thunders faction boxes and the introduction of modern Malifaux plastics, Wyrd went back to the drawing board and gave us a tweaked design, incredible computer generated sculpts and blazing levels of detail.  We went from gawky metal Ten Thunder Brothers to dynamic plastic Ten Thunder Torakage.  The news sculpts were of a quality almost unheard of, rivaling Games Workshop for quality and consistency of plastics while surpassing them in terms of casting and intricacy.

This new style has continued into the Malifaux 2e releases, with each of the reconcepted Masters getting the treatment.  Arms are longer, wrists are thinner, and nary is there a place thick enough to work a pin vice.  The new models are over-the-top dynamic, gorgeous and delicate.

Too Much of a Good Thing?

This is hard to say, but Wyrd, I feel like your models may now be too awesome.  I love them, I love owning them, I love painting them, but the thing is, when it comes to miniatures I also love playing with them.  My Guild Riflemen are complicated little statues, but they are more akin to Royal Dalton than Privateer Press when it comes to ruggedness.  Sure, Death Marshals leaping off of flaming coffins look cool on my shelf, but how on Earth am I going to get them to the game store?  You sold me a plastic Beckoner and a metal base insert, but her ankles are thinner than my drill bit.  How am I supposed to even assemble this?

I'm not mad really, if I had to choose between models that stretch me and require work or models that are slap-dash and don't, I know what I'll choose every time.  I guess all I'm saying is that I really can't handle any more delicacy.  Let's draw a line here and call it done, ok?

Broken Justice

Hey Justice, you know that's only half a sword, right?

Lady Justice is the latest casualty of this strange scenario.  Her blade was so thin and so long that I accidentally bent it while I was cutting it from the sprue.  One mishandled drop later and she can no longer properly represent her 2" melee range.  No matter how many times I tried to glue it in place, it just wouldn't hold.

I had a similar situation with Lucas McCabe when one of his arms broke (there was an extra arm in the box thankfully) and again when assembling the Guild Riflemen (one of them just doesn't get a knife now).

So the solution to my Justice dilemma:  I went out and bought a piece of brass that is 1/32" by 1/32" by 6" long and I'm going to have to make her a new sword.  I will cut the existing one off the model and attach the replacement blade to the hilt so I can use her cheek as a second contact point so I can get a better hold.  I want a model I can bring to the table after all, not just a pretty showpiece.  It should work, I'll post the results when I'm done.

The other solution:  I guess I have to grow up and be a little more careful with my toys.

Thanks for reading.

State of the Blog: August 2013

I started this blog a month ago today, largely as a personal motivation tool in an effort to push myself to take my hobby a little more seriously.  I honestly had no expectations about readership, I was primarily interested in keeping to a schedule and logging my thoughts on the new rules as Malifaux 2nd Edition rolled out. Imagine my surprise when, after only a scant few weeks, I was up to over a thousand individual page views!

Thank you to everyone who has stopped by and had a read, especially to those of you who keep coming back.  Whether you got here through Reddit, Facebook, Pinterest or the Wyrd Forums, I appreciate you taking the time to visit. I'm always looking for feedback and advice, whether its for painting, blogging, playing, whatever.  Please drop me an email or a comment on an article you read and I'll write you back.

Project Guild - Progress Report

One of the commitments I have made is to finish painting all of Malifaux's Guild Faction by August of next year. Between launching this site, a family vacation and a road trip to Gen Con, I haven't gotten much painting done this month (most of the work that does show in the progress report was the result of finishing mostly-done models).

Completed This Month: Nurse Enslaved Nephilim Guild Rifleman Lady Justice (v1) The Judge (v1) Scales of Justice (v1) 3 Death Marshals (v1) Purifying Flame Pale Rider / Lone Marshal

Currently in Progress: Lucas McCabe (foot) Lucas McCabe (mounted) Sidir Alchibal Brutal Effigy Avatar of Revelation Acquired: Lady Justice M2E Box Avatar of Amalgamation

One of the challenges that I face with this project is when to call it complete.  Is Project: Guild done when I have every discrete playable model?  Every version of every model?  All models that can participate in a Guild Crew, such as Nurses or Sebastian? What about limited and nightmare editions?  These are questions I need to answer over the next eleven months.  Please let me know what you think. 

Better Know Your Malifaux

Coinciding with the early release of the second edition rulebook this month I launched my first article series Better Know Your Malifaux.  The goal is to document my thoughts on each model, one by one, as I work on Project: Guild.  The tone and content of the articles is meant to be one man's opinion and overview of each model's capabilities, not to be a comprehensive strategy guide - for that I highly recommend the Pull My Finger wiki. 

So far I have completed four articles, covering Perdita, Francisco, Enslaved Nephilim and Santiago.  As long as I can keep painting and photographing miniatures at a decent rate, my goal is to do two articles a week until I finish all of the book one Guild models.  At that point I'll reassess, but if the momentum is there this might become a much larger project. 

Playing Some Malifaux

Last week I ran my first series of demo games at X Planet in Mississauga, my FLGS.  Over the course of five hours we got three games in and I need to say that I love the new speed of the game!  I only had my Guild and Resurrectionist cards with me so Jacob Lynch had to remain in the box, but Perdita, Sonnia, McMourning and Justice all got some table time.  The new players had a good time, and I was surprised at how quickly those who had never even played 1.5 picked it up. 

As always, tabletop play is the best way to discover new interactions and learn new things about your models.  I learned, in the same interaction, both how very vulnerable Papa Loco is to Wp duels and how effective the Death Marshals' Pine Box is.  Papa Loco spent a high card to escape the coffin at the start of the Death Marshal's activation only to face two back-to-back attempts by that same Marshal to shove him back in.  Now that the ability has a built in suit it costs very little for the Death Marshal to hold on to his victims once he has them. 

X Planet will be launching a Malifaux 2nd Edition League on September 16th where the focus will be learning the new system and hopefully growing the player base.  If you're in the GTA, come on out and play.  We just had it announced yesterday that the second wave of the open beta will be launching on October 7th, so we will likely not see much of the new Masters until after that, but they will be welcome once their rule are out.

It's been a great first month, thanks for everything!

Project Guild: 100% in 2014

They say that the best way to hold oneself accountable to one's goals is to share them with someone else, so I'm going to make a public claim and then it falls to me to back it up:

I will complete The Guild before GenCon 2014

It might not seem a lofty goal, but my plan is to do this while also not losing my job, neglecting my kids or alienating my wife, so that does indeed make it harder.  Added to this difficulty is that the guys at Wyrd intend to release a great number of models this year, all of which must also be completed for me to claim successful completion of this task. As a sub-goal, I will also photograph every model and put them up on the internet as proof of my success - I just need to find a good place to host the pics.  Any suggestions?

You can track my progress here on Stinkmunk's Malifaux Completion List.  It's not as awesome or as fancy as Mako's Malifaux Model Tracker but it will suffice for my needs.

As of today's date, I have completed 62% of the models, but the bad news is that I've left the hardest ones to last.  Avatars, Nightmares, out of production figures.  Still, I hope to succeed, and I have 53 weeks to do it in!

Thanks for reading.

On Accountability

I've been painting a long time.

Well, that's not true.  I've been buying models for a long time, piling them in corners and regretting it later.  Dozens of models, hundreds of models, from all different game systems.  I have spent hours and hours pouring over army lists, reading rules and theorizing about how I would play my next game.  I have thought about paint schemes and written fluffy back stories for each army, created my own house rules and army lists and generated dozens of spreadsheets and gaming aides to make me a better player.  In fact, I dare say there are only two things I've neglected in my twenty years of gaming: Painting and Playing.

This is something I intend to change.  For the last year I've been trying to add a little discipline to my hobby.  I'm not buying entire armies at once , instead limiting myself to what I can get finished and I've started tracking my progress with each project.  The funny thing is it's working!  I'm getting things done and piece by piece I'm becoming a better painter.

One project at a time.  The reward of progress is that I get to buy more things, but not until I make progress on the pile of metal I already have.  It's the antithesis of everything I've done up until recently, but it's getting results.

So that brings us to this blog.  My goal here is to use this space to keep myself motivated, to keep painting and to keep playing.  I'm going to share my thoughts on the models as I paint them and on games in general. I'm going to hold myself accountable to this hobby, lest I grow up someday and find myself an old man surrounded by projects unfinished and games unplayed.

Thanks for reading.