Spring Cleaning Malifaux

Let’s try this again, shall we? Unfortunately you can’t remove a contest from a project so forgive me rez-ing a dead challenge.

These models have been calling to me in mocking tones since April and someone locally is putting together a little league to run between now and Christmas so it feels like the right time to come back. Me being me, I signed up for the league three weeks ago but didn’t start looking at rules and models until Sunday evening… when my first game is on Thursday.

After spending the evening watching some rules videos and playing around in the app for list building, I’ve decided to go with Perdita for my master mostly because I could get the cost closer than with the other masters in the box. I have 30ss worth of models that share her Family keyword but as we’re going to be playing 50ss games, I have a bit of tweaking to do.

I already checked on the league discord that everyone is happy with me running old models and they had independently said that proxies are fine (Wyrd are having  supply issues over here as the edition switch is happening). I have some old Guild Guard models that I can run as Pistoleros but, as every site seems to already be running Black Friday sales, I picked up the actual models and an extra box of versatile models to start building up my plastic collection. I have no idea if they will turn up in time for my game on Thursday or how they will look next to the old metal models so I might still use the proxies.

Before stripping the models (as described previously, there’s no primer under these paint jobs and the paint is flaking off at this point), I wanted to get as much of the flock off as I could. It wasn’t too hard to get under it with a knife and peel off most of the basing layer… and without slicing myself with said knife!

This is when I discovered that Abuela Ortega (pre-wheelchair era) was on a resin base. I can’t really explain why the weight of this one model being different to the rest was so completely unreasonable to me but it was so she now has a plastic base like her family.

Everyone got stripped. The previous owner didn’t use primer so they didn’t need very long. The bases had to be replaced because whatever had been put on them didn’t like the stripper. Thankfully I had a load of 30mm dipped bases with slotta gaps… I have no idea why but we don’t question the base stash, just accept it’s gifts.

I decided that I would be a better opponent if I didn’t paint and instead read the rules. It was a hard choice!

The game itself was really fun; I lost 6-1, forgot about my scheme for a whole turn and definitely missed my own rules all the time. The basic gameplay of Malifaux is pretty straight forward but each model has two or three rules and then each warband has another couple that work across them all. It is perfectly learnable but you’ll never get them all first game.

I’ve been suffering pretty awful brain fog as a result of some health stuff but I think if I just take the same nine models for all four of my league games, hopefully it will stick. Ultimately this is about making some new friends and playing some games… some competence would be nice as well!

I didn’t take any photos of the game but I did take some of the fur friends 🙂 Pancake the cat and Maple the dog. 10/10 will play at their house again. Their human also plays Moonstone so we lucked into a good new friendship here.

A combination of waiting for the new addition and other games getting to the table sooner means I’ve put this to the side (again).

One day Malifaux, one day.

I decided to get back into this project after doing a massive batch of goblins and was desperately in need of painting something a little more individualised. I’ve been mentally turning over in my head how to tackle the Malifaux stuff and eventually settled on keyword groupings.

That means the first batch is Augmented. Six models; there are two metals and the other four are plastics. I hate the basing above everything else in this collection so my first step was to break everyone off the bases they were on. The large construct has a mental base insert so it stays. The rest got a layer of texture paste.

So far so good.

While waiting for the paste to dry I decided to scrape off some mould lines and tidy up the models a bit. This was the moment, as the paint flaked into my hands, I realised none of these models had primer on them. Fffffuuuuuuuuu…..

I spent the rest of my hobby session playing with Biostrip.

This could be a big problem for the rest of the project. The idea of stripping 50 odd models to repaint them makes my heart sigh in resignation. We’ll see. I’ll work on this little batch this week and see how I get on.

I started on the 20th because I’m one of those kinds of people. Knowing this step was going to take a fair bit of tedious legwork, I took a photo of each model and stuck them all into a folder on my desk top.

Malifaux having a continuous story over the years meant that most of the characters have stayed in the game;  current range of models had older sculpts that have been updated so I started there. Googling “first edition Malifaux (insert model name)” worked for about three quarters of what I have. Thankfully Reddit, the Malifaux Classics sections of Wyrd’s shop, the Wyrd discord helped with the rest.

The game has changed massively since these first edition models were created and while I don’t know of anyone locally who plays, I would like them to be playable by the end of the project. The next step then was checking base sizes to see if any of them had been Old World-ed. Thankfully Wyrd make all the cards available through their website (including ones for models no longer supported in a section called Dead Man’s Hand). Only one model needs a new base and she was a bit of an anomaly in the first place, the only one I had to jump onto their discord to try and identify.

So here we are, one week in and everyone has been identified (and bases sorted to be playable in the current state of the game).

Somehow we’re back here again; dusting off old projects and feeling marginally better about our piles of shame. This year I’m hoping to clear a project which wasn’t even mine to begin with.

I’ve known what one of Spring Clean Challenges was going to be since I had a dig around in the stash back in November looking for mushrooms for my goblin army. I found a box that I bought so long ago the game has gone through two editions without me getting to them. 

I always planned on getting into Malifaux and someone was getting rid of all their Guild models in a bulk deal for super cheap. They even sent them in their carrying case.

Most of the models are in rough shape. Bits have broken off so repairs are essential. They are mostly metal so chipped paint is common. I don’t think their previous owner knew what washes were either. The paint jobs aren’t awful though and so I’m hoping in most cases to not have to strip them and start again. At some point I’ve thrown in a plastic gang from a later edition.

Firstly though, I need to figure out who each of them is…