Painting Log - Children of December Box Set

The painting train continues a-rolling. Now that my Khador is pretty much caught up to being fully painted (just some rarely used duplicates and the.....Bombardiers,) I want to try and get as much Malifaux stuff painted as possible before switching back to painting Warmachine.

In order to accomplish that, I've decided to pick a crew and paint everything I have that is associated with that crew. Painting up Malifaux crews is usually relatively quick - a full Malifaux crew can have fewer models in it than a single Warmachine infantry unit - and it's a very welcome change of pace.

The first crew I've decided to catch up on is Rasputina's crew, which means I've been spending the past few weeks painting ice critters. I'm very pleased with the result, especially for how quickly I managed to get them done:

Children of December Box Set with bases from Secret Weapon Miniatures

More thoughts after the break.

One of the reasons I picked this as my next crew to paint is that I knew it'd probably be an easier one to paint. The other two crews I had ready at the time - Misaki and Mei Feng - were both likely going to be more difficult to paint, whereas this crew is something like 70% drybrushing.

Which is of course how all of the ice models - all three Ice Gamin and the Ice Golem - were painted. The models were basecoated with, I believe, Underbelly Blue, then washed with Cygnar Blue Base. From there I drybrushed them with Frostbite and Morrow White before picking out the eyes (base of Exile Blue and a dot of Morrow White for the eye.)

The Wendigo ended up being my absolute favorite model of the bunch. I was initially semi-dreading it because of how much painting was going to go into a silly little Totem (although in fairness Rasputina's Totem is quite good.) But the model very quickly grew on me, and I really enjoyed painting it up. I think the Wendigo is one of the best examples of Wyrd's new model design: it's eye catching and interesting without being overly ornate or busy, and it's just loaded with character.

Rasputina was the capstone to the whole painting project, and I like the way she turned out. I initially painted her up with a really light skin tone, but that didn't really look right. So I mixed Frostbite with Ryn Flesh in varying degrees and threw in some Underbelly Blue washes to give her a frozen skin tone. I also tried to give her blue lips using Cygnar Blue Base, which was way too bright, but an Underbelly Blue Wash (IIRC) pulled it back to something that matched her skin tone. 

She also slightly ended up with a case of crazy eyes (very easy to accidentally do when painting model eyes) but since she's a cannibalistic ice sorceress who lives in the mountains it's probably totally appropriate for her to have a bit of the 'ol loco stare.

The other big driver for painting up this crew is that I've been using them fairly often in my recent Malifaux games, and I've been enjoying them quite a bit. Rasputina's crew is simultaneously an easy crew to use and a rather difficult crew to use.

The easy part is that the crew is relatively straightforward (there are shenanigans, but they're all relatively explicit.) It's mostly all about getting models into position to hold the enemy up long enough for Rasputina to blast everything into oblivion, with other crew models helping as necessary. It's extremely cathartic after years of playing Marcus (especially from back when he was terrible) to switch to essentially a sledgehammer.

The hard part of playing Rasputina's crew, at least right now, is that in Malifaux killing enemy models isn't necessarily worth anything (or even worse, it can cost you dearly.) The whole game is based on VP acquisition and that often requires some degree of movement. Rasputina's crew (as I've been running them; I know there are plenty of other options) is on the slower side, but much more critically it's very easy to get side tracked into doing something other that vigorously pursuing objectives. And with a crew that's as slow as this one, losing sight of the strategy/your schemes for even a turn can screw you pretty badly.

All that said, I've still had a lot of fun running the crew and been pretty successful with it. The speed issue can easily be resolved by swapping in some different models if I really feel like it's an issue, but I'm also content to wait for the re-release of models like Snow Storm that will help the crew's mobility.

I also have some December Acolytes (seen lurking in the back, waiting to be painted next) which help out a bit by being deployed further in on the table. Painting up two of those is next on the list which should finish out Rasputina's crew for the near future (or far future, depending on how Wyrd's release schedule holds up.)