Painting Log: Yamaziko, Oiran, and Misaki

After many weeks of toiling and stalling over ninjas and yellow, my initial Misaki crew is complete!

Join me after the break for pictures of the final three models, thoughts about them in and out of game, and what's next for my painting table.

Oiran, Yamaziko, Misaki Front View

Oiran, Yamaziko, and Misaki Rear View

First off: yes the gap on Yamaziko is very bad. That is laziness - I had hoped that primer and paint would mostly mask it (sometimes it does for small gaps) and by the time I realized it wouldn't (after I primed it) I didn't really care enough to go back and putty over it. I may go back over it at some point in the future; it shouldn't take too much effort to patch and then touch up.

Other than that, I'm pretty pleased with how these three ladies turned out. Yamazkio is the one I'm least pleased with, but I'm also not surprised. I was really concerned that she would end up being another roadblock model - I didn't know how the hell I was going to paint her lantern/jug thing, and I didn't know what colors I wanted to paint her robes - so I did what works best in those situations: paint first, think later. With that in mind, I think she turned out alright.

I really like how the Oiran turned out. I had a similar paralysis with how I was going to paint her robes, but a quick image search for some ideas brought up a blue paint scheme (for all of Ten Thunders, point of fact) that I really liked the look of. I decided that would be a good color for her robe and as a bonus the yellow I use throughout the crew would look really nice as a contrasting color. Once I had those figured out, everything else was just details and highlights.

I saved Misaki for last, in the hope that it would put me in the best possible mood to tackle her model. It also helped a lot that painting the other models in her crew did a nice job of preparing me for painting the details on her. I didn't do anything fancy with her, but I'm overall pleased with how she turned out.

The one thing I don't really like was how her weird kick-energy-swoosh turned out; I intended to try and paint it using a series of washes over a white base to give it depth, but I mucked up the paint density. So it ended up being more of a couple of washes and a drybrush highlight. It doesn't look bad, but it also isn't what I was originally going for. Lesson learned for next time!

As for in-game efficacy, this is probably the best set of three models out of my initial Misaki crew.

Yamaziko is a fantastic Henchman: she's cheap, can easily carry around support upgrades (especially since Nimble gives her suprising mobility), she kicks out consistent damage, and her Brace Yari action allows her to guard an area decently well.

The Oiran is a model that surprised me. I had heard a fair amount of negative buzz around her when the Wave 1 cards were released so I wasn't expecting much when I used her. Much to my surprise, the Oiran ended up being a solid Minion for her cost. I think she suffers most from having the "worst" Lure in the game (needing a suited card to cast it successfully), but even a slightly finicky Lure is great to have, and her other abilities aren't bad either. I don't know that I'd ever take more than two of them, but I can definitely see taking the one from time to time.

And then there's Misaki. Initially I picked her up just because I was considering making Ten Thunders my "main" Malifaux faction, so why not own the boss of the faction, right? After playing her, however, I really appreciate her approach to the game. She's an offensive melee Master, but she's not as straightforward as someone like Justice or Lilith, while also not being as complex as the Viktorias. Misaki also has loads of mobility, which helps a ton in both setting up her offense, and running objectives (so she has valuable inherent flexibility).

Finally, she's an owner of one of Malifaux's most terrible/fun types of triggers in the game: an instant kill trigger. Her unique take on it is that her melee attack doesn't have either of the suits needed for that trigger; the only way to get it off is to use a soulstone and drop a card. This makes it a calculated expenditure during the early part of the game, but one with potentially huge payoffs.

There is another way to get access to her trigger: Once Misaki bottoms out her soulstone reserves, she gains one of the suits she needs for her trigger, along with a bonus to her Df flips. This is the other half of her risk/reward: going out on soulstones is as dangerous as it is with any Master, but she gains some potent bonuses to offset that risk, while maintaining access to her instant-kill trigger.

This makes playing Misaki a game of calculated risks. It's worth spending soulstones with her, because she has strong melee potential and an ability that compensates for running out of soulstones, but you also don't want to burn through them without having something to show for it. It also makes Misaki one of the precious few Masters I'm willing to run without the maximum available soulstone pool at the start of the game, which is nice.

I'm very excited to have another Malifaux crew fully painted. I'm at a pretty decent percentage right now - of the seven crews I own, five of them are fully painted - though that's going to drop as more models I want to complete those crews come out. Hell, I'm already technically behind, as I have Silurids, Waldgeists, and Canine Remains to assemble and paint for Marcus, and Thunder Archers along with Samurai to assemble and paint for Misaki. But for now at least I'm decently well caught up.

My original plan was to just knuckle under and keep painting Malifaux stuff until all my crews are painted - Mei Feng's crew should paint up fairly quickly, and I don't own a lot of stuff for Pandora - but I think I'm going to deviate from that and work on my Convergence. I need to paint those models just to be able to use them (I can't finish assembling the "floaters" until the bodies are painted) and they've been sitting in the queue for awhile now. Plus there is also the general excitement I have for getting that army on the table.

I have a paint scheme picked out for Convergence; I was originally just going to go with the studio paint scheme, but I ended up struck by inspiration. The tricky part right now is figuring out how I want to apply that paint scheme. The studio paint scheme being all metal makes it tricky to visualize how different paint schemes may look on those models, and I haven't been able to find many examples online to demonstrate how alternate paint schemes may look.

As with most painting quandries, I think it's best to just put brush to model and figure it out as I go. Thankfully Convergence has some easy "tester" models with the various Servitors: they're a scaled down version of all the areas you'll need to paint on the vectors, so it's a great place to try out ideas. And if you mess up, they're just dinky little 2/3 of a point models that aren't going to get much visual attention anyways!

With the Misaki crew in the "completed" file, I'll be moving on to painting Convergence soon. I'll be back to post up my first batch of Servitors, whenever I manage to finish them. I may need a short break of Dragon Age and fighting games before I dive back into painting.