Its Brilliant!!!

Among the variety of new crews that have been brought to us in the Storm of Shadows is Mr. Lynch and his crew of gangsters, gamblers, addicts and women of ill repute. Jakob and his crew are the first crew box to make it out of the release gate post Gencon, and those like me who were lucky enough to grab stuff at Gencon had the opportunity to get the full crew. These guys are dual faction Neverborn and Ten Thunders, but I decided to get them based up on my asian bases to match my 10T crews.

I have had a lot of fun playing around with Jakob and his crew, although I am finding I am using less of his "dedicated" crew and more of the wider 10T faction models to flesh out his play style. Jakob is a very flexible master, with him actually working less as master and his totem being the heavier hitter of the pair. Now, I love the idea of his Totem, the Hungering Darkness. I will readily admit I think its one of the worst models Wyrd has produced to date. It just does not fit my overall mental image of a "Creature of Old Malifaux on par with the Tyrants". The model, in my mind, looks more like a Tadpole than anything else. This model is up very high on my list of models to find a good alternative to use. That said, I love the simplicity of Jakob. I could have attached a ghostly skeleton bit with cards dropping to the ground that came with the model, but I prefer the simple man in a suit offering out his hand in greeting, or to accept payment.

Jakob and Huggy (Hungering Darkness) both work in a crew that contains a new characteristic of Brilliance. Brilliance is a type of drug that Huggy exudes into willing addicts then consumes from them afterwards. There are a number of servants that work for Jakob and Huggy, are full of this "Brilliance" and help deal it out. The first of these are models I love, which are the Beckoners. These would be the "Women of Ill Repute" mentioned earlier. I painted mine up and then showed them to my daughters and wife. The overwhelming response was that they looked like slutty versions of Disney's Tinkerbell (in green) and Jasmine (in purple). At the end of the day, who am I to argue with them, they would know best! Both of these girls regularly find their way into my Jakob crews, as I find them to be the best way to spread brilliance and help Huggy operate within the game.

That brings us to the Gangsters of the crew. In the story, Mr. Graves and Mr. Tannen are actually Neverborn who have "inhabited" the skin-suits of humans. These guys both work for Huggy and are operating on some level full of Brilliance as well. I really like the look of the models, although I am finding that I am not using them a whole lot in games. Tannen can create a bit of a negative play experience overall, and only fits into the play style of a couple crews of mine. As for Graves, he is a great model but in my Jakob crew, I have other models that perform his role better than he does.  I love the model for Tannen, as he certainly comes across as a creepy little slimy dude. He has a knife hidden behind his back which you cannot see in the picture. As for Graves, I could not resist modeling him up with a fence post in hand, as that's one of his weapons on the card.

At some point we come to the question of how does this Brilliance drug affect those Humans who are imbibing and partaking? What are the addicts like? Happily, Wyrd answers this question for us in two different stages. We start with the "Active" addicts, those humans who are currently under the influence. Those are the Illuminated in the game. These models are fun to put together, although the woman with the distended jaws was a bit of a frustration. From a painting standpoint, there are lots of chances for blending and off color choices to play off the human skin tones to the more alien/exotic brilliance infused mutations. The third model is a real "Monkey on your Back" illustration of addiction. In this case the Brilliance has manifested some type of Mini-Huggy that started consuming the Brilliance during use. The Illuminated are not Dual Faction models but instead are dedicated Neverborn models. They can be hired by Jakob regardless of which faction he is in, but not by other 10T masters. Despite this, I wanted to keep with the same asian base scheme across the models that could end up in 10T crews.

Then we come to the next set of models, which is an illustration of what happens when an Illuminated becomes burned out on Brilliance. The result end up being the very sad and incredibly creepy Depleted. Depleted are exactly that, Brilliance users that have hit rock bottom and are hopelessly burnt out on the drug. Their life essence has been consumed by Huggy and only a husk of a person is left. I am not finding that I use these much at all, as they really fill a spot in the crew as a cheap tarpit unit. I can see the use as they can fuel Huggy in the game, but I just do not have room in many of the lists I have build for Jakob. I have pulled them out in fun games and they are interesting. While the model rules alone make them insignificant, Huggy has a rule that removes their insignificance while he is within LOS. Add to the fact that they are brilliant and the fact that they can offer additional healing to Huggy and they are not a horrible hire. Overall, I can see them making their way into a couple lists, just not the primary lists I am playing. These end up being a more for fun model overall. On the modeling side, the Gimpy Foot guy was the biggest challenge for me among the Depleted. I ended up having to glue him on the base with the Foo Dog just to get him to stand up securely. The normal foot is very very small so does not have much room for a pin. The gimpy foot has no room at all for pinning. This required something else for him to lean against. That said, I am fairly happy with the way these three ended up coming out.

That should bring us to the end of the Jakob Lynch crew from the Storm of Shadows book. What we basically have here is the Neverborn section of the new book, which all synergises well with Jakob. I find that I am going a different way with his crew, as I mentioned above. Instead of taking him primarily as a Neverborn Master, I am melding him into the Ten Thunders, running with Beckoners and Huggy but then adding models like Yamaziko (from the pure 10T faction) and Kang (from the Dual faction 10T/Arcanist). I also like adding in Ototo from time to time, swapping with Kang.

Stay tuned next week, still to come are a look at my Arcanist/Ten Thunders and some Hobby tracking and random painted models.

Ten Thunders Auxiliaries?

Misaki is able to transform a number of Outcast models into Ten Thunders models through her hiring rules. In addition, with the release of Storm of Shadows, Ten Thunder's Brothers have moved from their book 3 standing as Outcasts to be fully Ten Thunders now. I have a small set of Mercenary outcasts but I do not use them much. In addition, I have never picked up a Viktoria crew, so am missing out on a couple of the typical mercenaries that are seen. Namely, I do not have Taelor or Hans, both of whom become Ten Thunders with Misaki as the master. When I found out what Misaki would be able to include as Ten Thunders from the currently released models, I went out and picked up a couple Outcast's that I had not grabbed previously. Namely, the Ten Thunders Brothers and the Ronin.

On the other hand, in preparation for my dive into the world of Ten Thunders, I painted up a full set of 3 Ten Thunders Brothers and 3 Ronin. Both work very well with Misaki, and the Brothers work well with any Ten Thunders crew.No one who has played Malifaux for a while says the Ronin are bad models. They are very mobile, ignore armor with thier melee attack, and have a very decent melee attack in general. Overall, they work really well and fit nicely into the overall Misaki play style. When I grabbed the blister of Ronin I actually went out on Google images and did some searches to figure out how I wanted them to look. I found some nice examples which I decided to put a mild twist on and mimic. I am particularly happy with the purple haired Ronin, and with the loose-shirt cowboy hat Ronin. The shirt color on the cowboy hat Ronin came out just as I wanted, more linen than white.

That brings us to the Ten Thunders Brothers. These guys have a lot of character and are fantastic 5 point models for Ten Thunders Crews. They have decent Melee, bring along the same Melee Expert ability that the Ronin do, but then add in something more. These boys can be taken with any 10T crew, not just Misaki, and they bring Companion to the crew. That plug-in companion ability creates some very interesting and powerful combinations overall, allowing things like the Torekage's ability to use their swap for a potentially nasty Alpha Strike. From a model standpoint, while I enjoyed painting them I did get a bit frustrated. The masks are not uniform across the models and its a bit tough to figure out what was a half mask vs a full mask vs something else. I am really happy with the colors I got on the straw hat for the one guy, and like the whole look and idea of the massive barrel hammer on the other. I have found myself leaving Hammer-brother at home and bringing the other two in my case however. This has more to do with fit than anything else. These three models certainly hit a time in my painting when I ran into a wall of frustration and just decided they were "good enough for table top".  I think there is a whole lot more that could be done with them to improve their look over my paint job.

So there you have it, the 10T Auxiliaries. I still have a bunch of other pictures to go, with the plan to get them posted through the end of this week and into next. My gaming is a bit slow this week with some family events going on, so no battle reports for a while. I have moved over to playing Mei Feng, and have my first handful of games in with her. I will aim to get a battle report up soon, from some of the upcoming games until the end of November. Our Winter Achievement league has just started up, so there is a fair amount of incentive to get some battle reports posted (they are worth achievement points).

Ten Thunders - Misaki and Crew

I paint most of my own models, this is fairly well known to those who play against me and to those who follow the blog. I do, however, from time to time commission out some of my models in order to have some fantastic painters I know paint them up. Recently I had James Convy from 13th Hour miniatures paint up my Misaki crew. Convy is a friend and local who also happens to be a winner of a bronze crystal brush. Yeah, he is a damn good painter!

So it has taken a couple weeks to get all the models I received into the light box and pictures taken. Convy painted up the full set of the new Ten Thunders models that were released at Gencon. I was not a huge fan of the Master Misaki model, but I do like the Minion Misaki model a great deal. Convy painted up both for me, and I was amazed that after seeing his job on painting Master Misaki, I actually like the model.

So, without further ado, check out his painting them go to his website and get a quote for some of your own models!

First we have Misaki. This view of Misaki is fantastic as you can just make out the Koi fish painted in the water, which Misaki is checking out while exercising. This detail is what really won me over on this model after Convy painted it up. I was a bit disturbed that the model in general was in a pose that said (to me) "Looking for my Contact" more than Kung-fu fighting. Now this is more relaxing Kata before kicking your ass and I really like it.

Here are a couple other views as well, which just look really really good. The yellows are nice and crisp and overall she looks good with the crew. I hope the layout of the blog gets the pictures lined up to not throw off the entire flow of the article.

As I mentioned, I was not a huge fan of the Master Misaki model until after I got it back from Convy. Due to that, I had pushed her back on the painting queue and had him initially paint up Minion Misaki which I used with the Master card. I love the paint job with the Red dress and details he did for this Misaki model. We did have a good laugh after he finished the paint job and pointed out that Minion Misaki has a blow-up doll face. Even so, she is a great model and I am now swapping between the two models for the crew. The red makes a nice contract to the mostly yellow Ten Thunders crew.

So, with a look at the variety of Misaki completed, we move into the rest of the crew. Starting out is a picture of Shang, Misaki's totem. When I originally heard about Shang I was expecting a wiry little dragon similar to the character from Mulan. Shang ended up as a nine tail fox made from fire. Shang is an absolutely massive model for a Height 1 model on a 30mm base. While I really like the model, I wonder if the plastic sculpting was a little off on this guy.

We also have Misaki's Mentor in the crew, Yamaziko. Yamaziko looks very different from the overall crew in her darker green robes. She is a fantastic model to play, fitting into several Ten Thudners crews outside of ones led by Misaki. She was also the first of the Wyrd Plastic models I got to see, on the day before Gencon fully kicked off this year. Eric J was walking around outside the exhibit hall with a Yamaziko he had just assembled. What was most amazing was how sturdy the spear is. The new plastics are very strong while still holding very good detail overall.

That brings us to the montage of Ten Thunders Archers. The Archers are really great models with a lot of detail around the bows and arrows. I love looking at these guys. The heads were rumored to be a real bitch to assemble and get on the model. Overall, I found that letting Convy assemble them for me worked out to my benefit and was very easy! I like the way they look, and love the painted eyes on the front of the helmets/hats.

Following the Archers we jump to another group of yellow painted Ten Thunders models. These are some fantastic models overall, with a whole lot of character between their poses and weapons. The Torekage rarely get used in more than 1 or 2 in a crew, so I find I am constantly swapping out which 2 are in my case for games. Convy actually did a tutorial on his website on how to paint these guys up. Its the same rich yellow he used on the archers. If your interested, check out the tutorial here.

The last model Convy painted for me (for this crew) was Ototo. Ototo is the big beater melee model for the Ten Thunders. I am getting a fair amount of feedback from folk that they do not like the sculpt for Ototo. I have to admit that I like it, its very reminiscent (to me) of Captain Cave Man and his big club. It also has a Flinstones Bam Bam vibe to it. Overall, Convy did a fantastic job painted him up and I am finding use for him in my crews.

So that brings me to the end of the models painted by 13th Hour Miniatures. I also have some Ronin and Ten Thunders Brothers that I use with Misaki, but I painted those myself. I wanted to give a showcase to the models Convy painted along with starting to show off my new crew. I will get the Ronin and 10T Brothers posted later this week. In addition to that, this will be a series of pictures with all the new models I have painted up. I have been on a roll since Gencon and have nearly all the models for Storm of Shadows crews painted and photographed. I will also be updating the Malifaux Crew's list at the top of the page with pictures of the new models. I know I opened with it, but lets close with a picture of the full crew.