Into The ToMB - Month 1 Post 1, or Building A Fire

OK, so Month 1 of ToMB kicked off on 17th February. The Malifaux blogosphere is now full of people talking about their new Masters, from Tara to Collodi to Hamelin and back again.

I chose Sonnia. Really I picked her because I loved the box art. Because I wanted one of the new plastic crews, I was limited to Wave 1 Masters anyway, and the artwork on her box spoke to me more than the others.

Playstyle never really entered the equation, and having never played before, I only had the model stats from the M2e rulebook to go from anyway. In essence, it would appear that her crew sets things on fire so that Sonnia can blast them to bits in a fiery conflagration.

In Sonnia's The Torch and the Blade box, you get Sonnia, her henchman Samael Hopkins, her totem Purifying Flame and three Witchling Stalker minions, along with the appropriate M2e stat and upgrade cards and 30mm bases.

One thing to note if you're used to assembling Games Workshop's plastic kits: Malifaux plastics are really fiddly. And I mean really fiddly! Sonnia's face is a separate piece from her head and Samael has several incredibly small pieces, some of which are really difficult to see how to attach, even following Wyrd's online instructions. 

And Purifying Flame is so fragile, any impact is going to snap his arms off, resulting in seriously difficult and messy repairs.

The other thing I'm not used to is 30mm round lipped bases. With GW models, you can assemble them on their flat 25mm bases and texture and decorate the bases afterwards. With Malifaux bases (and I assume Warmachine/Hordes) that's a no go; you need to build the base first so you can put the model on top.

This led to me trying something I'd never done before: sculpting base detailing out of Green Stuff! All I did was to mix up a small amount of GW Green Stuff and press it into the recess of the base. After some clean up with a sculpting tool, this left a neat green circle in the recess. Then, using plenty of water, I used a hobby knife to sculpt some rectangular cobblestone shapes. I think they look pretty good:

I then had to decide on a colour scheme. For simplicity's sake, and because the box art was the main reason I picked the crew, I decided to paint them as close to the artwork as possible. I use GW paints for all my painting (I don't really understand the hate some people have for them, but then I've never used anything else) so when I'm done I'll list the paints I used.

Here's a parting shot with what I've done so far:

Next time I should have more painting done, and I'll talk about getting the crew on the table and blowing stuff up!

See you through the Breach!

The Scribe