#MFXTOP Best of 2014

TOP TOP

During the course of 2014 Malifaux: Tyrants of Painting awarded 10 men as winners.

1. @MarkJByrne
2. @wrkbnchwarriors
3. @gazmania
4. @shakes1066
5. @bigboybucky
6. @thatdarnsatan
7. @oathius
8. @andythorngate
9. @archonmoonson
10. @derby_malal

We did get repeat winners and many entrants were in the podium time and time again.

I thank these ten for showing off how beautiful Malifaux miniatures can be, helping inspiring, myself, each other and hopefully a large portion of the Internet.

Really though, this goes past these ten. Although they are the cream of our crop I would like to again thank each and every person who entered the competition and I hope that 2015 brings just as much beautiful work.

Your mission:

Is to search the blog for the work of these ten, check their Twitter timelines, soak in their work and what they have done for this competition.

Return by midnight(GMT) January 1st and vote who you think is the best of the best in this poll:

VOTE HERE

#MFXTOP December Winner and Final competition of 2014

#MFXTOP DECEMBER

Thanks again to Element Games as the overall winner AND best newcomer receive a voucher to spend in their store.

Who takes down the final monthly competition of 2014?:

Third Place

In at number three is @Sir_Reeves
To no one's surprise James does well in a painting competition.

Top tip, go check his twitter timeline for more goodies, plastic Leveticus most recently.

Second Place

Second place goes to @Proximocoal
I didn't forget Connor this time, thankfully as again
he has entered a beautiful model, love the dark steed.

Best Newcomer

Our newcomer @Paintedguys
snaps up the award and his Johanna is very nice,
check his blog, it's very good!

First Place

This month's winner is
@Derby_Malal
Looks like people love those Gremlins.
I would say an Easter bunny is wrong for this time of year,
however maybe people were thinking chicken > turkey.

Fantastic work on this Rooster Rider though, the beak and the pink tones being

some of the highlights of this piece.

Finally the basing is awesome and finishes this model perfectly.

@derby_malal is the Winner of #MFXTOP12 "Nightmare Before Christmas

and December's

Tyrant of Painting.

#MFXTOP 2014

The usual reminder, but don't forget each month the Winner and Best Newcomer gets a voucher for Elementgames.co.uk 

The Best Newcomer award is for whoever received the most votes and has not entered #MFXTOP before.

however...

return in the following blog where a new poll will open.

Finding the best of the best. The TOP Tyrant of Painting #MFXTopTOP ?

-Ben (@psientologist)

#MFXTOP Voting December

Happy Holidays.

This is a page of all the finals entries with the names of the entrant in one place.

Please have a good look over them all and then click the link to the poll at the bottom.

You don't have to have entered or do anything special to vote, just click that link, you get one vote, so use it wisely!

So in alphabetical order (by twitter handle):

@cdhay

_________

@derby_malal

_________

@docbungle

_________

@elessarion30

_________

@paintedguys

_________

@proximocoal

_________

@sir_reeves

_________

@talentlesspaint

_________

@Therril_83

_________

CLICK HERE TO PLACE YOUR VOTE!

#ToMB Claw & Fang Vol.13

A Long Delayed End

Where we left off.

For those who don't even remember what #ToMB is/was it stands for Tale of Malifaux Bloggers.

Like the Tale of Gamers articles on so many sites and in magazines we were given a budget each month of $25 ($50 in the first) to start a new master and start collecting.

Dollars were used and the Wyrd web-store prices were the standard so everyone would be on the same page.

I started with Marcus and proceeded to buy, build, paint, play games and record my thoughts on this process.

An issue I had early was the amount of models I didn't want to buy in metal, this caused for some delayed purchases and ultimately one of the reasons for the huge gap in continuing Marcus tale.

It's October now and I believe that #ToMB should have already ended.

With Gencon a lot of the models I wanted were released and it gave me a chance to get some of those tools I knew Marcus would enjoy.

On top of this, I will be taking Marcus to a fixed master tournament, @leebattrick's Malifolk 3.

Now seemed as good a time as any to talk about the games I've had between now and volume 12 as well as end thoughts and eventually one final volume discussing my tournament experience with the Beastmaster.

Dollar Dollar

For those that are interested my dollar spending for up to month 4 was as follows:

• Claw and Fang - $50
• Metal Gamin - $21
• Dawn Serpent - $15
• Rogue Necromancy - $15
• Night Terrors - $15
• Total Spent - $116
• Money remaining - $19

With two months remaining another $50 added to the $19 would give me $69 to play with.

• Molemen £11.90 (£14)
• Silurids £13.60 (£16)
• Hoarcats £9.35 (£11)

Above were my Marcus related purchases from Gencon, I cannot remember the dollar amounts, but the first price is the Element Games Prices and second is the RRP.

£41 is roughly $66 meaning that I was way within budget.

I will highlight the reasons for purchasing each of those boxes as well as cover what I have done with them painting wise but before that...

What else would I buy?

My one regret was not purchasing Waldgeists from Gencon, this Neverborn minions are also Beasts.

For 6 stones you get a tough bugger with 7 wounds and Armour +2, add this to Perfect Camouflage (negatives to shoot or from charges if they haven't activated), Unimpeded and a way for them to make their own terrain, these guys are hard to crack easily and are fairly annoying.

Wk4 is a let down, but with Germinate they are almost always able to take advantages of their tree like ways gaining a 4" melee range.

Perfect area denial, fantastic for things such as Squatter's Rights.

Canine Remains will also be a good future purchase, almost as fast as the Night Terrors but with the ability to interact. These dead dogs are quite versatile at the measly 4 stones they cost and they can also make things become Beasts allowing Marcus to do a few more tricks. 

December Acolytes are on my list of things I own I want to paint.

From the Shadows is almost reason alone for taking them, I have even considered Wild Boars due to this.

However for the 1 stone cost extra Acolytes offer a lot more controlling and reliable piece.

The 12" range on the Harpoon can cause early irritation especially considering it dishes out slow (with Sh6 no less) add this to either forcing a discard on your opponent or better, dragging their models out of position the Acolyte can do a lot of work.

They may not be Beasts but they are worth having in Marcus' arsenal and hey, if you need some anti Armour or Hard to Wound they do that too.

Shikome are a nice fast attacking unit that is worth a look in.

Blessed of December is a nice alternative to the Cerberus versus certain opponents and The Spawnmother has a lot of potential being a chunky Swampfiend which can occasionally charge for free and enhance the crew, especially the ones that Leap.

Lastly I could talk about Mechanical Rider or even Soulstone Miners, but I would suggest checking some of the other blog posts I have made concerning them.

These are simply some of the best things Arcanists can field and it doesn't have to be all about Beasts.

Moley Moley Moley

Gaming

Molemen were always something I wanted to add into Marcus' crew quite early. The issues was metals and I wasn't too fond of the models.

For 4 soulstones, these guys can prove fairly tough and can cover some similar roles to the Metal Gamin.
Df4 isn't particularly high but Armour +2 is great and combined with the Burrow trigger of being able to reduce damage to 0 a lot of weak damage will do quite literally nothing to a Moleman.

If simply holding ground the Molemen can boost up to Df5, however discarding a card is a tough price considering unlike the Metal Gamin they can't use actions without cards to go Defensive.
Wp5 is an improvement over the Metal Gamin and the obvious adage that they're Beasts means these are definitely not strictly worse.

However, if I consider them possibly worse why bother?
Well it's (0) action Tunneling that makes the Molemen great, placing in contact with friendly scheme markers 8" away (that's 2 walks for the Mole) can be extra strong. More on how a little later.

Painting

Trying to keep within the video game theme I had a few ideas.

Resetti from Animal Crossing would be a good laugh, but painting dungarees onto a model seemed a little too odd.

My mind as always went to Pokemon, being there are so many unsurprisingly there are many moles.
Drillbur and Excadrill (the latter being a monster I like to use) seemed like a good choice at first.
Especially to me as in head Moles (the animals) are grey.

However, the digging Moleman made me think of a lot simpler direction.
Diglett.

Unfortunately however these turned out OK, I think the scheme is too simple to indicate any impersonation.
Luckily though this did speed up things I wanted to get done for #Malifolk3

One thing, well a person really, did save me from not showing the obvious theme.
@dudewaaagh the man behind the fantastic Dreamario/Nightmario crew had used something very classic to Mario on bases for his Shy guy Alps.
Green Pipes.

Very kindly of him, he sent me the materials he used, so mostly done for me bar resizing, gluing and painting.
The third Moleman would emerge from a pipe and although I'm not sure what he's doing with his arms now, I still love it.

Bouncy Bouncy Bouncy

Gaming

Leap it's pretty good isn't it?

Silurids were one of the top things I wanted to add to Marcus' crew and again due to metals I avoided them.

Boy am I glad I did as I love the new miniatures even more than the quite decent metals.

As I was saying Leap is good, well it's excellent. Arcanists do have the Sabertooth Cerberus and now the Blessed of December both however are a little expensive to be in a crew for just scheme running and this where Leap comes into it's own.

Hopping 7" then walking another 5" for a foot total and still being able to interact makes good for placing markers, flipping Squat markers and a Leap of 7" also helps for Stake a Claim.

It's all pretty obvious that an extra (0) move will help here, but until you play with it and start jumping over terrain you don't realise quite how ridiculously powerful it really feels.

Scott Porter tore me apart with Necropunks and Leap in Stake a Claim at my first tournament.

They felt, unfair. How would I catch them? They can place markers in the turn they move? This is nuts.

Well Silurids, my word.

They're better for this.

They do lose the defensive abilities of Hard to Wound and Hard to Kill like the Necropunks (and don't forget Reattach) and cost two stones more, but 7" is perfect for Stake a Claim and needing simply just any five or greater to succeed in doing the action is just great.

My first few games with them made me open my eyes, I knew they were great, but this felt almost like cheating.

Going back to the Moleman's Tunneling you can now maybe see a little combo I like.

7" Leap from the moleman, place a marker and move allows the Moleman to instantly catch up.

Allowing those early scheme marker drops on the enemies half of the table or even again Squatters Rights to be sorted.

Add this to the fact that actually they can beat some (smaller) things up, 1/3/4 is no a fantastic damage spread but the Ram trigger Blood Frenzy gives the Silurid's Talons the potential to pretend to be a Cerberus.

The Mask trigger Bite also does some work. Another thing to hand out poison which I know Shikome will love.

Lastly, Silurids do not have the same resilience as Necropunks but Silent and Perfect Camouflage do a lot of working of avoiding shooting death, also the encouragement to activate last is also handy.

Painting

Video game fish, what is there? 

James Pond?

Nah!

Fishy Pokemon?

I've done too many Pokemon themed things.

What fish men are there?

Well my mind went to Final Fantasy and Sahagin.

Sahagin are fishmen, aquatic monsters that walk on the ground.

In VII they are actually portrayed as turtle-like creatures with tridents which doesn't work for Silurids, but through most the others they look kind of similar.

This opened up barrels of colour scheme choices as typically with JRPGs you get repeat monster classes with different palettes.

The reoccurring colours were green, yellow and blue for the bulk of the monster.

Green would be too similar to the box, the yellow ones didn't look appealing at all so that left me with Blue.

Perfect for Arcanists.

Now at one stage I was going to just go simply, blue with red thins, this may've had looked better, it would be striking for sure.

The white underbelly was also an idea and one I am still tempted to go back and do, or just do my third like it.

In the end I went for a rainbow thin, not so scary but the art had me impressed.

Now my replication isn't that great but in the end I was happy with what I had done.

Basing wise, still needed snow to tie into the rest of the crew but something to show that they were Neverborn and fit any potential crews in the future (though I imagine I might just buy more as they're very nice).

Swampfiend was the word that made life easy and I went for some disgusting shiny green ooze.

Meow Meow Meow

Gaming

Hoarcats had awful metal miniatures this made me barely ever consider them though I had a short history of using them on Vassal

Meowlifaux was comedy list where I took all Hoarcats against Jan's Gremlins as "Devour is so broken".

Well it is decent, however it turns out so are Hoarcat prides.

Five soulstones gets you a surprisingly offensive little beast. Fangs and Claws may only be Ml5 but 2/3/4 is pretty solid. The power though comes from having +1 damage if the model is at three or more wounds.

I love how this thematically reflects the same idea as Three-headed, but again let's look at that 3/4/5 on a 5 stone model? Bring it on.

With the added Ram trigger to get double positive damage these little kittens can sometimes be as scary as the bigger cats in the right situation.

Eat Your Fill is also perfect, something the Sabertooth doesn't have on it's own is to get Three-headed going again where as if a Hoarcat goes down to one or two wounds it still has potential to power up.

Pass Through is surprisingly useful, especially to get into the right position in combat and avoid the troubles having a larger base sometimes causes.

Finally, defensively the Hoarcat is ace, Manipulative 12 is a pain in the back side and Small Target means that shooting the kitty dead early is a difficult task. I've found that against gun lines this model can simply dive right at it and be alright, especially considering it's one of if not the cheapest model in the crew.

It's not all about Devour.

Painting

Pokemon came to mind and I may be painting some up as Meowth.

However there was only one real choice.

Red XIII's kittens.

Now I have been "that guy" but I think that the single Hoarcat on a base looks fine.

Yes it's meant to be a Swarm a Pride by name but three is far too full and busy and two, is that a pride or a Swarm really? That's a pair, a tag team, a couple.

So far the two I have done have some tattoos like Red XII.

The face marking, though a single stripe not two and numbers.

VII and I so far. I want the third to be V to add up to their daddies amount.

One more Volume!

Volume 13 is the end of this #ToMB experience.

Also he will be revisited as I have already started to paint (and finish some) additions to his crew outside of my #ToMB allowance.

It's been a long time to get around to finishing this.

I hope this has been entertaining as well as somewhat educational.

Thank you for reading.

-Ben (@Psientologist)

#MFXTOP December Weeks 1 & 2

Ho Ho Ho and all that.

Been a little while since I've put up an update post, but this time I've managed to get on it. Go me.

Weeks 1 & 2 Entries

The earliest entrant was #M2GT double winner @Sir_Reeves

Love these models and James typically has done a wonderful job.
Love the little details, especially the arrows.

Next entry was @Elessarion30

Eless has been working on dreamer recently and you gotta love

the Day Dreams. Also is this 11/12 #MFXTOP she has entered?

Good work!

@DocBungle was next with this lovely Pathfinder.

Always rate this guy in game and I love the model if a little large.

Bear has done a great job of the man wearing... him?

Check out more with the traps over at his blog.

 Lastly for this blog was another TOP regular @Therril_83,

Quite a different colour scheme for what I've seen for McCabe and I like it.
Reminds me I better get on with mine.
Check his twitter for more updates as they come.

Sir Blogsalot

You may have noticed that at some point down the line I probably said I would do a tournament report blog for the UK GT. I mean, why wouldn't I?

Well I started but in the end I wrote a report that has appeared elsewhere.

It ended up appearing in Wyrd Chronicles 15 and I couldn't be more pleased that I got that opportunity, follow the link and download, if you haven't already you should check out other issues of Wyrd's fantastic E-zine.

While we talk about blogs, I hope everyone has enjoyed the addition of some Relic Knights action.

I will however be adding a couple of blogs soon tying up #ToMB for Marcus, the aim is for the next couple of Fridays.

Also with the new Gaining Grounds strategies I will probably be posting an initial thoughts post very soon and I have a Turf War mini blog rolling around in my head, so look out for that too.

Thanks again to everyone who has read the blog, participated in the competitions and voting.

Next year I hope to make this blog even better than it already is.

Cheers me lovers.

-Ben (@psientologist)

A (Relic) Knight's Tale - Aaron's Tale (Part 1)

Esper

One of the many things that makes Relic knights stand out from other games it's it's main in-game resource; Esper.
For my first blog, I am (hopefully) going to explain a little bit about it and it's importance in the game.

Let's start by breaking down what Esper is.
"Esper is the primal energy that binds everything in the universe. It is everywhere and it infuses everything."
Esper is a type of energy which is required to provide power for actions and abilities models wish to use in the game.

Esper is made up of 6 types, and each is affiliated with a particular colour and faction in game. They are as follows;

• Law (Blue) - Shattered Sword
• Essence (Yellow) - Doctrine
• Creation (Green) - Cerci Speed Circuit
• Chaos (Orange) - Star Nebula Corsairs
• Corruption (Purple) - Black Diamond
• Entropy (Red) - Noh Empire

Each of these Esper Types also belongs to one of two groups:

• Creation, Essence and Law form the Radiant Group.
• Entropy, Chaos and Corruption form the Void Group.

These groups also represent factions which can be used in game, essentially mercenaries which may be played either independently, or hired by other factions which belong to their group.
Models from each faction will tend to use primarily (though certainly not exclusively) Esper of the type affiliated with it's faction, and also commonly of the other Esper types in that Esper Group.

The Esper Deck

Esper is represented in game by a deck, consisting of 42 cards.
They are broken down as follows:

• 36 Standard cards
• 3 Void cards 
• 3 Wild cards

Standard cards will have a large icon and a small icon printed on them.
Each icon will relate to an Esper type, the larger being that particular card's Primary Esper Type, the smaller being the Secondary Esper Type. A primary symbol is worth two points of that Esper type, whilst a secondary symbol is worth a single point of Esper.
There are six cards with a primary symbol for each Esper type, 3 of which will carry secondary Esper of the next colour clockwise in the colour wheel, and 3 of which will carry secondary Esper of the type denoted by the colour anti- clockwise on the colour wheel. For example;
Of the 6 cards with Creation (Green) as their primary Esper type, 3 will show Essence (Yellow) as the secondary type, and 3 will show Law (Blue) as their secondary type.
Void cards show no Esper type and have a black, solar eclipse type symbol on them. They have no Esper type and no value, they are basically useless in game.

Wild Cards show a ring of 6 icons, one for each Esper type. When played, the owner may choose which Esper type will be used, but a wild card only ever generates 1 point of Esper. As you may be able to guess, wild cards are useful, though not overpowering, being worth only as much as a secondary Esper.
Here ends my blog post for this month, hope for those of you who didn't know anything about the game this explanation has helped you to understand it a little better. Next month I will go into more detail about how Esper is actually used in the game. See you next time!

- Aaron (@forestreveries)

#MFXTOP November Winner and December Theme

#MFXTOP NOVEMBER

Thanks again to Element Games as the overall winner AND best newcomer receive a voucher to spend in their store.

Who has the loveliest facial hair?:

Third Place

In at number three is @Forestreverie
Santiago is a good choice as he has nice thick facial hair,
however what is also excellent about this is the sandy tones with the perfect red spot colour.

Second Place

Two times in a row in at second it's @Cactus_Henry
Are we seeing a Ten Thunders crew emerge slowly across #MFXTOP?
Another great entry, a lovely full mustache accompanied by a nice bald head!

First Place

This month's winner is
@ArchonMoonson
Now well technically not hair, this Waldgeist definitely has the tree-
person equivalent to facial hair.
Expected it may have fallen into Decembeard more than Movember
but it is hard to tell when lacking a nose or mouth

On a serious note, Martin has done a fantastic job of a fantastic model, 

the grey tone of the wood with the pale mushrooms gives the model a creepy feel

while the basing is interesting and a little brighter but does not detract from the model.

@ArchonMoonson is the Winner of #MFXTOP11 "Movember"

and November's

Tyrant of Painting.

#MFXTOP Month 12

The usual reminder, but don't forget each month the Winner and Best Newcomer gets a voucher for Elementgames.co.uk 

The Best Newcomer award is for whoever received the most votes and has not entered #MFXTOP before.

December's Theme

Is...

"The Nightmare (Rush) Before Christmas, or more precisely the 23rd"

It's a mouthful of a title but I am still running a December competition it just will have less time given to it than usual.

Participants have just over two weeks to paint anything they would like for Malifaux for this competition.

I do have a reason outside of having a break for this theme, all I will say is if you have or haven't entered before this is your time to shine as this will not be the last competition of 2014 but will be the last one you can paint specifically for...

and that is all I will say for now.

If you have any other questions, contact me on twitter where I'll be tweeting rubbish constantly.

Head over to Element Games with new crews, new bits and even new terrain there are plenty of things to get yourself or even eachother for Christmas.

Listen to Malifools, hopefully episode 100 (one hundred I know can you believe it?) will be out and it's a big 'un, with the line up of myself, UK no.1 Joel Henry and fan favourite Matt Spooner.

Lastly, visit the Wyrd forums, there are lots of tournaments already being planned for next year September's Curse 2015 has a date of 27/9/15 so write that down.
However also drag yourself down for Isle of Faux, get on the May Feng reserves list and generally keep your eyes peeled for #SMP events and more from the other wonderful TOs.

-Ben (@psientologist)