Back in the swing

It's taken a couple of weeks to recover from Adepticon and work my way back into the regular routine.   Competition painting is now on the back burner, and it's nice to relax and paint tabletop miniatures for a while.

By painting for competition, however, I learned a lot about the areas I need to improve, and I've been eager to apply those lessons to my regular tabletop painting.  Conversely, tabletop painting provides practice for display/competition painting.  And thus the circle goes round and round....

I've returned to working on my Marcus crew for Malifaux.  Here is the Razorspine Rattler (the 1st edition metal model) to accompany my painted Cojo.  I wanted the spines to resemble the color patterns of a lionfish.

I finally decided on which model to use for Myranda.  Two things decided it.

1. One was receiving the starter box and feeling lukewarm about the design of the new plastic models.  Wyrd continues their trend towards delicate, fiddly, hard-to-assemble, multi-part models.  I said "screw that".  
2. The second thing was coming across the alternate metal sculpt of Marcus at Adepticon, for half price.  And it's the one Wyrd model I've come across which is actually a single-cast figure.  And his pose and expression matches the Myranda model I proxied from Privateer Press. 

So I picked the proxy from Privateer Press' Tharn Bloodtrackers.   I think that model is a better fit than Rackham's Kelt Fiona.  So there you go.  And a jackalope to boot.

Note they're primed in white.  Glorious white.  Well, two-tone zenithal, but white, not gray.  I fought against gray primer for the entire month of March, trying to bring color to my Strohm Chevaliers models for my Crystal Brush entry.  I had no idea it would make such a huge difference.  At least it does to me.  Back to my old stand-by forevah and evah.  White primer, baby.

Here are the other models for the crew that I'm pushing through the pipeline.

I needed to add one more Moleman to my existing 3 to make a total of 4, so I traveled an hour to a game store in Maryland (Games & Stuff), in the hopes they would have a spare blister of Molemen.  They did!  And they had a Razorspine Rattler as well.  I want to run a pair of Rattlers, and I was going to use the plastic one, but now I'll have a matching pair of the metal ones.  Its tongue was missing, unfortunately, so I had to greenstuff one on there. 

And once again, painting a Marcus crew will serve multiple ends:

1. The obvious one is to add another option for Malifaux Monday.  It will be particularly nice to declare "Arcanists" for my faction and still have my opponent guessing whether I'll play Ramos or Marcus.
2. The Dragonpainting forum is having a painting challenge to paint a unit, so I can participate in that.
3. Dropzone Games in Glen Burnie, Maryland, is hosting their annual Jump Master's Painting Challenge, which is a Crystal Brush qualifier -- Best of Show wins a ticket to Crystal Brush 2015!  So maybe I can finance next year's trip to Adepticon!