Malifaux: Herald of Obliteration (and some friends)

I’m a sucker for limited editions, so when the Nightmare Edition Herald of Obliteration box was available again at Wyrd’s Black Friday sale, I knew I had to pick it up.  I’m not a big fan of the clear plastics, but for only $5 more I figured I’d see if I could do anything interesting with it.

I’ve only played Neverborn so far, so they’ve been sitting unloved. I decided to break them out  for Wyrd’s Frozen Moments painting contest in the crew category.


Read on for some commentary on each model.

Tara
Tara

I left Tara’s freaky arm transparent, and hit it with some green washes and a bit of drybrushing.  The rest was primed and painted as normal.

Karina
Karina

I struggled with what to do with Karina.  Doing her left hand like this maybe isn’t very different than Tara.  I considered offering to swap with a non-transparent one.  In the end, I decided to use what I had.  I hit the left the hand clear, then hit it with Tamiya Clear Red. The idea is to evoke the glowy magic from the art.

Nothing Beast
Nothing Beast

The Nothing Beast got primed gray for the lower body, leaving the it transparent from about the waist on up.  Painting directly on the clear plastic didn’t work well, as you’d expect (paint pooling up, and tending to rub off), so a layer of Dullcote acted like a clear primer.  Successive drybrushing and washes brought it up to mostly opaque, with just a but of translucency in the arms, hands, and tentacles.

Bête Noire
Bête Noire

Bête is the clear red version from the Black Friday sale.  Waist down was left transparent, but with Dullcote and some washes to give it some depth and texture.  I had kind of hoped for a smoother transition from opaque to transparent, but it didn’t really turn out.

Miss Terious
Miss Terious

Miss Terious is the one non-transparent model in the crew, but at least she’s a special edition.  After I went painted the arm breaking out of the coffin green I remembered that it’s not some zombie breaking out, but whoever got trapped there.  Oops.

The Wretches were all painted up like the Nothing Beast, although with no fully opaque priming.

Overall I think I made the transparent models work, but I’m not super excited about transparent in general.  It works pretty well with Tara’s theme, and the neutral color of the plastic meant I could do interesting things to it.  I’m not sure I could do the same with the pink Dreamer box, for example.  The clear plastic is also harder to work with than regular gray plastic.  It’s brittle, and doesn’t cut or sand as easily.  Seams are harder to fill and clean up, which really shows on the Void Wretches.

I’d like to give a shout out for Element Games.  I purchased the MicroArts Studios Wasteland bases from them using my winnings from being the best (and only?) newcomer in #MFXTOP.  Even though it was shipped from the UK to the US, it was fast and competitively priced.

Updated October 2016 with improved images.

3 thoughts on “Malifaux: Herald of Obliteration (and some friends)”

  1. Done a nice job on the Bette we traded for between us. I think the transition is subtle but noticible.
    I really like what you have done with the Tara crew, might try something similar with my own translucent crew when i get around to it.
    I agree entirely with you on the workability with the translucents, not only with the difficulty in working with the brittle plastic, i also found them more difficult to line up joints, and got some horrible discolouration in places with the glue, although having already decided to prime most of them it is not going to be a problem, just wished i had saved some money and just bought the standard plastic crew.
    We live and learn, but i think i will no longer bother with the translucents in the future. Except perhaps as an investment for trading for models i want.

    1. Hey Bryan,

      Glad you like it! I think you may have me confused for someone else, though. I didn’t trade anyone for Bete.

      Since this, I did talk myself into doing translucent Pandora. I’ll probably talk myself into more in the future (a translucent Wrath would be nice, although I wouldn’t re-buy that box). I do have a couple other translucents lying around from various promos but haven’t felt the need to paint them up just yet.

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