Hobby decision reached!

As a follow on from my previous entry regarding my entry into the world of Malifaux, I have made my choice regarding my first crew.  Well actually I made the choice yesterday, But I haven't had the chance to blog since then.

Kirai Ankoku won by a hair's breadth. I'm sure I will pick up Nicodem in due course (zombies FTW!), but right now the japanese spirits won for the fact they look amazing, and the fact that Nicodem requires an entire legion of zombies to be painted.  So yesterday I picked up the box above, plus an extra pair of Seishin.  I've also ordered Kirai's Lost Love totem and a pair of Gaki to round off the crew in the meantime.  On top of those I also splashed out on Vanessa and the alternate models of Nicodem and Lady Justice - these three just to go in the display cabinet and look awesome.

So yesterday was spent assembling and basecoating the models, and today I made a start with the painting!

You'll have to forgive the poor photography, it's the best my phone could manage and sadly doesn't do justice to the highlights.  I started with my Kirai model.  It's been about a year since I last painted, so I wasn't sure whether to start with my crew's Master or sharpen my skills on a less important model.  In the end I made the decision to start with the most important piece, so I didn't feel I wash rushing myself.  This took roughly 5 hours to paint in a single sitting, which by my standards is pretty good.  The oranges and blues are colours I haven't worked with before so I'll probably learn to do better, but right now I'm happy with the way she's turned out.

Once she was finished I wanted to keep the momentum going, but without starting another 5 hour model!  So seeing as I have 3 Seishin to paint and they're fairly basic, I decided to wind down by painting one of them.  Once again the blue was an unfamilir colour, but with a nice big area to work on I just kept lightening and layering until I had something I was happy with.  This guy took me roughly 2 hours, and once again I was very happy with the result.

Tomorrow I'm aiming to do Ikiryo (Kirai's spirit), and the other two Seishin, which will leave me with Datsue-Ba and the two Onryo to paint over the weekend. Then next week I'll pick up the rest of the crew and get them all painted.  I'll probably need more Gaki and Seishin, but these should be enough to get me started with the hobby.

 

So there's my crew choice!  Expect more photos to follow shortly!