Couple of weeks ago I decided to get into Malifaux game and eventually ordered 2 boxes: Ten Thunders and Kaeris crew. The boxes have arrived and I wouldn't be myself if I hadn't jumped straight into assembly of those nice new plastics.
Both boxes have really nice artwork, Ten Thunders box is significantly bigger, because it contains a sprue of plastic parts, whereas Kaeris box has 6 white metal minis that are all one piece (excpet Kaeris, but I'll get to it later).
Ten Thunders
As I've already mentioned, this box contains a single sprue with 6 multi part plastic miniatures:
As far as I know, Wyrd (Malifaux' producent) has started using plastic not so long ago. It doesn't show at all, the quality is amazing here. The details are extremely fine (A LOT of caution required, while cutting them from the sprue), mold lines almost invisible and easy to remove. Nowadays people tend to say that Games Workshop plastics are the best on the market, and while I don't want to disagre, I must say that Wyrd is on par with GWs products. The injection is flawless, material is of very good quality (and it's a hard plastic, which is important when parts are that small). Sculpts and general art direction are of course a question of taste, but I really like it.
(sorry for the poor quality of some of the following pics)
 |
| Misaki |
The poses are extremely dynamic, especially one of the Ten Thunders' leader - Misaki. I have no idea what the woman was doing and how she ended up in this position, looks like she's doing some kind of magic with her foot, quite awesome if you ask me. My only gripe with this figure is not really its fault - I don't like how small the eyes are, it will be very hard to paint them correctly. Otherwise this mini should be awesome to paint, I already have a couple of ideas about the color scheme and maybe some free-hands?
 |
| Ototo |
 |
| Torakage |
 |
| Shang |
The rest of the minis are great too. The burning dog is really cute and offers a lot of potential for creative painting. Old guy with a huge club looks hilarious too me and Torakage are a nice, very solid group of scary warriors. You can feel how fast and deadly they are in combat just by looking at them.
Overall I like the minis a lot, Misaki is my favorite, but the rest looks really great too.
They all went together really well,the only problem was with one part of Shang's tale, which I didn't know where to put (it didn't fit so well in the obvious place where it's suppose to be). That brings me to my biggest complaint about this box - there's no instructions... You do have a rendered version of all 6 figures on the back of the box which is enough in 99% of cases, but Shang's tale was apparently in the unlucky 1% for me :P
The other thing is that you only get one bigger base in this box, while both Ototo and Shang don't fit the small ones, does anyone know which mini should go on which base?
Kaeris crew
The second box consists of 6 miniatures in 7 parts (Kaeris' wings are separate from her body). There is some flesh (you can see exactly how much on the pics below, I haven't cleaned anything off), some minor mold lines, nothing too bad if you know how to work with white metal minis. The casting quality is great - I haven't seen any faults other than said flesh.
 |
| Kaeris |
 |
| Fire Gamin |
 |
| male Gunsmith |
 |
| female Gunsmith |
The figures have a completely different feel to them than the plastics, which is not a bad thing at all. They are very well detailed and I really like their sculpts too. Especially Kaeris, which is a gorgeous mini, I was thinking about getting it long before I decided to get into the game. Gunsmiths look really cool with their western-ish vibe.
I must say I'm really impressed by both metal and plastic minis from Wyrd, I hope I will get more in future. Can't wait to paint them :)
