Pages

Sunday 20 February 2011

003 - Meet the Neverborn

There I was, happily painting my way through legions of Imperial Guardsmen and Leman Russ tanks, eagerly looking forward to having the army finished by the new year and ready to join the local gaming club, the Leeds Night Owls to learn how to play 40k, when I was bitten by the Neverborn bug!

While browsing their forums I came across mention of the game of Malifaux, and a quick Google search led me to this picture of the creepy little serial killing baby known as "Baby Kade". My curiosity immediately piqued, I delved further, and after discovering he partners with a giant carnivorous Teddy Bear(!!), I knew I had to try this game and that my starting faction couldn't be anything else but the Neverborn. I immediately picked up a Legion of Sorrows box set which would allow me to start playing straight away.

My Crew
Pandora
Owner of the legendary Box, Pandora is one of the 4 currently available Neverborn Masters, and plays completely differently to any other master in the game. By opening the Box, Pandora unleashes the worst fears and emotions of her enemies, who literally kill themselves with self-loathing and pity. She can also be incredibly fast, appearing and disappearing before the enemy crew has time to react, and her style is very much "death by a thousand cuts", preferring to chip away at the health of enemy models 1 Wd at a time, rather than wade in and hit things hard with a big sword (that's Lilith's job!)


I painted Pandora in a similar scheme to the example in the Malifaux book. I had experimented with a few different colours for her dress, including red and white, but nothing seemed to look right, so I settled on the cream colour.
The magical flame emerging from the open box is actually half the size of the one the model comes supplied with. I felt that putting the whole piece on obscured the rest of the model, so I snipped off the bottom half and only used the tip of the fire. The fire was painted GW Jade Green, a colour which I carried through to the whole crew in small amounts, to give a unified scheme.

Coat: Liche Purple/Liche Purple+Skull White
Dress/Leg Wraps: Graveyard Earth/Bleached Bone
Skin: Dark Flesh/Dwarf Flesh/Elf Flesh
Hair: Chaos Black/Skull White streaks

Pandora's base was made by cutting out sections of cardboard from a cereal packet in the shapes of flagstones, and glueing them on with PVA. This was then drybrushed to resemble stone, and a few tufts of static grass added to finish the effect.


Candy
Candy is the Woe of Innocence Corrupted, and she features in the top right corner of this blog in Voodoo-doll form. Candy hates humans, and those she cannot ensnare with poisoned sweets often fall foul of her ability to use her victims guilt and regret against them.
I decided to paint my Neverborn children with regular skin tones, instead of the pallid, undead looking skin in the Malifaux book, as I didn't want them to look like zombies, especially when I might consider painting zombies in a Ressurectionist crew in the future. Plus I figure that if they look like real children then it's even more scary!


Pink Dress: Blood Red+Skull White, highlighted with extra Skull White
White Frills: Fortress Grey/Skull White
Hair: Bestial Brown/Sunburst Yellow
Skin: Dark Flesh/Dwarf Flesh/Elf Flesh

Candy's lollipop was painted with a Jade Green spiral pattern, she was based with the same cardboard flagstones as Pandora.


Baby Kade
Kade is the Woe of Innocence Lost, and he delights in pretending to be a baby to lure his victims to their death, which he dispenses with a gigantic (to him at least!) carving knife. While not the strongest melee fighter available to Pandora, if he gets the right triggers at the right time, he can be deadly. Plus, isn't he just so CUTE? The model is one of the tiniest things I've painted, but I still wanted to pull off a nice paint job, so he took a lot of time to get right.


I painted his teddy bear in the colours of a panda, as I intend to add Teddy to the crew soon, and he will also be painted as a great big evil (but cuddly) panda.

Skin: Dark Flesh/Dwarf Flesh/Elf Flesh
Nappy: Fortress Grey/Skull White

I did my best to make his eyes look as deranged as possible, by painting small pupils in the centre of his big round eyes.


Sorrows
These guys are minor Woes, basically backup for Pandora and friends, and they don't have any particularly special abilities in themselves. Their main use is in linking up to the main crew members in order to borrow their more effective spells, and absorb damage from enemies attacks. I painted them slightly different to the pictures on the box, because I didn't like the bright green colour that made them look like Slimer from the Ghostbusters.


Shadows Layer: Dark Angels Green
Base/Middle Layer: Jade Green
Highlight Layer: Rotting Flesh

The protruding tongues and eyes were painted with Scab Red followed by Blood Red highlights. Lastly, the bases were finished off with cardboard flagstones and static grass

The next addition to the crew is going to be Teddy, following which I'm leaning towards a couple of Stitched Together, who appear to work well with Pandora's Willpower based mechanics.

0 comments: