Avanti IT!

 Rounding out the remainder of my Malifaux crew at these little fellows. They sure do like to clown around! Pun pun pun pun pun pun.... They are all little minions controlled by the puppet master in my last post. More of a swarm tactic.Continuing the basing theme of a Victorian Venice.

Also continuing my inspiration of "things that scared me". They were painted in the likeness of Tom Curry's representation of the clown IT. Besides him and that little leprechaun horror movie, they round out the top 3 of childhood fears. 

Avanti! While the very last of my Malifaux crew, Teddy, got side lined; these fellows took his place.




 A couple squads of Italians have formed up in the square. While originally purchased for a Eastern front force from the Perry Brothers, I doubled down and went with a neutral paint scheme to be able to use them for both North Africa and the eastern front.

 

 If you see some horses in the background, that is because they are. The entire inspiration of building this army was 2 units. The heroic and often fatal charges of Italian cavalry on the eastern front, or the guerrilla warfare from horse back in East Africa. 

Here are two of the internets best articles on the subject that inspired my interest.

North Africa Raiders 

Eastern Front: The Last Cavalry Charge

Unrelated, but I highly, highly recommend reading the book, "An Army at Dawn", Rick Atkinson's 1/3 series on America in World War 2 and the invasions and operations that led to the end of the war. Army at Dawn is the North Africa campaign, Torch through Tunisia.

 

 Much can be said and debated about the scale of Perrys to other companies models. But they're metal lines are almost perfectly in scale with warlords and should not be a concern when considering buying these models. I really wanted to capture the posses of the "action" models and mounted up some fortifications for them to be defending.

 The second unit that inspired this army, is NOT the tank below, but an anti aircraft gun that was truck mounted. It will appear later, once painted of course!

The L6/40 light tank is made by Company B, and like most Italian armor, it did not fair well.... Outdated from the onset it turned into a recon tank due to its low profile and quickness.

Crimson Doom

“The thrill of a thousand worlds dying at once, but my ultimate goal lies beyond the downfall... Bow before the Crimson King! Bow… or die!”

Continuing down the rabbit hole, we have Malifaux's master of puppets, Collodi. First off this guy comes off as a character from the streets of Venice; but going deeper he inspires the arch villain from Stephen King's The Dark Tower saga. 

 The overall basing was very ad-lib and the whole crew has got an orange dusted, white stone ruin. Part of the desert terrain found in the pages on the aforementioned book series.

 The Crimson King is intent on reaping the benefits of a decaying world.

 Part of the King's henchmen are his green "doombots". Not to give away too much of the story, but the fantasy world crosses over into modern reality. In which, the henchmen were designed on what were thought as powerful creatures from the other world's culture.

 In the book, the robot warriors were wolves in green hoods armed with golden snitch hand grenades and laser swords. One of the crazy cross overs involved in the decaying world of the The Dark Tower.

 While still reading the rules, painting progress continues!

I really like how the green turned out, got some new colors in the works to move away from my comfort zone of the red spectrum.

A Turn Down the Rabbit's Hole...

... Leads to dark places.

With my adventures into Malifaux and the Neverborn faction; maybe dark modeling has been occurring...

The models that caught my eye were a lot of the nightmarish creatures and evil dreams. Part of that draw was taking models or concepts that I was frightened of myself as a child.

1. The Nightmare Before Christmas. As a child I could never watch this movie and really questioned the people that enjoyed this movie. The villain, Oogie Booige, has thrived down down the rabbit hole...

 Santa had an unfortunate fate in this version of the tale....

  His pals that are up next, draw inspiration from Stephen King's The Dark Tower, and winnie the pooh.... all with a twist...

One last call out, the NOVA Open Charity Foundation has set up a blog to track the last 6 weeks leading up to the event. Check it out and buy some tickets if the fantastic armies interest you!

http://novacf.blogspot.com/