Diesel DM

Mallet – Mason’s Guild

This was undoubtedly the perfect model for me to kick off painting a new game system.  The sculpt is amazing, there is just enough detail to keep it visually interesting without being overwhelming.  The pose is a wonderfully dynamic running pose that gives you the feeling that Mallet is off to charge another mark.  Lastly, the expression on his face is really well executed.

Mallet – Unassembled

Assembly was straightforward with the hammer connecting at each wrist.  There was very little in the way of mold lines or flashing on Mallet. The hammer itself was probably connected to his sprue at the bottom right in the picture above, but had separated in the bag, leaving only to clip off the extra metal on the end of the foot tab.  There’s also a small piece that needs to be clipped between his left foot and the bottom tab.

Mallet – Assembled

Mallet – Assembled (Back)

Painting this model was a delight.  I’m sure part of it is that “new game system” honeymoon period, not to mention this game will have no units!  No painting 12 nearly identical models, hooray!  The sculpt provided nice spaces for doing blends and it wasn’t bogged down with too much detail.

Mallet – Face Painting

As usual I started by painting the face and hair. This is often my favorite part and it helps set a tone for the rest of the model.  I used my standard face-painting colors from Warmachine.

Yikes! Too blue!

Next I continued by blocking in my colors. I wanted to mimic the studio scheme fairly close, but as this was my first Mason model I had to determine the paints to use.  My first try had a grey shirt and blue pants, but that was way too blue.  Unlike Warmachine, none of the art seemed to have extremely bright colors.  They are all more subdued.  So, I painted over that with something closer to denim.

More denim, more better

This was an improvement, but now the pants didn’t contrast with the shirt enough. I ended up with denim paints, black shirt, silver arm and brown leathers.  The studio art shows black leathers, but that was going to blend in with the black shirt too much and I wanted another color in the palette. I borrowed from my standard Cygnar paint selections for the armor, leather and denim pants.

Mallet – Back

The last thing to do was the base.  I practiced on a couple spare bases to determine how I wanted to accomplish the field.  In the end I laid down a mix of sand and fine grit into a base of white PVA glue.  I then painted in Battlefield Brown, dry-brushed with Bloodstone, then lightly with Rucksack Tan.  Then some more PVA glue and covered most of the base with GF9 static grass.  I thinned down a little  Morrow White and painted a line across the grass using a small straight-edge.  I have to say, painting the line at the end is oddly satisfying.  I’ll do a more detailed article on basing in the future.