Hobby Update: New Magnilde and Cursed Daughter

One of my last purchases for WHFB was a Valkia model, which I hobbied up with a head swap a few years later to run as Herja of the Fallen, though by the time I got to her she had been nerfed into Magnilde. It's a fun model and I like the pose and such, but it is an older Finecast model, meaning it is very flimsy and brittle. Most of the spikey bits on the ends of the wings have all snapped off already! Magnilde is solid performer, so I'll likely take her often in the Varangur lists, so I want something a little more durable for travel and gaming. 

Mantic does make a Magnilde model, but despite being official, this one just didn't look right to me. A whip for CS2? Furs for Def5? I must be missing some lore here. After Battle 021, I was idly browsing around the shop and looking through some of the many pre-primed D&D-style minis, and found a Deep Cut Barbarian from Pathfinder that looked like it should do the trick. My Fallen are non-human, so I wanted their affiliated leader here to also look non-human. The Pathfinder Orc looks the part, and should fit nicely with the current Fallen models I think, should anyone look closely.

The new Magnilde. I need to paint the edging for all my Varangur. I haven't picked a color yet. 

Nothing too fancy here for a paint job. The only thing to draw attention to is using the Army Painter Speed Paint "Hardened Leather" on the Gehenna's Gold armored cloak/skirt things. I got the brush nice and wet, so this functioned like more of a wash than anything else, but did lead to a nice and vibrant effect in person. I want to play around more with this paint range, so this is a small step in doing so. As mentioned already, Magnilde has been a solid performer, giving some nice results as a very disruptive individual character. Hopefully we'll see this new version on the table soon!

The Pathfinder blister had a second mini, a less-geared barbarian with a large two-handed axe. While I was at it, I hobbied this one up as well. I painted the legs a dark grey, and then remembered that I wanted to try out the Army Painter Speed Paints a little more, and tossed the Hardened Leather on all the leathery-looking armor. 

The Cursed Son, er Daugther. This was a female orc barbarian after all.

The picture is trash, unfortunately. I had a hard time getting it to focus, and thought I finally had a good pic, but evidently not. In person, it does provide a really nice gradient and look on all the leathery armor bits, so yeah, it does what it is supposed to at least. Good showing so far on the Hardened Leather Speed Paint, despite the poor picture here.

I thought this could be a good Cursed Son option, though actually reading the stats now, it's got very similar staying power to Magnilde, and is pretty tough out of the book with a -/15 Nerve and a strong 5+ Defense. I don't think this mini captures that staying power, but that's ok as I think I want to test them out with the Wings of Honeymaze, which will lower its Defense. The boots of the mini has wings, and there are feathers in the hair and on the belt, so highlighting those with the same Gehenna's Gold and Hardened Leather "wash", I think this should be passable was wings and draw attention to the model? If flying boots work for an rpg, they should work fine here too I think? I'm not sold on the metallic hair feathers, so I may go back and try some more normal colors. There wasn't much definition to the feathers, so figured I'd try the metallic route first to just draw attention to it.

The new Magnilde should hit the table soon. We'll see about squeezing in a Cursed Son as well. I think a duo of flying individuals would be scary, but as individuals, neither are particularly killy. Worth checking out, but we'll need to test to see if they are worth running in tandem.