Yellow Thunder #4 The Mistress and her Pet

Misaki and her personal totem, Shang, have one of the nicest stories that I've ever read from the world of Malifaux. As a child, the Oyabun's daughter devoted most of her time to honing her martial arts skills. Her diligence wasn't the only thing that set her apart from other children though. She claimed she could see what she called foxfire. It was something she started referring to as her special friend. It wasn't until after she's crossed the Breach on her way to Malifaux that her unique companion really came into being in the form of Shang.

 Misaki is a true assassin. She moves very quickly around the board and hr charge has a range of 8' and ignores other models and buildings as long as her target is in line of sight. Add a 2' melee range to that and it becomes clear that she must always be taken into account by opposing player. What's more, she has the Stalking Bisento upgrade, which potentially gives her a chance to dish out as many as 4 attacks in a round. If you add a Recalled training, she gets + to all her flips for one turn, which makes her a true melee monster. Her other Melee attack, Thunder, gives her a chance to do blast damage (which she ignores). This can be very effective against certain crews (hello Dreamer!).
I've already mentioned mobility. With the Next Target trigger she can push up to 4' in any direction after damaging her target. If she doesn't manage to jump out of the engagement, she can always turn to a Misdirection upgrade. As long as you have a mask in control hand, she can pass on the damage to any other model within 2' (apart from the attacker).

Misaki is probably the most complex model I've ever painted for Malifaux. Her pose is very dynamic and the number of details can seem a bit daunting at first.I found choosing colors for each of these a bit challenging but ended up throwing in a bit of red and turquoise along with a touch of blue and green on the metal parts.
I used a Zen base insert for her base. At first I didn't really know what to do with this special effect she's creating but in the end decided to make it look like she was splashing water. I needed to make a few changes to the base for it to happen.

 I really like the design here. Shang is a truly unique totem and painting him was a lot of fun. I chose a rather simple base for him as any detail would probably be lost there. He's pretty big and barely fits into a 30 mm base.
In game he bring in some help to Misaki in the form of healing action and some potential damage output. Still, with a Df of 5 and only 4 wounds it's probably a better idea to keep him in the back (but within 6' of Misaki).

And here's the finished crew. I normally paint using much darker shades so it was a nice change. Somehow it seems to me that the Ten Thunders get the most amazing miniatures as they're unique in design and have very dynamic poses.