Coryphee: A Flourish and Knife-shoes

In terms of style and character, I'm going on record to say that the coryphee are unique to Malifaux.

A coryphée normally refers to a rank in ballet. The rank-and-file ballerinas are the "corps de ballet", and the coryphée serves as their lieutenant -- the lead dancer of the corps, but below the other dancers.

But of course, this a wargame. So even dancing becomes violent.  In the game, Malifaux's coryphee (sans acute accent) keeps the dancer garb but are embellished with blades on the hands and feet.  They have an ability to move into an opponent's space to attack and move out without getting hit in turn.

So you have a nimble dancer adorned in taffeta with scissorhands who deftly tumbles in to cut you to ribbons and then tumbles out in time with the music.

Further, they're man-sized puppets, not people... because it helps to be a mannequin if you're going to dance around in knife-shoes.

So... graceful bladed ballet-lieutenant puppets.  Can't think of where I've seen that elsewhere.

Onto painting them.  I've played these only with basic priming done in a game or two. I found it was really difficult to figure from the card which one was half kneeling down (aka Coryphee 1) and which one was re-enacting the crane kick in Karate Kid (aka Coryphee 2).  So lesson learned?  Paint them the same color as the cards (i.e., same color as the box).  I don't often follow the canned color pattern, but experience showed the way to wisdom here.

General Color on both

• "Skin" Fabric - Base: FolkArt Butter Pecan, Wash: Vallejo Sepia Ink, Highlight 1: FolkArt Linen
• Boots - Base: heavy glaze of black, Highlight 1: FolkArt Metallic Black to finish (to give a shiny leather look).
• Blades - Vallejo NMM Grey Metallic set

Coryphee 1 - Color pallet Pink

• Corset and gloves - Reaper Gem Purple
• Bows on Corset - Base: Reaper Entrail Pink, Wash: Brilliant Red, Highlight: Entrail Pink and Apple Barrel Antique White (also see final touch notes below using FolkArt Metallic White)
• Dress - Base: Reaper Entrail Pink, Wash: Reaper Crimson Red, Off Shadow: Brilliant Red, Highlight: Entrail Pink and Apple Barrel Antique White
• Bows on dress - Base: Reaper Gem Purple
• Undergarment - Reaper Moldy Skin and Bloodless Skin

Coryphee 2 - Color pallet Turquoise

• Corset - Base: Reaper Ghoul Skin, Main Shadow: Reaper HD Field Grey, Lines: Bloodless Skin
• Dress and Bow - Base: FolkArt Aqua, Shadow 1: Reaper HD Turquoise, Deeper Shadow: Reaper HD Winter Blue, Highlight: Reaper HD Ice Blue and Apple Barrel Antique White
• Undergarment - Base: Reaper Moldy Skin

Quick shot of what Coryphee 1 looked like after Grey prime, black wash, white drybrush while I worked on the "skin" fabric

Coryphee 2. Initial work.  Stripes on the corset worked out well.  And I was also pleased with the undershadow colors on the back of the dress.

Here's Coryphee1 mounted on base. The Malifaxu 2e figures have an annoying recurrance with great figures but impossible to stay mounted on the base due to the size of figure's foot print.

Size comparison with AA batteries to show perspective to the problem.

Anyway, at this point I felt the bow had no "pop".  Visually, it just got confused with the rest of the dress. So I decided to mix my 2 Highlight colors with some FolkArt Metallic White and just lightly go around all of its edges. 

The base was looking a little lonely - mostly because it was off-center.  So I crafted a little ribbon laying on the floor out of green stuff, as if the coryphee had just swung a scissorhand to cut a ribbon. Used the same blue dress color as above.

Now presenting the graceful bladed ballet-lieutenant puppets...