Alfred
Publisher: Knight Models
Cost: N/A (See Below)
Release Date: March 2015
Get it Here: N/A (See Below)
The Batman Miniature Game is slowly but surely growing in popularity outside of Spain and England, especially now that Knight Models has released a physical copy of the rulebook with cleaned-up English (instead of the Spanglish it was originally written in). I know I’ve been a big proponent of the game for a while now, and I have nearly thirty figures for the game… even if I only have eight of them painted. You might have even seen some of my reviews, like the Stephen Amell version of Arrow or Swamp Thing. Well today I’m looking at Alfred.
Alfred is a special promotional piece you could only get by pre-ordering the normal version of the Batman Miniature Game rulebook. If you ordered the limited edition Joker cover version, you could get the Red Hood (Joker, not Jason Todd), but I strongly preferred Alfred, so that’s the version I grabbed. Alfred may eventually be available at conventions or if Knight Models ever does another promo, but for now, the only way you will be able to get him is via third party markets or miniature stores like Miniature Market who are including the Alfreds they received with the purchase of a Batman Miniature Game rulebook ala what Knight Models did for those who ordered the book directly from them. So let’s take a look at the model and his card and show you what you get if you eventually pick up Bruce Wayne’s trusty butler.
Alfred in the box. Poor guy was face down in foam!
Alfred outside the box.
The back of Alfred’s packaging. Notice the professional paint job I will not be able to achieve.
Here is Alfred’s stat card. He only costs 30 points to add to your warband, which is really low for a Batman team character. My Frank Miller and Nightwing figures are roughly 200 points combined! Of course, Alfred’s stats are quite low, in keeping with his point cost. He stands out by bringing a lot of extra money to the table, which lets him buy all sorts of equipment. His real selling point is the Medic special trait, which is unique to this figure. He’s essentially a cleric for your Batman army. This is great because Batman teams tend to be outnumbered due to their character’s high point costs. Alfred lets you fill in a small point gap, get a ton of equipment and heal your expensive key pieces. A fun figure to be sure, but he’s best left as a defensive piece.
Let’s start the paint job. Eyes are always the hardest part for me, and with Alfred I also had to do a mustache and eyebrows! That’s a lot of very tiny detail my hands generally aren’t capable of. Still, I had to give it my best, so in this shot you can see the beginnings of the face on a primed body (Chaos Black spray paint from Games Workshop). I used Abaddon Black for the hair, eyebrows and mustache, White Scar for the eyes, Mournfang Brown for the pupils, Agrax Earthshade for the mouth and finally Fair Skin (the only non GW paint on the face. Fair Skin is from Reaper Miniatures). This is a good start, but unfortunately, the photo is kind of blurry. I suck at taking photos and it doesn’t help my iPhone HATES to focus on the miniature I am trying to take a picture of.
Here I’m starting to add some detail to the character. Alfred’s shirt is going to be more White Scar, his bowtie is Abaddon Black and his vest is Dawnstone.
So this is Alfred’s back. There isn’t a lot of detail to it, and the fact he is in a tux (making the figure 90% black) doesn’t help. We do have the hands though, and oh my god, this was the hardest part of the mini. At first I tried White Scar but the paint was too thick, making the hands into an amorphous blob. It looked terrible. So I had to strip the paint from the hands and go with something else. Oddly enough, I turned to Reaper paints, which I am generally hesitant to use because they are so watery and runny. Here, the natural thinness of the paint worked wonderfully. I started with a basecoat of Maggot White (off-white) and then used Pure White as sort of a wash to bring out details. I couldn’t use a colored wash like Nuln oil because Alfred’s gloves needed to be spotless. He’s a very immaculate man after all. So by using two very thin but very different whites, I could bring out the detail in the hands. Again, the picture is a bit blurry, but you can easily make out all the fingers now.
Here I’ve gone over Alfred’s tuxedo with Abbadon black. Sure he’s been primed, but black primer is so dull. I wanted to have the tux glossy so it would pop. By using Abaddon Black over the primer you can make out details now, like creases in the outfit and the lapels.
The finally paint I used on Alfred was Brass Scorpion, and that was for the buttons of his jacket. It adds a bit of contrast and color to the very monochromatic figure.
So here is the completed rough draft of Alfred, minus any touch ups I need to go over, like where paint has flaked off or where I’ve slipped due to having no manually dexterity. Here you can see I need to touch up where the vest meets the suit jacket and a bit of the hair.
Here is the other side needing to be touched up. You can see I’ve got some flesh on the color, and the base has flecks of paint that need to be removed.
The finished Alfred from the back. Look at how those hands turned out!
The finished Alfred. Yes, he has a People’s Eyebrow going on. I imagine Master Wayne just said something like, “Thanks for the emergency surgery but I have to go out and stop The Court of Owls now.”
One more look at the finished product. As always, I am far from a professional quality painter. I’ve only been doing this for a little over a year, and I have no manual dexterity, but it’s always fun to paint a Knight Models miniature. The Batman Miniature Game is fantastic, easy to learn and a lot of fun. By the time this goes live, hopefully I’ll have painted Catwoman, Talia, Adam West and Captain American. Yes, that’s what his card from Knight Models says. Captain American. Hey, they speak/read/write English far better than I do Spanish so I will not nitpick.
Anyway, if you’re a fan of BMG, you might want to pick up Alfred. I mean, you’ll want the rulebook anyway and he’s a wonderful addition to any Batman warband.
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