Lieutenant Allison Jakes gets a promotion, and Cygnar gets a new warcaster. Enter Captain Allison Jakes.

From her origins in WARMACHINE: Tactics, we always knew we would be evolving Jakes into a full-fledged warcaster on the tabletop. So, we made sure to give her room to grow with her initial design while keeping her both identifiable and iconic.

Artist Andrea Uderzo and Art Director Mike Vaillancourt quickly upgraded her during the concept stage with a few variations. We toyed with letting her grow her hair out, but ultimately we decided that the bob was very much her iconic hairstyle. You can also see a couple variants on her coat and armor that we could choose from.

It didn’t take long to dial in the final concept. You might recognize that her new swords are repurposed versions of the weapon once wielded by Commander Dalin Sturgis.

Following the detailed concept, Mike put together a collection of possible poses from which we chose our final.

The color palette came together quickly thanks to her original incarnation as a Cygnar solo. This guide would be key for our illustration and miniature painting steps of the process.

Jeremy Chong’s first sketches of the art did exactly what Mike and I had asked of him, showcasing Jakes in a shallow swamp fighting off a horde of scrap thralls. Once I saw these sketches, however, I immediately did a face-palm, realizing the requested scrap thralls would be exploding as she cut them down. Figuring it would be best not to show our newest Cygnaran hero covered in exploded thrall viscera and spare parts, we opted to swap in mechanithralls and spare ourselves the humiliation (until now) of our oversight.

With the proper undead baddies in place, Jeremy’s final art is a great scene to behold. Jakes is going to have to chop through a lot more of the undead before she gets a second round with Sturgis.

Above you can see the before and after of an early round of sculpting by Javier Garcia Ureña with feedback from Studio Director Ron Kruzie. Most of the feedback centers on bulking up details so they translate well to the size of our miniatures.

And here in the final round, you can see her posed and ready for action. After this, the model is digitally engineered by our own Nathan Lombardi, printed for mastering, and moved into the metal production process.

And here she is in all her glory, thanks to Studio Painter Dallas Kemp. Get your own copy of her and our other new warcasters at Gen Con and the Privateer Press Online Store next week, from August 4th through 7th. Be sure to tune in tomorrow for a preview of our next piece in this series!