Assembly was pretty simple; the body is all one piece, the right arm and staff is another piece, the left arm is another, the head another, and the little backpack (with steam exhaust pipes) is the last piece. I didn't use the backpack and filled in the peg-hole on his back with putty. The mini's waist is very skinny and I actually snapped it in half while assembling it and had to pin and reglue it. The arms and head went on fine, but the end of the staff snapped off. I ended up replacing the (pewter, bendable) staff with an aluminum rod and sculpted a new top... except that top looked like crap (it was just a layer of putty over the rod, crimped in a pattern to give it a texture) and halfway through painting the mini I tore off that modification and built a new one (shown) out of a leftover piece from an old GW skeleton sprue, which turned out pretty cool.

I played World of Warcraft for years, and the liches in that game have long, flowing robes and generally have a purple color scheme, so I tried to replicate that look with this mini. Base color is a deep purple, drybrushed with a lighter purple. The staff and various ornaments are a sickly green (Reaper's Sea Foam, I think). Metallic parts on the arms and shoulders are metallic silver drybrushed with metallic green. The hands, head, and the staff's horse-skull are a standard Sean bone-paintjob (mid-brown brushed with light brown brushed with ivory.

(You can see the official painted photo here.)