Out of the mist they come...

Many moons ago (well, a few moons ago) I promised to show off my SAGA Welsh warband. Today I will make good on (a portion) of that promise. I still have Cavalry and the Warlord to paint, truth be told, but other than that they are all done... erm....

Anyway, lets take a look at some figures. These figures are all Gripping Beast; as I tend to stay with one manufacturer and Gripping Beast published this amazing game I thought they deserved my money. The figures are nice too, which helps.

First up we have the Welsh levy with bows (Bonnedig).

The astute amongst you will be thinking that the bows they carry are not the ones that come with the miniatures. And you would be correct. I purchased the Gripping Beast wire spears (which are really great, by the way) and, noticing that the bows would I also be brittle I bent off cuts of wire and made my own. I like them.

Next, some Hearthguard (Teulu)

 They are painted with better cloth and shield patterns than the warriors, to represent their higher social status. They also have more red in their colour scheme for the same reason.
Talking about shields, most people seem to use the Little Big Man shield transfers; obviously, I do not. This is because I simply prefer to hand-paint all my own shields.
The original warlord has been re-appropriated to lead the Teulu (he is my Warlord's brother. The other Teulu figure is a battle-banner bearer; he needs painting).
You will also notice that my welsh carry a lot of javelins (usually tucked behind shields); I wanted to represent the javelins on my models so I used the original spears and cut them down.

Next up, some Warriors (Priodaur).

A lot of Christian symbolism on my shields (mostly, ChiRho). Also, each of my warrior units carry a small banner (cosmetic only, not a battle banner) with a Christian symbol. I just like little banners and pennants. The Hearthguard are meant to have one but I have not gotten around to it yet.

The second unit of Warriors (Priodaur)

I just want to mention the bases and how I did them. I used a polymer air drying clay to make rough ground (use artists air dry clay, not kids because it crumbles; I used fimoair from Hobbycraft in the UK). I then pushed broken bits of slate into the clay before it dried (use a little PVA to fix it in place).
It was painted brown and drybrushed lighter brown (mud) before adding patches of static grass and finally lichen. I think they look pretty good, personally.

See you in the next update.

Praise the Sun[titan]!

A quick update regarding my scratch-built Heirotitan - he is painted.

I did him mostly stone and goldleaf with some lapis lazuli (turquoise) stones inserted into the statue.

As for the building of the model itself: the top half is the Necrosphinx and he has a scratch built staff (made from brass rod and plastic card) and scratch built scales (made from a bow, some modelling chain and shoulder pads). And the legs? A Thor action figure. I am not joking. He has Thor's legs. Thor wears some sort of chainmail and I filled most of it in using liquid green stuff. However, I wish I had now used milliput (watered into a paste) as the liquid green stuff still left 'rippling' on the legs.

Anyway, some pictures:

 So, there he is; a scratch-built Heirotitan.

See you in the next update.

There is no shelter here...

Malifuax 2 is here!

I loved Malifaux. I like how it uses cards instead of dice and that it is a skirmish game with multiple objectives to achieve during the game. But most of all, I ADORE the miniatures. Wyrd produce miniatures with exceptional character; just by simply viewing a Wyrd miniature it tells a story.

My favorite faction was the Neverborn and, in particular, Pandora's crew. These guys are, essentially, demons that walk amongst people, disguised as innocents. In reality, they are twisted evil natures of innocence lost (typified by Pandora herself - Pandora's box, anyone?).

Actually, the Neverborn are misunderstood; almost 'noble savages' if you will. They do not like the fact that the humans are encroaching on their territory and they want to scare them away (or outright kill them...).

Anyway, enough fluff, lets see some models!

Wyrd have gone to plastics. I believe the plan is to make everything plastic.

They are actually computer rendered models, rather than hand sculpted. There are pros and cons to this, of course. Lets ignore the loss of things done wholly by human hand (this is happening through all walks of life) and instead focus on the models themselves (though, it still takes a lot of human skill to render a model...).

One of the problems of this method is that the detail is not as deep and, actually, they had some early problems with featureless detail. Fortunately, this has now been mostly sorted out and the detail is good (still not as deep as hand sculpted, but it is not an issue unless you paint with crayons..!).

However, the models look gorgeous! The scale is much easier to control using this method and you can get some superb poses and some much better definition to fingers and other thin parts. This is a double-edged sword though, because it makes the models very brittle in places.

Anyway, lets take a closer look at some models.

First up is Pandora herself. This model is so much slimmer than the previous model (and I like it a lot more). Her feet are a small surface area to attach to the base, which I anticipate as the problem area here. Overall, a massive improvement on the old pandora (which, to be honest, was a bit manish...).

Candy was a great miniature before, if a little flat. This new mini solves that as it is not flat at all (in fact, none of the new miniatures suffer from flat appearance that plagues some metal ranges).  She has lost a little of the evilness though (the original had a pair of scissors behind her back) but the miniature is still brilliant. As Pandora, her legs are thin (though totally in proportion) and the contact with the base is small.

Baby Kade is quite a bit different from the original, though no less sinister. The original was carry his teddy and had a knife behind his back and a truly evil look on his face; a great mini. This one is not as overtly sinister but is equally as disturbing.
This one is more baby-like with excellent proportions. He has pinned his teddy to the floor and looks like he is about to start performing an autopsy on it using a knife. This is a fairly robust figure with only the knife looking like it is able to be broken if not careful.

 The original Sorrows were great figures. These are better. The poses on these are brilliant and very dynamic. They are robust too, with the only possible problem being the fingures (look at those fingers, though!). The only thing I am a little dubious about is the 'swirls of power' around the bottoms of the figures - these were extra bits that glue on and they look a little out of place from certain angles. However, I am confident that once they are painted they will look fine.

This poltergeist is a HUGE improvement over the original, which was, frankly, awful. However, I acknowledge that this one just looks like a large Sorrow, but I am fine with that as it fits into the crew better that way (and, to be fair, it acts a little like a large Sorrow in the game).
I like this model, particularly the pose; really looks like its screaming at you and reminds me of the librarian from GhostBusters... GET HER!

"Coooey! Come on boys! I will take you to... HELL!" 

These are Beckoners; a sort of Demonic Hooker...
The models are really great, if a little dainty with some possible snapping issues (particularly on the cane).
But, again, overall great models.

To sum up, I am really happy with the new Malifaux plastics, despite some issues with brittleness. I cannot wait to see some of the other plastic redesigns and how they can continue to improve.
I especially need a plastic Teddy as the metal one is awesome (see: http://whogoesfirst.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/where-does-he-get-those-wonderful-toys.html)

See you in the next update.

Skulls of the Foe!

I have painted some more of my Tomb kings army; the Catapults and some Horsemen.

First up, here are the Catapults:

These are the older Catapults, which I think look better than the new Tomb Kings one (personal preference, of course). I have also made Skulls of the Foes tokens for each catapult, so that upgrade can be represented on the board.

The paint job is deliberately simple; I don't see catapults as grand colourful contraptions. More likely, they are crewed by reanimated slaves with an overseer.

I really like these catapult models.

Next up, I have completed a unit of Skeleton Horsemen.

These Horsemen match the colour scheme of the Regulars in the rest of the Tomb Kings army, namely the white cloth with the turquoise as opposed to the black headclothes of the horse archers. This is because these are part of the regular army, acting as battlefield messengers and scouts.
In game, they have some use chasing off missile cavalry or redirecting charges onto the warmachines.

Well, that is it for this quick update. The next one is a scratch built Hierotitan I am working on at the moment.

See you in the next update.

Where does he get those wonderful toys?...

Bit of a mixed bag update this time around, lots of miniatures from lots of different games. These are all from my personal collection and I doubt I will be selling them because I like them so much.

So, lets crack on with the pics:

Meet The Family. Actually, this is not quite all The Family, we are missing another son; he has a flame thrower and a gimp mask. Anyway, these are from Foundry's Street Violence range (a range I have quite a lot of) and I particularly love The Family.

Lets take a closer look at each figure.

Meet Ma. As desturbing as this miniature is, I must admit that I quite enjoyed painting it...
I was torn between painting her *shudder* knickers and boots white or black. I chose black at the time, but now I was thinking maybe white would be a little more, erm... disturbing. I love her pink babydoll nightie thing and thought (after I did it) that maybe the white would go better with the pink babydoll...

I cannot deny it; everything about this figure is totally AWESOME!
There. I said it. And I am not proud of myself...

Meet two of her sons. I really love these figures; they are very evocative of the theme. The whole Family is kind of Texas Chainsaw Massacre style...

The bases on these miniatures are not complete (they have been sculpted from modelling putty), I was waiting until I finish the gimp flamer guy first.

They look such a happy Family; not at all dysfunctional and mentally disturbed...

Anyway, on with more miniatures.

Here we have some Epic scale Deathguard Marines. I LOVE epic (when it was called Space Marine and Titan Legions), it is my favourite of the GW miniature games by far. I think it is because you feel you are actually taking part in a huge battle, as opposed to a skirmish like Warhammer and 40K.

I converted all the Nurgle Rhino tanks with modelling putty (Green Stuff) which is hard to work with at this scale.

You might be wondering on the colour scheme? Nurgle is greens and browns, surely? Well, yes. But not Deathguard; they are actually white. However, I did not like the white/cream that is usually traditionaly, so I went with a light grey instead; I just liked it (in real like, they are actually lighter then they appear here). 

Lets take a closer look at the rhinos:

This is my favorite one, the tongue turned out pretty well, I think.

Spines bursting out of the tank.

All of them have pock-marks, cuts and the Nurgle mark.

Next, lets have a look at a Malifaux figure. I will be picking up the new Malifaux plastics at some point, but I have quite a few of the metal ones from Malifaux 1.

Meet Teddy:

 I painted it (obviously) as a carebear - Nightmare Bear. Here is a close-up of his emblem; an evil moon licking a star:

I thought that this was very evocative of the theme of Teddy in Malifaux (he feeds on fear). 

I was apprehensive about painting blood on the mouth and hands; I normally shy away from blood on miniatures (I think it generally looks cliche on weapons and such). However, I could not really escape it for this miniature; if I did not do it, it would look too cute instead of a feral monster. It also contrasts nicely with the blue fur.

So, there you have it; a mix bag of miniatures.

The next update will be more Tomb Kings miniatures; Skull Catapults and the scratch built Heirotitan.

One final thing:

They taste better with the leaves still on. Fact.

See you in the next update.