Hound of Tindalos

"They are lean and athirst!" he shrieked... "All the evil in the universe was concentrated in their lean, hungry bodies. Or had they bodies? I saw them only for a moment, I cannot be certain."
— Frank Belknap Long, "The Hounds of Tindalos"
 

Over the years there have been loads of different takes on the Hounds of Tindalos. Some look like normal dogs, others skeletal, rotting dogs... others are just completely weird (which is appropriate I guess), but the Modiphius design for the hounds are, in my opinion, one of the nicest around with their angular representation. It also helps that the detail is really crisp on the models and really, really delicate. To put it into perspective, the ankles on that hound are pin thin. I was a little scared of breaking him when gluing it all together, but now he's based he seems fairly solid.

Terror rising

I got a nice surprise coming into the office this morning... my rather densely packed  Achtung! Cthulhu kickstarter parcel has arrived. How exciting!

 

 Just under the yellow bags were the floor tiles created by Henning Ludvigsen, the guy who created all the tiles for Descent 2nd Edition and Mansions of Madness... both of which are stunning and should be compatible with these in terms of scale (at least Mansion of Madness will be, not sure about Descent yet).

The tiles cover a number of locations from the forthcoming Assault on the Mountains of Madness campaign, so cover a Nazi underground base, snow covered outpost, Elder City ruins and more. Apparently there will be more sets coming in the future that cover other parts of the campaign as well as other locations. Looking at these tiles makes me wonder if it would be possible to create new stories and plots for Mansion of Madness using these. Each board is double sided and mounted on very thick boardgame style card and are either 10x10 or 5x10. Some of my favourites are the dockside tiles that combine to create a 10x20 square dock with boat.

I've not had time for more than a cursory glance at the figures yet, but the quality is outstanding. The detail and casting quality is flawless, with no visible cleanup needed on the parts, other than clipping any small bits from their sprues. Scale wise they should be perfect sat next to Bolt Action troops. Once I have some stuck together I will get a nice scale photo up. The one downside (if you see it as that) are the sheer number of small parts for some of the models and how delicate they are; we could also do with a parts list for each set as each set of 6 figures lumps all the bits into one bag. I fear for the lives of some of these as time goes on, especially the tentacles on the Cthonian or the rocket being carried by the Nachtwolf Stalker. I've included some examples below with a USB stick as scale guide to how small some of those bits are!

Some of the heroic characters come with some deep, dark secrets. One of them has a small dragon/imp thing sat on her shoulder and Natalya (below) has some sort of spirit riding inside her that comes out and protects her every now and then. The nice thing about both of the models is that neither has to have the mythos element attached as there are no visible markers on the model for where you stick them. This means that it would be possible to get two of each and have one version that is usable in normal pulp games and one for mythos/horror games.

 

Just look at the size of the sword in the second image... then realise that it is about a third as thick... I really don't know how it survived the post as some of the thicker pieces didn't.  

  

We've even got separate horns for the Night Gaunts!

  

And a mass of limbs to attach via very small ball joints... these are going to be as delicate as some of the worst infinity models and probably as nightmarish to glue together. Hopefully these delicate multi-part models will be the first to get the plastic treatment we were promised in the kickstarter.

 

 The only disappointment so far though is the huge scale difference between the two deep ones! There are three different sculpts (not including the special in the bulk box). The left hand model is miles bigger than the other two as you can see from the photo below. Thankfully I've only currently got one of each so he can be an older Deep One, but it would have been nice if they were all the same scale.

 

The rest will make an appearance as they get constructed and painted. I can safely say that I'm over the moon with them all and will be buying lots more as they get released for the skirmish game if the quiality remains at this level. The renders of the current range can be seen on http://www.modiphius.com/miniatures-range.html

Now to see if I can get replacements for the bits that didn't make it in the post!

I also suspect that this has just derailed my Vehicle entry for the sub-challenge this week as I really want to see them all constructed :)

Qu-sh-ug Kickstarter

 Pure Evil miniatures have started an interesting looking Kickstarter to pay for one of their limited models, the Qu-sh-ug, to get a more general release. As you can see, he's a nasty looking thing that looks like he has stepped out of Hellboy.

The tentacles are separate items and can be attached in any number and combination; there are some photos on the kickstarter with one or none that both look fairly good... but I think he looks really neat as he is.

There are also some cultist models (as seen next to the creature) that come with the higher level pledges, or as an add-on. These would work really nicely as stone statues in a graveyard, especially if you added some wings to it's back, or cracked it in two.

In other news, there has been some painting progress, despite all the packing. I still need to varnish and base them before photos are forthcoming, but another 12 zombicide walkers were completed last night... which is leaves 8 more walkers, 8 runners and 4 fatties left to do from the general trays. The quality isn't perfect, but they look good in a horde and were quick to do... so job's a good'un.

Warlord take on Dredd

Last year myself and a friend partook in the Dredd miniatures kickstarter from Mongoose Publishing. Almost 6 months on and we're still waiting for the final models to show up as they keep having manufacturing problems, or issues with the sculpters... so it's interesting to read this morning that Warlord Games are going to take over the production and distribution of the range. Hopefully this means we'll actually see some of our final bits arrive.

I'm also praying that it also sees the introduction of some quality control as there are some really dodgy models in the Mongoose range... sadly this includes some of the newer figures from the kickstarter (World Judges I'm looking at you!).

This one will be an interesting development to keep an eye on.

Official announcement about the Gates of Antares!

There's finally an official updated for Gates of Antares, which is kinda exciting as I wasn't quite sure what would be coming from this.. but it looks like good news. The system has evolved and seems to be becoming more dynamic with the introduction of the Bolt Action Initiative/Orders system combined with the original GoA reactions and D10 mechanics.

They have also released the Hansa figure from the Kickstarter on the Warlord store in three forms: metal, resin and the ultra limited (and now mine! Muahaha! *ahem*) clear resin version. Pricing isn't bad for the models either to be honest, especially when you consider he's the equivalent to one of GW's main characters.

Anyway, you can read the full thing over on the Warlord newsletter

Scruffy tank

Over the last few years GW have been pricing themselves out of my (and many other people's) gaming budget as well as doing other very strange things to the community like threatening fan sites. The one thing they have been doing well recently though are their Masterclasses. These are 1 day courses run at GW HQ with a couple of their painting or sculpting teams. I've now been on three of these, Forgeworld Tank Weathering, Eavy Metal Painting and Introduction to Sculpting. Each came with a complete kit, all the materials, lunch, training and all the coffee/tea/biscuits you can consume in 1 day.

The Weathering Masterclass was probably my favourite as I had an immediate use for that one as I was working on my Chimera and this Demolisher. I know I have a various step by step guides that I wrote afterwards. When I find them, I'll upload them here

40k Anniversary model

As some of the gaming world are aware, last year was the anniversary of 40k's launch. I was one of the lucky few in our local store to get the limited Marine that was released as part of the celebration.

He's not quite finished yet, but I ran out of inspiration... I really don't like painting marines; which was a pain to discover part way through painting a marine force!

He's an experiment in using a white undercoat and layer after layer of washes to build up the colours. I wish I'd taken some intermediate photos as well because it's really interesting to see what happens to the colours and model with this approach as it basically highlights itself if you just keep adding layers into the recesses of the model instead of all over.

The Gates start to open...

As I mentioned yesterday, something looks to be afoot in the Antares camp as the website is currently being updated with some new bits of information and photos.

The Hansa model that was going to be the Kickstarter exclusive will be the first model up for sale and will come in three formats... the gaming version in metal, a resin version and a very limited clear resin edition (only 20 in existence!). This is leading to some speculation about what this means in game terms... will Hansa come with a cloaking device, or is it just a gimmick? Either way... I want one ;)

There's also a small piece that mentions the use of Bolt Action's initiative system and dice; so it looks like Warlord Games will be more involved with the overall system and will still be dealing with manufacture and distribution.

Shasvastii Noctifer

Last year DakkaDakka held an official Infinity painting competition. All the entries had to be started and finished within a set time period and all had to be submitted anonymously to prevent favoritism. Unfortunately, I encountered a couple of issues with this competition.

1) I ran out of time thanks to working loads of overtime that month
2) Most people stuck to forces and colour schemes that everyone already knew, so it was fairly obvious.

I'd picked up the Shasvastii Noctifer model as it looked really interesting to paint... and someone else liked the way I'd been painting Aleph and tried to do something very similar. While this backfired on me, it was an interesting experiment in social interactions and how people are affected by who they think is responsible for the items in question. As it turns out, there were lots of significantly better models in the competition and I'd not finished him properly before the deadline.

Movement in the Gates of Antares realm?

Prior to All Quiet on the Martian Front, Rick Priestly tried to launch a very ambitious Sci-fi game on Kickstarter called Gates of Antares that was asking the community not only to fund it, but to help generate ideas, test the Alpha and Beta rules as well as feed back on model concepts. the eventual aim was to produce a gaming system that covered multiple scales with one ruleset and incorporated a living, breathing universe that evolved based upon players submitting game results and planning their next actions through Guilds.

It was a grand plan that eventually got withdrawn as it was probably a bit too ambitious (*sad face*) and generated arguments from various forums that were utterly conflicting and confusing. Some people claimed they were pandering to too many ideas, others claimed the same ideas weren't being listened to... I'm not sure how those can both be true! I felt sorry for the guys as they were putting a lot of effort into the game and it was shaping up to be really good. I do, however, think that pulling the kickstarter to go back and rethink their strategy was probably a good thing to do.

The forums have been dwindling, kept alive by a valiant few mods and users despite the endless waves of spam. Today, the forums received a major overhaul in terms of structure which is an interesting development as there were a few adverts saying that GoA will be demo'd at the Warlord Games open day in a few weeks time... Fingers crossed that this means there's still life in GoA!

Basing

An ongoing topic of conversation that affects every gamer, no matter what system they play, is basing. Some come with integrated bases, others with slotta base tabs... others have no tabs or bases at all and stick onto whatever you want. You've also got slightly different sizes of bases from different manufacturers (standard slotta and D edged ones mainly). This non-standard way of basing figures drives me slightly bonkers!

Anyway... for my Guard I got tired of trying to base everything after they had been painted, so in the end I lightly stuck them to temporary bases while painting and only based them afterwards, which seemed to work much faster as there wasn't any concern of cross contamination while decorating.

Rather than buy scenic bases, or manually make loads, I started experimenting with casting up a few that I'd made and mass producing them to see how it looked. From the photo below, I'm pretty happy with how they came out.

Sticking squads onto these bases certainly looked significantly better than the ones that I'd tried to do after the fact. So much so, that I took everything off their original bases and made a load more of these. I think I've still got a pile in one of my boxes of figures. When I come across them and I've got a few people commenting, I'll give them away in a little competition. I was originally planning on producing and selling them, along with some other random bits that myself and Adrian were going to make... but now Adrian is back down under that plan isn't going to work so well.

With my switch of focus from 40k to a wider range of skirmish games that can all potentially use the same figures (7TV, Zombicide, 7ombieTV, Strange Aeons etc. etc) I've started to rethink the basing on new models as I'm sure you've noticed in some of this year's finished figures. Rather than having scenery on the bases, I'm quite liking the trend of using clear perspex instead, so that the figures blend into the tabletop/board more. I'm thinking that the occasional bit of terrain or scenery may work it's way into some bases, just to add a bit of interest.


What do you like to use for basing?

Infinity Sophotect

One of the games that is doing the rounds near me, and I'm sure everyone else, is Infinity. Game-wise it's a refreshing change down from the tank fest that is 40k (yes, I know I play Guard and have a small parking lot at deployment) and model wise... they are a painter's dream, or nightmare depending upon how much detail you like. 

I eventually settled for Aleph as I wanted to try painting something shiny white after the browns and dirt that are the main themes behind my other gaming force. the first model to grab my attention and demand to be painted was the Sophotect. You can also see her on one of the bases I made and cast. There will be a small post about those tomorrow as that goes into a whole other topic for discussion...

Weekend uselessness

The sooner this house is packed away and ready for sale, the better... it's driving me slightly nuts. Yesterday was a good example of how un-handy I am. We had one friend around building us some decking in the wreck of a back garden and my dad putting wooden flooring down in the hallway to replace the balding carpet and making regular sacrifices to the blood god while doing so. In neither case was I able to do much more than offer tea, or holding of stuff, so I ended up painting woodwork around the house instead... it's not quite so helpful but it needed to be done.

Still. On Friday evening we went back to see a house we've been eye-ing up for the last few weeks and I think we're going to make an offer on it tomorrow *fingers crossed*. The thing that has caught my eye is the *massive* attic with it's high ceiling... this will become my gaming room after it's boarded (assuming we get it of course). Then all we need to do is have the owners find a house they want and to sell ours.

Gaming related posts will resume tomorrow. In the mean time, Bombshell have another kickstarter running. I'm sure I'm supposed to like the main figure, but all I can think of is how cool a bunch of the evil robots would be for 7TV. Unfortunately the postage for the bots is as much as the miniatures themselves... so that's out the window. Still. Have a picture and a link

Inquisitorial assistance

The Inquisitor I showed yesterday is accompanied by his loyal follower, T020. In game he counts as a death cultist... what else could he possibly be?!

The model is from last year's Forge World show only Enforcer model. It's a really nice dog model with some weird bits and pieces embedded into the poor thing. It pretty much painted itself in the space of an hour or so with a white undercoat and a series of brown and black washes.

Dark Eldar Scourges

Many moons ago I gave up on painting and gaming, reverting instead to consoles...I still regret getting rid of everything, mostly because there were some interesting figures in there that I'd love to go back and repaint. Not that I'm short of things in the lead/plastic mountain.

Then at work we made the mistake of hiring an Australian contractor... we became really good friends and he dragged me back into the perils of the plastic crack. While he was in the country I took the opportunity to paint him up new units for his birthday each year to go with whatever force he was constructing at the time. The first batch was a bunch of Ork Nobz and the second was a unit of Dark Eldar Scourges. In the time he was here, I painted more finished squads for his force than he did ;)

In order to try and make them more unique and personal I painted them up like a flock of Red Kites as where I live we have loads flying over the house. Sadly he's moved back to Oz now and we don't get to chat as much any more as we're both busy with work and decorating. Really must sort that soon!

Inquisitor

Speaking of inquisitorial forces (or at least I was yesterday with the servitors) When the first plastic warhammer character blisters came out, Dakka held a competition to convert one of them into a 40K figure. You'll have seen similar cross-system conversions done in White Dwarf with the Blanchistu column since; though most of the ones in that column seem to be made from the nurgle lord, rather than any of the first round of models.

I attempted two for the competition, but only the inquisitor was completed as I didn't quite get the other one to work as expected. Maybe I'll go back and revisit it one day when there's nothing else to paint*

I'm happy to say that I actually won the public vote with my Inquisitor; though a lot of the other models were brilliantly converted and painted. I've not seen so many brilliant ideas in one thread before. This guy started life as the Warriors of Chaos sorcerer lord. Now he fights against evil in all it's forms.

*So that'll be never then!

Servitors

I seem to have acquired a large number of servitor models over the last couple of years... I think Arakasi and his Big Mek conversion may be to blame for that one. Both my Imperial Guard and Inquisition forces utilise servitors in one guise or another... plus the metal ones are great fun models to paint. The first two painted up very quickly indeed...

 

Tanks, tanks... everywhere it's tanks!

With an Imperial Guard force you just know it's going to be full of tanks. Rather than posting all of the Chimera separately, here they are in one big batch. They are all done using a variation on the normal Chimera pattern and seem to get lots of positive comments whenever they come out for a game.

So how do you get that setback look to the top part? Here's a tutorial I wrote earlier! This works on the old and new Chimera bodies as the majority of the changes to the kit were combining a few of the side pieces together into one.

The first step is easy. Build the Chimera chassis as normal, leaving off the top, until you get this far


Take this piece


And cut the corners off, so it looks like this


Fit the place onto the top of the tank, just behind the main cab


Next we need to cut down the top. Place your saw just behind the first to viewports and using them as a guide... cut the back part off.


Before discarding the back part, we need the two sides. So carefully cut these off


Stick the in place and file them down so they are level with the top of the tank. I tend to stick the back door on to make sure the sides are correctly aligned.


Shave off the 6 rivets that look white as these get in the way of sticking the top on.


Before sticking the top on, we need to deal with the two lasgun ports. I never liked the lasguns, so reverse two and glue them in place as two view ports instead.


Once the top is in place it'll look like this


As we're using the turret ring/hatch on the front of the tank, we need to cover up the hole in the turret. Glue some plastic card over the top and trim/sand it down so that it fits seamlessly.


Use any bags, boxes or barrels that you have to neaten up the tank and make it look used. Also use it to cover up the open part of the hatch on the back.


You are now all done.

Imperial Tauros

Do you get the feeling I like Forge World's models rather than the main GW ones? I've never been a massive fan of the Sentinel concept, though I do have to say that the plastic version is significantly better than the easter egg design in Rogue Trader or the boxy chicken in 2nd edition... anyway.

When the Tauros was announced, this suited me perfectly as a stand-in

Red Scorpion Sergeant

As I mentioned yesterday, DakkaDakka had a thread (it may even still be going for all I know) called the Great Marine Swap that allowed people to paint up figures for other people. The other Red Scorpion that I did was a sergeant for someone's Deathwatch squad. All I was asked for was a sergeant armed with a plasma pistol... the rest was up to me to piece together.

In some of the Forge World books, Red Scorpion sergeants could be upgraded to apothecaries, so what could be better than an apothecary power fist?