Mon Dieu! Cthulhu

A few years back Modiphius released their excellent range of Achtung! Cthulhu rpg books, bringing the fight against the Old Ones to the Second World War. One of the adventures for this included a mysterious character called Seraph, who guides the heroes through a mission behind enemy lines in Finland. This adventure also came with a novella version of the adventure, which was a great little read.

Earlier today they sent out an email announcing another novel featuring Seraph called The Crystal Void. This time our mystery man is catapulted back in time to the age of Napoleon to continue the fight against the creeping darkness. It also marks the start of Modiphius' new setting, Mon Dieu! Cthulhu. Effectively Sharpe Vs Cthulhu... I'm sure someone has fan-ficced this somewhere, but the setting sounds like a lot of fun, especially if this also sees miniatures that we can use to turn Sharpe Practice into a mythos game.

If you fancy giving it a look, the pdf version is £2 from their webstore, or £1.80 if you follow this link to the store and search for Crystal Void.

Spine of the Saracen

Every now and then a book or tv show throws up a neat idea for a weird war artifact. This time it comes courtesy if Warehouse 13. I'm not quite sure what to do with it yet, but here it is...

In series 1 Mica and Pete come across an 11th century Saracen artifact called the Spine of the Saracen. This device attaches itself to a host and feeds off their bio-electricity, amplifying it in the process. The excess electricity is continuously discharged by the Spine and hosts body, which causes anybody that the host touches to be electrocuted. The host's rage is vastly increased and drives them to attack whatever they hate most. Once attached, the only way to remove it is for the host to die, or to seriously overload it with electricity.

So how can we use this neat little device?

For in-game situations this sounds like something that would have been created by the Saracens as a defense against the creeping darkness whenever it broke through; possibly some cult of warriors who could calm the rage.

I can imagine some of these surfacing in an excavation in the Middle East an ending up being harnessed by a Black Sun assault trooper, or a sacrificial experiment. Black Sun (or whoever) would probably want to send an escort with the Spine bearer in order to recover/reuse the device later. These individuals would be faster, stronger and tougher than normal infantry, but limited to close combat only due to the electricity. I can't imagine it working too well with explosives. Weaknesses would have to be overcharging the artifact with electricity.

Alternatively it would work quite well as an artifact bearing cultist for Strange Aeons or Kulten. 

Servants of Nyarlathotep

I can't believe I forgot to post these guys!

Infections and plagues spread across warzones. Most of the time they are entirely natural in origin, but occasionally it is something else entirely.  Nyarlathotep's servitor infection slowly twists the mind of the victims until they become cold and psychotic, devoid of all humanity. Eventually the Servitor reaches maturity and bursts forth from the body as a twisted conglomerate of claws and weeping wounds. The victim's head also becomes a giant fanged tentacle...

These servitors need to be directed by Overlords to keep them under control. The ranks of the Overlords are those individuals that evolved slightly differently to the Servitors; they retain eyes in their tentacled heads and humanoid hands able to use modern equipment. The Overlords can be seen directing hordes of Servitors across the battlefield

Qu-Sh-Ug

Here we have a great big beastie from PureEvilMinuatures, a Qu-Sh-Ug. This was funded through their kickstarter last year and is not yet available through their website, sadly, as it's an awesome miniature and I want another one apparently available from the PureEvil ebay store (http://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/pureevilminiatures)! You can see some great versions over on their Kickstarter page.

The kit consists of three major parts, the body and both front legs. In addition to this you get a plethora of different tentacles to customise your nasty however you wish. All of the examples had different numbers of tentacles coming out of the mouth, but I decided to be different and turned one into a tail instead as it seemed to balance out the reaching paw.

 

 

He's not a small creature either. To give you a sense of scale, here's a shot of him towering over poor Sergeant Hopkins

I havn't forgotten the snow article, it's just taking longer than expected to put together. snow bases are hard to photograph in a way you can see them clearly!

Cthonian

Flowing tentacles and pulpy gray-black, elongated sack of a body...no distinguishing features at all other than the reaching, groping tentacles. Or was there—yes—a lump in the upper body of the thing...a container of sorts for the brain, basal ganglia, or whichever diseased organ governed this horror's loathsome life!
—Brian Lumley, The Burrowers Beneath

I decided I wanted my Cthonian to be a bit brighter than the pulpy grey and black of Brian Lumley's burrowing horror, but it has come out a bit more rainbow than I originally envisaged... For now it's fine, but it's a prime candidate for a repaint in the future

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 :)