Critter kingdom

I was looking through the massive backlog of draft posts to see what was in there and it seems I got half way through posting quite a few things from the painting challenge last year... so here they are as some filler ;)

These rats and bats are from Mantic's dungeon Saga. These are probably the nicest things to have come out of it, besides the furniture!

 

At the other end of the spectrum we have the Goliath from Shadows of Brimstone. Like most of the other monsters from the SoB boxes so far, the detail is soft and it needed a lot of filling and resculpting... but he looks pretty imposing now he's finished. That base he's on? That's 70mm... he's one biiiiig critter. Sven once again provides a scale reference.

More monsters

This entry for the Analogue Challenge is a mixed bag of models. Some for Dungeon Saga/Frostgrave and some for Shadows of Brimstone.

First up we have the banshee from DS, which leaves one of the core set villains left to paint and 6 armoured undead. The banshee is quite a nice sculpt, with the exception of blobby hands and will see a lot of use in various games.

As a change, I decided to try some of the Dungeon Saga demons. These guys are the same size as the undead trolls and act as their equivalent in the demonic campaign. Again, very nice models to paint, though some of the seams are tricky to clean off as the plastic is slightly bendy. If the Kings of War ones are as nicely sculpted, they should be great models... not that I need any more of them. They will also be nice large size demons for Frostgrave. These guys suffered from a partial varnish fail. You can see the white marbling on the back of the middle demon; though in this case it adds to the texture rather than obscuring detail; so not so much a fail as an unexpected detailing!

Last and definitely least are two of the ghosts from Shadows of Brimstone. These figures are some of the worst I've had the misfortune to work with. The detail is shockingly soft, which makes them ugly lumps... so a quick ghost paintjob was done at the same time as the DS banshee to get them out of the way. Scale wise they are only useful in Shadows of Brimstone as they are 1/48 (ish), which makes them really tall when compared to any other Old West figures that I have, even Black Scorpion.

Because it was asked in the Challenge comments, here is the recipe for the ghosts:

1. White undercoat
2. HEAVY wash of GW's Coelia Greenshade. Add some black wash to the deepest, darkest areas if you want to get it really dark
3. Wipe of excess with fingertip
4. Lightly drybrush white. Make absolutely sure the wash is dry first, otherwise you get weird green marbling instead (which actually works sometimes)

Pulp variety

With the first batch of tentacles being based upon Purple Tentacle, it was time for some Green Tentacles. We've only got one green/yellow combination as it didn't really work that well, so I switched to green with purple suckers for the other 5. Still.. you have to have one green/yellow, right?  Looking at the photos, I really need to clean the loose flock off the black next time!

I've started a little 7TV cast based on the tv series Life on Mars, with some fantastic police from Crooked Dice. I've got some detectives and a police woman still to paint up.

To go with these, I also picked up some of the Crooked Dice Weeping Angels. Oh no! It looks like the Police have stumbled into an area inhabited by the Weeping Angels (talk about a crossover!) Those coppers better not blink...

Oh dear, those poor police officers...

Quickly, keep staring at them and back away slowly. What ever you do, don't blink...

I said DON'T BLINK!

Oh sh...

I feel like I could take on...

This is a bit of a last minute entry this week, after the massive upload of WotR figures earlier, but I couldn't resist trying to squeeze them in as well.

Shadows of Brimstone comes with 6 tentacles in each box and, as I got both boxes, this week I present the first six... carefully themed after one of my favourite games ever. Take a guess ;)

And as there are only so many ways you can take photos of tentacles, here are a couple of shots of them savaging some mythos explorers from last year's entries to the painting challenge. These last two also give you some sense of scale on these things.

Thankfully what you can't seein the photos are some of the overly soft details around the edges, where the poor sprue layout caused some of the suckers to merge into weird blobby messes and for others to become MASSIVE lumps that are easy to mistake for rocks... Like plenty of other people, I took a scalpel to these and tried to clean them up as best I could, but there's only so much you can do to rescue the suckers without cutting them off completely and making new ones... which is probably what I'll do to tentacles 13-24 when they arrive later in the year.

They aren't on bases as they come with them built in and I didn't really see the point in adding clear bases to something that could already stand up!

I forgot the treasure!

Yesterday I mentioned that the party didn't have much to spend in town. You know why? I forgot to give them treasure cards after the last fight.... duh!

As so many cards contributed to the fight, they all ended up with 3 cards each (1 per contributing card to a maximum of 3).

Jackson picked up some Rattlesnake fangs, a bandanna and an old map. The fangs will be attached to his shotgun for even more damage dealing (+3 damage).

Fred found a Crisp rose, a Hunting knife and an old map. He can't use the rose, so that will be sold next time he's in town.

The Reverend found a Cigar, an axe and a rune of Shadows. Not sure what to do with the rune


Doc has a Silver Buckle (which he can't use), a pick axe and a Rune of the Void.

As Fred could use the buckle, he's swapped it for the Rose, which is of equal value. Hopefully this will help keep him alive a little bit longer next time around.

Down into the depths we go...

So, I've had to come home from work feeling like crap... sore throat just in time for Christmas. Ain't that typical? I should be putting more paint on some models for the painting challenge, but I think that's probably a very bad idea right this second.

I decided it was probably less taxing to try out Shadows of Brimstone, so here's a tale of woe, followitng the exploits of our intrepid band of lawmen. No photos I'm afraid as I was just using card tokens to represent the heroes and monsters as they are either still on the sprues or partially assembled.

In our party we have:
- Jackson Swift, a US Marshal (Hardened resolve, spectacles and dynamite)
- Fred Smith, a Lawman (Iron Will, Weathered hat, dynamite)
- Reverend Jones, a local Preacher (Missionary, Cure, Weaken, Lucky Charm, bandages)
- Doc , a Gunslinger (Pistol fanning, Concealed flask, dynamite)

Jackson Swift had been sent out to Brimstone shortly before the town imploded, to bring in the Scafford gang. Having deputised some local law enforcement he's been on their trail ever since. This day, Jackson had seen signs of them entering this particular mine... Doc knew this was one of those days he should have stayed in bed, but had no clue how quickly it wold become apparent.

After passing into the mine, the party see a room full of pipework and skulls. Lots of skulls*. Sadly, Fred slipped on one and started a large cascade, causing lots of wounds and sanity loss to everyone as they are buried in the landslide! (And a growing dread card as they search). The avalanche of skulls unblocks a narrow cap in the roof of the room, letting in a shaft of light. Reverend Jones takes this as a good sign and starts to sing a small sermon, raising everyone's spirits and healing one of his wounds in the process. After all the excitement calms down, they discover a clue as to where the Scaffords went.

For some reason Doc was dawdling a bit, giving Reverend Jones a chance to heal some more wounds. Gazing through the next doorway they spot the second clue... and a room full of monsters! To top it off, the walls are dripping with gore... we can only assume this is what is left of the Scaffords.

(The red Threat card that I drew said to draw two Mediums. The first of these was for 3 Tentacles, 2 corpse piles and 3 undead *gulp*. The Second said to draw two Easy.. no fair! The first of these was 1 Night Terror and 4 void spiders. the second was for another night terror and 5!! Stranglers). Just as well I've got lots of dynamite and it's only my second room!

Doc opened the fight by skillfully throwing some dynamite at one of the Stranglers, which was standing between a couple of tentacles and a corpse pile. The resulting explosion took out one of the Hungry Dead, a void spider,a tentacle and 2 stranglers! Fred thought this was a great idea and followed suit, taking out two stranglers, two void spiders and a tentacle. Things were starting to look a little less worrysome... but only marginally.

The remaining stranglers then got to attack Fred, between them only causing 1 unsaved wound. Before the tentacles got to attack, Jackson let loose with his shotgun and managed to blow one of the corpse piles apart, removing that threat from the board. Unfortunately Fred was paying too much attention when throwing his dynamite as one of the night terrors lumbered across the room and ripped him apart. So much for his lucky hat! This left a free path through to Doc for a tentacle, who bludgeoned him to death too. Things are not looking quite so good.

Summoning his vengeful wrath, Reverend Jones proceeded to Weaken the tentacle and banish it back to wherever it came from.

With only two of them left, and the monsters closing in, Jackson threw his dynamite towards the newly spawned Hungry Dead, blowing it, the corpse pile and the last Strangler apart and seriously wounding the two Terrors. With no way through, the Terrors just had to stand at the back and wait for the remaining undead to either do their job, or to collapse and make way. The Reverend manages to weaken one of the dead enough to cave in it's skull with his holy book, only realising afterwards that that was a dumb move as there was now space for the terrors or a void spider to come through instead.

Thankfully initiative order saw the spider skitter through  to get in the way, even though it did cause some damage. Jackson raised up his shotgun and thought of his responsibilities as a Marshall (+2 attacks), which he dutifully used to remove the undead next to him and then open up on the terrors, taking one out completely and allowing another shot at the Terror behind it, bringing that one down very low as well. The remaining terror barged through the gap and tried to savage our valiant hero, which he shrugs off. The poor thing is nearly dead anyway... it's probably just waving some bloody stumps around at this point.

The reverend manages to fend off the spider for another turn, while valiantly keeping the darkness at bay once more. Jackson finishes off the last Terror and causing some extra damage on the last spider. It doesn't last the rest of its following turn...

With the monsters out of the way, Jackson and the Reverend can tend to their collegues and get the heck out of dodge along with a few pieces of Darkstone each.

Jackson finished with an impressive 160 XP and 1 piece of darkstone
Fred finished with 105 XP and 1 piece of Darkstone.
The Reverend finished with 90 XP and 2 pieces of darkstone
Doc finished with 170 XP and 1 piece of Darkstone

Fred managed to gt a Slashed Leg (-1M) from being KO'd. Doc had his arm crushed (normally -1 Combat), but he's already on Combat 1, so I think that stays the same.

During the course of the journey back to town everyone starts to have Dark Dreams which everyone takes to heart:

Johnson: -4 Sanity next game
Fred: -6 Sanity next game
Reverend: -5 Sanity next game
Doc: -5 Sanity next game

Geeze, these guys really didn't like their dreams did they? Thankfully they manage to avoid any corruption form the Darkstone shards

As the adventure was really really short, they didn't actually find any treasure, so no-one has anything to sell, so it's one night in camp to pay a visit to a few different locations and see what they do.

Johnson goes to the saloon to see if there is anyone causing trouble and ends up in a bar fight instead, which ends with him getting a slashed leg (-1M).

Fred also goes to the saloon, tells some tall tales that no-one believes.

The Reverend decides to go to the Church and preaches the faith. Sadly it seems to be a heathen town, so there's no-one there to pay attention to his diatribe.

Doc goes to the bar as well, but unlike the others, seems to have a great time and comes out of it $10 richer.

Everyone gets a good night's sleep at the camp site, ready to head off into the wilds looking for the Scafford gang again.

* Was this mine designed by GW or something?!

Baby, it's cold outside...

Despite the painting challenge being on for over week, a bout of generally feeling worn out, or overly busy each night meant that my first submission was actually for the Cold sub-challenge... which given I'd just spent 2 days sitting in a feeeeeeezing cold church hall helping man my wife's stall at a craft fair, seemed entirely appropriate.

Just to make it even more fitting, I painted this beat up while watching Cowboys Vs Aliens just to get the creative juices flowing. The model is from the long awaited Shadows of Brimstone kickstarter which, for those of you that havn't been paying attention, is a weird wild west dungeon crawler, similar to Warhammer quest. Your party of cowboys venture into some mines in search of mystical Darkstone crystals and gateways to other worlds, while fending off large, lovecraftian beasts such as the Night Terror. I can see this being used for all sorts of other games, like Pulp Alley for an abominable snowman, or some weird mythos beast in Strange Aeons...

Inspired by Joakim's snow beasts, I decided to give it a try, but with a slight twist. The model has lots of lumps and bumps all over it's shoulders and looks mightily annoyed... so I wondered if those lumps are actually chunks of darkstone that have become welded to some poor beast's back somehow; driving it insane with pain.

It doesn't take a microscope to see the joins in this model. I didn't really have time to sit and carefully sculpt over all of them; though I did manage to at least lessen the impact of them with some liquid greenstuff before undercoating. The next two, along with all the other multi-part SoB models will probably be left until after the challenge is over, so I can spend time properly filling in and hiding all the joints. I hope the rest of the models aren't this gappy, though I'm not holding my breath as whoever did the sprue layout or QA on these wasn't paying much attention. Just as well the game is looking so good...

Just to give some semblance of scale to this thing, here he is next to a WIP King Richard III. I'll bet that fight didn't happen in the film, or the book!

Now things are starting to roll, let us see how close I can get to last year's score of (I think) 982. This year will be a lot slower as I effectively had a month off for Christmas last year thanks to so much overtime being accrued.

This one is a challenge entry, so should be 55 (ish) points. Only another 928 to go.