Its a WiP kinda day... Raging Heroes Centaur (SF ver), Hi-Tech Bioconvergence, Star Saga Mercs, Marines & Rangers and an Afterglow Trader

These Centaurs are the most bizarre models I've ever worked on! They have a lot of parts and some very dynamic posing on top of being a totally over-the-top design.

I've started work on the first six of these.  They will replace the GW Dark Eldar Grotesques.  I mean they really fit the description mush better and there are more poses available.  The GW model is a single pose model that looks like a nightmare line dance formation if you actually use a whole unit.  I'll still use the GW ones of course but I never built more than a couple of them because of the pose.  This will add a real touch of the macabre to the formation in addition to visual diversity.

 The model design is fantastic and uses humanoid/eldaroid torsos in place of the legs.. leaving the construct to run along on eight hands! of course the cacophony must be maddening as there are five heads... four of them screaming as they carry the creature and one controlling the whole mess. I have three of the torsos installed at this point... its a complex build and will take a bit longer than usual but its a very interesting process and the results will certainly be worth the effort.

 When trying to figure out how to build these I went looking for a construction diagram on the Raging Heroes website.  They have diagrams for several of their more complex models but not for these.  I searched the Kickstarter updates and found the one where they built several of these and explained the letter system.  Its really quite nice!  Each part is clearly labeled with a letter and the primary centaur torso has letters in the sockets so just match the torso to the socket of the same letter then add the head an arms with the same letter as the socketed torso and you have it.  Of course a few of the parts separated from the sprue during cleaning but the letters are attaced o the part a bit more vigorously than to the sprue so most of the parts separated with their id letter.


I have a lot more of these to build so I'm happy that RH has made the construction relatively easy.



 Other things on the desk!  Star Saga Mercenaries, whcih are the Player Character models of the game.  I'll work on these while the kicker drys on the centaurs... super glue and accelerator are great... until they are not!

 Star Saga Corporate Marines and Rangers.  Same as for the Mercs.. I'll work on these between drying bouts.  I'm trying to come up with some good corporate colors.  I like the idea of Mishima Crimson on the rangers and a more khaki color for the marines.  Greens are also a possibility but isn't particularly intuitive for space focused forces.  I've already used Rent-a-Cop blue so will probably avoid blues for these guys. and gals.

Hi-Tech miniatures Bioconvergence.  I picked these up at a game shop in Germany with the idea I'd use them as ADMech proxies.  Initially I was thinking Kataphron because of the tracked chassis but the weapon loads are not really that similar and, since I had four of them I decided to reboot as servitors.  The weapons are obviously very close GW analogs and I've magnetized them so I can swap them out as needed.

Lastly a Trader for Afterglow.  I don't know anything about Afterglow but the models I've come across look interesting in a post apocalypse kinda way.

For my purposes this guy will be a supply contact for the Jailbirds as they wander the wastelands.

Back to the table!

Dark Souls the Board Game Gargoyle, Dragon Slayer Ornstein and Sentinel. Star Saga Security Guards.

 The Gargoyle is a large Boss model that could easily see service as some kind of critter for many different systems.  Part of what attracted me to the Dark Souls project was this sort of generic usefulness.

Shown here with the Herald for size comparison I went the malefic flesh route.  I haven't paid any attention to the actual look of these in the video game and just painted them for flexible use... although the experiment with "Good" and "Evil" floors make these guys stand out from my other collections.

The color scheme is low contrast which always makes getting good visual definition at the 3ft range interesting.

The skin base is Malefic Flesh (Vallejo) over a Krylon Camoflage Khaki base. Wings are Sunny Flesh (V) and Fairy Flesh (V) over the Khaki base. Washed with a very thinned Military Shader from Army Painter.  That has proved to be a useful product that I just started experimenting with for the Dark Souls project.

The metals are a gold NMM style which helped get good definition at range.  Regular metallics would have worked as well but would have required more serious lining.

 The Sentinels.  More of the "construct" series.  What is up with those crazy tiny heads!

Painted over a bronze base coat these used lots of regular metallic paint.  Flesh Wash (Secret Weapon) and Seraphim Sepia (GW) for shading.

 Dragon Slayer Ornstein is one half of a Boss Mob Duo.  His partner should wrap up this week as well.  I'm down to 4 remaining Boss models, in various states of paint, to finish the Kickstarter Core Set.

Like the other Constructs, and many of the models from this set in general, the color scheme is low contrast.  After an initially foray at a yellow mane I decided the whole model was way too warm and redid the mane in blue.  I also changed some green gem style details to blue gem to bring some continuity

 The spear has this crazy twist to it.  I thought about trying to straighten it but then decided I Kinda liked it the way it was... especially since there is another Boss with a really wavy sword that is obviously intended to be wavy.

The Blue mane really stands out here.

 Having initially misidentified this Boss as a Mini Boss I thought it was associated with the Sentinels in some kind of group.  It turned out not to be the case but they do make a good group for use in other games!

A for scale view of today's Dark Souls set.

 Star Saga!

Rent-a-cops.... er... I mean Security Guards... really in the Mantic Warpath Universe there isn't a significant difference.

I initially wanted to do Law Enforcement Blue with Black kit... this, predictably, turned out to be mostly just black blobs at three ft... so I did a wash of Sapphire (Secret Weapon), which is really Law Enforcement Blue if you use enough of it, amended with Glaze Medium (V).  One the right is the first coat, on the left is the second.

 The Black details could still use some picking out with some gray edge highlights but I'm happy with them as they stand for now.

 A view of the Security Guards and some techies facing some Plague Victim payback!

The Security Guards and the Techies are easy to tell apart even though they were painted using similar techniques.

The three different poses for the Security Guards.  There are three sets of these figures in the core game and I've given them squad ID badges just because... a squad of different figures is better than a squad of identical ones.

On the painting table at the moment:

The 4 remaining Bosses from Dark Souls.
Some Bio Convergence (Faux ADMech) from Hi-Tech.
A peddler from Afterglow.
Spicy Pupniks.

On the build table:

Sci-Fi Centaurs from Raging Heroes.

Build it!
Paint it!
Play it!

Reaper Bones II Cargo Container and Star Saga Techies

 The Bones Kickstarters have been getting steadily better.  They have always been good value for money but the quality of the first Bones KS was very low.  The sculpts were good but the Bones Material itself was poor.  It was floppy, hydrophobic, and barely usable.

Bones II saw a large upgrade in quality.  The hydrophobic properties of the material were well understood by this time and there seems to have been some change in the formula that both gave stiffness to the models and improve paint adhesion. Also structurally important sections of models, especially larger ones, were further stiffened with a type of hard plastic.


This shipping container is from the Bones II Kickstarter and in made of a hard plastic.  Unlike the softer materials found in the furniture of products like Mantic's Star Saga this had zero warping and holds its shape.  It required no clean up other than a wash.

 I used blue masking tape to create some white spaces and sprayed the unprimed model with Krylon Camoflage Green. The Green area was then washed with Sewer Water (Secret Weapon).

Tape was removed and the White areas were painted directly with Graveyard Bone (Reaper) and the whole thing sealed with Krylon Clear  Satin finish.

I then used some extra decals from Atenociti's Workshop's Fast Panda to create a supply chain for my favorite Undertown Fast Food Franchise!
 

 After the decals were applied and solvaset into the textures I weathered the container with areas of Brown Rust (Secret Weapon), Engine Metal (Secret Weapon) and some targeted washes of  Seraphim Sepia (GW).  A few details were hand painted in and the thing sealed with Krylon Clear Satin.

 The Techies from Star Saga wrapped up at the same time.  The Star Saga miniatures have been surprisingly fun to paint.  I think I like the classic sci-fi look of them... as contrasted with the Grimdark stuff I so frequently paint.  Don't get me wrong! I loves me some Grimdark... but its really been fun stepping outside of it and still being firmly in sci-fi territory.  I think Undertown will be seeing a lot of traffic from the miniatures of this range in future!

 Some size comparisons.  The container is pretty large so it can give full cover to some monsters and vehicles.  As you can see this container has been vandalized by the Free Bruxx Network!

The Bruxx are a complex race of Uplifted Rats from the Serene Dawn RPG setting that I work on sporadically.  I'll have to source some sci-fi Ratmen soon.  I *may* have some here somewhere... but I'm always on the lookout for more great sculpts!

 The container can fit a 5 model squad inside.  I love models that have usable interior spaces.  Too bad this one is full of Plague victims! 

Here is the container flipped onto its side... ya never know right?  So I weathered it a bit further to simulate forklift incidental damage, wear and tear from dragging etc...

Hopefully tomorrow will see the completion of some more Dark Souls minis and construction started on some ADMech, a peddlar to fleece the Jailbirds, and some Twisted Dickensians.

Build it!
Paint it!
Play it!

Cheers,

Swelter

Void Elf Hunters

 The Void Elf Hunter units got finished up.

I am really excited about this kit!  The prototype unit took a bit of time to get sorted but, with the lessons learned from that the remaining units were quick, easy, and fun to assemble and paint.

I really got into the backgrounds for these.  I have them referring to themselves as "Death Guard" and will spin that into a rivalry with my CSM Death Guard!  Anyone know how to write "Death Guard" in Dark Eldar?

As is often the case the production groups were both easier to do and looked better when finished!  In this case after painting up the production groups I went back and brought the weapons of the prototype group into compliance with the production group scheme. 


One of the big improvements was in the assembly.  On the prototype I broke a couple of parts using tools to take these off the sprue... then I remembered something Benoit at Raging heroes mentioned... that the guys had a way of just popping the models off the sprue without using tools.  After a couple of moments I discovered the parts were attached in such a way that they could be popped off the sprue very cleanly and never broke another bit!  Thanks for the tip!

 My initial use of these will be as Dark Eldar Trueborns in Ynnari service.  As as such I wanted to go with a deathly bone color of armor and to have the flowing bits resemble grave shrouds using cool colors like tiel and blue-green.  This makes the unit a lot more colorful and interesting to look at on the tabletop.

The units are divided up bu the color of the pony tails with the blue unit as the prototype and the magenta and orange being production groups.

 The general procedure was:
 
Whole Model:
Prime with Khaki paint and primer combo.
Heavy Dry-brush Graveyard Bone (Reaper).
Dry-brush Splintered Bone (Reaper).
Wash with Sepia Ink mixed with Glaze medium and Thinning medium (Vallejo).
Drybrush Graveyard Bone.
Layer Splintered Bone.

Weapons:
Wash with Armor Wash (Secret Weapon)
Dry-brush Rustungs Farbe (a bright Silver)
Paint Gory Red (Reaper)
Layer Blood Red (Reaper)
Layer Carrot Top Orange (Reaper)

Shrouds:
Inside Surfaces:
Paint Dragon Blue (Reaper)
Layer with Voidshield Blue (Warpaints)
Layer White (Reaper
Outer Surfaces:
Paint Copper Verdigris (Reaper)
Wash Green (Secret Weapon)

Faces:
White Flesh (Vallejo)
Wash with Flesh Wash (P3)
Layer White Flesh.

Ponytails:
Wash with Ink heavily mixed with Glaze Medium and Thinner Medium)
Highlight top strands by adding some white to the base mixture.


A sneak peek at some of the stuff on the table for next time... Techies and Scientists for Star Saga!

Dark Souls minor enemies and Star Saga Plague

 This wrap up the trash mobs and lesser minions for Dark Souls the Board Game core set.  There still remain 4 Bosses, 1 mini boss, and 2 elites.

Shown with the PC Assassin for scale and to show the difference between the "Good Guy" and "Bad Guy" bases.

The Archers and Knights are the trash mobs for the second half of the basic game and are taller than the PC models and the undead style minions that were the adversaries in the first half of the core game.

 These are done in a brassy style and I think of them as "constructs" or animated armor type opponents.

The biggest complaint I have about these models is the lack of variety.  Each type of adversary has a single model that is replicated to get the required number of adversaries.  This makes the enemy easy to identify but has a very "board gamey" feel.  Options to add additional miniatures, when available, are usually just more copies of the same single pose.








 In future I will probably not be as excited to get involved with Kickstarter projects that emphasize the figures as a selling point but fail to provide more than one pose for large numbers of models... especially since a lot of the actual games are not great games but are selling miniatures to  paint and use for other purposes/games/proxies.

The undead minions are similar in size to the PCs.  Each section has two types of adversary... a missile troop (archer/crossbow) and a melee troop (sword and shield)  Each type also has one elite unit (I haven't finished the construct one yet) which is a large melee type.








 The restless dead.

3 sword and shield
3 Crossbow
2 elite axe

The Assassin faces off against a big undead Axe wielder.

Star Saga!

I like Star Saga,  Its a bit quirky but covers a lot of ground.

I'm still sketchy on the details of the Plague but in the core game they appear to be humans intentionally subjected to the plague in an attempt to weaponize it.  This seem to have gone predictably wrong....






I've painted some temporary bases until I decide what to do with the minis in the long term... but they came out well enough that I may just use this theme with the rest of the box set and leave the minis with the actual game instead of cannibalizing them for Deadzone/Warpath!...how novel!

I went with prisoner basic orange with bits of diagnostics gear and control items attached.


For fun I decided to go with green-ish hair and glowing green, monochrome, eyes.  Kind of like teeny, tiny hulk!

Undertown Vending Machines

 Things go better with ZOLT!

These vending machines are from the Undertown KS from Atenociti's Workshop.

They were clean cast, as always, and came with great photo-graphics. These are a joy to paint.

 Since these are part of The Undertown they got a fair bit of weathering to represent decrepit hardware plastered with much more recent advertising. 

The two I had the most success with are the yellow and blue.  Each was sprayed with a gloss base coat and it really made the difference in the final finish.  after all the weathering and a satin top coat they had the most convincing "old drink machine" finish.

There are also a pair of "Information Vendors" basically neighborhood directories... pretty handy for densely populated zones with hit or miss infrastructure.  These are weathered as well with the info screens being a bit hazy while the adverts are in much better shape.

The model for scale is a Void Elf Hunter from Raging Heroes TGG2 KS.  I really like these models and the remaining 10 of them are in the final state of assembly... hopefully they will make an appearance in the next couple of days.

I'm getting into a big production period with a lot of different projects on the desk.  I want to trend towards fleshing out the Ynnari/Void Elf while also knocking out a several board game sets and getting to work on fantasy civilians, Nomad Jailbirds, and more! 


As always... *think* I know what will show up next... but really... I got no idea!

Void Elf Hunters, Boss Monsters, and Bad Guy Floors

 A bunch of things painted and a lot learned.

We got in our first game of Star Saga.  The game looks like it will play well once we have a few run throughs. 

On the down side: The rules are a bit haphazardly organized and required a lot of looking around to sort out questions.  Some of the examples don't seem to agree with the written rules etc...

 On the plus side:  Its a really ambitious game for the format and allows for a large number of different kinds of action while not adding tons of extra rules.  Its a fun stand alone but looks like it really shines in the campaign mode.

I painted up the Plague Aberration (the far left model in the picture above) mostly just to test the material for paint interactions and didn't spend any time cleaning it up, or washing it, in advance of painting.  It took paint really well and was a lot of fun too! I'm going to have to dig the plague out the Deadzone and Warpath boxes and churn a pile out.  Of course I didn't back the Plague faction very hard... good thing Mantic remains affordable even when not in Kickstarter mode!

 The Titanite Demon from Dark Souls the Board Game.

This is a large model as you can see from the picture of it intimidating the Herald player character...

Also fun to paint using mostly washes and dry-brush... even played with osl a little on it.

The base is a test run of the "Bad Guy Floor" and you can see the Herald on the "Good Guy Floor"

 The massive blue sparky Horns are a mix of dry brush and wash as will as some top layer stippling.

The main body is a heavy Sunny Flesh drybrush over the Khaki base coat then a coupl of washes of P3 flesh.  The P3 flesh is a purplish shader which I'll use a lot for the undead and malefic flesh tones. 

 The Aberration was, again, dry brush Sunny Skin Tone over the Khaki base coat and then wash with Secret Weapon Ruby for the softer areas and Army Sepia ink thinned with Vallejo Glaze Medium for the bony bits.

The skin was brushed back up with a thin Brains Pink and the carapace with Graveyard Earth and Splintered Bone (Reaper)

The eye glow is old Scaly Green (Citadel) which is at least two generations of GW paints old... its a great paint for lenses as well... I'm gonna miss that when its gone!

 The Aberration with Canoness Veridyan.  The Star Saga version came sans base so it loses a little height in comparison.. the good news is it doesn't force me to come up with a basing scheme yet!

As much as I like doing scenic bases I've been thinking about going with clear bases for the Mantic family of games.  Mostly its just so I don't have to look at trench warfare bases on a map representing a star-ship or a high tech base in a jungle... its just a thought at the moment and might be already sabotaged by Mantic's habit of including integrated bases on their minis... which would have to be removed to replace them with clear bases... 

 Void Elves!

These are beautiful kits from Raging Heroes which I want to use as Ynnari faction Eldar.. kind of Elfy Death Cultists... Bone Brown is the new Black and tiel and blue fancy bits because... elfs!  I mean... even a morbid death fixated elf has to have some style!

I use the giant pony tails as unit colors so I can keep the models organized on the tabletop.  Blue, red, green,,, etc... this first squad is blue.

I'm really excited about these models for a couple of reasons but the main one is the sharpness of the detail.

 Raging Heroes has always made really beautiful models with great designs and a lot of character but for many years the details were soft edged.  The soft edge meant that speed painting techniques, and dry-brush in particular, were harder to use, required more touch up and a steadier hand.  Lines that could be made to pop by dragging a dry brush across them had to be painted manually if you wanted that very fine sharp line.  Basically you had to be a better painter to make an RH model look good than you had to be to make a GW (or similar)  model look good... and it just took longer.

 The Void Elf Hunters have very crisp details and painted up really rapidly! I have two more squads of them to paint and I'm assembling them now.  I'm hoping this is a trend throughout the TGG model line as it will really help at the "I'm generating a cool looking army here not painting a masterpiece for a contest " level. 

Veridyan and the Hunter... Veridyan is on a 32mm base so I really ought to dig a GW model out that is on a 25mm round to use for these size comparisons... I'll eventually unpack one!

 Veridyan the Aberration and the Hunter.

The main lesson from this week... if I'm gonna bother to paint it I really ought to clean it up! Even models from board games! I ended up liking these models and thinking about using them beyond the occasional session of the game they came with...

The Aberration is a great model and, though it took the paint well, it has some really prominent mould lines. 

Similarly the Titanite Demon would make a great proxy model and has some casting lines and the joins (the model comes pre-assembled) are not obscured and could have used a spot of the green stuff.

Final thought...

The Hunters! front and back... these helmets are so awesome... they remind me of Predator... which is, of course, a great theme for the "Hunters"

Back to building and painting...