Twisted! The Dickensians: Set 2

For The Dickensians: Set 2 I wanted to follow the spooky theme I established with The Dickensians: Set 1.  They turned out to be less festively patterned but with a little more Engine Energy color.  The two groups still sit well together so I'm happy about that.

First up is Ollyver... formerly a sweet kid, currently an Engine powered, rage fueled, behemoth.  I envisioned him almost literally bursting with Engine energies which I extended beyond his artifacts to his hand and face.  Some OSL to emphasis the energy of his bare hand as it crush/melts some unfortunate brickwork.



I added a fair bit of green-stuff artifacts to the base to help with his pose and give some energy to the hand impact.  This allowed for a more upright pose and a clearer look at the rage energy face.


Energies of the Engine here provided by Emerald Green (Vallejo(V)), Verdigris (Secret Weapon(SW)), Solid White (Reaper(R)), and Green Wash (SW). The Skin is a Malefic Flesh (V) over a Khaki Primer (Krylon (K)) layered with Natural Flesh (V) and spot washes of Flesh Wash (P3).


Nancy.. the wicked queen herself... I viewed her as a Twisted! Green Lady analogue akin to Poison Ivy of the DC Universe.

Her skin has responded to the corrupting energies by becoming more pale and translucent... quite unlike the darkling purple shades that the Urkin exhibit.  The real inescapable mark of her corruption however are the writhing, armored, tentacles that erupt from her knees...








I kept her within the limited color palette but omitted the gray and shifted the dark purple to a more violet ink.  Her clothes are the color of Engine energy layered with white from the Bone Triad (R).  I really like this model.. the combination of graceful and horrific are very well executed in the sculpt.

 Feygin... kinda struck me as the Pied Piper of the group... always inviting another lost child into the vile embrace of Nancy... and into the family of the Urkin.  I would normally have done the rats in gray and black to imply plague and decay but I had a hard time getting definition and opted for a less ominous, and more visible, scheme with golden brown (V) and Buckskin Pale (R).  This is also the color of his hat just adding more Buckskin Pale to lighten it up.

The pistol is fun and very Buck Rogers and Feygin also sports multiple energy sources.  His skin is also relatively un-scarred by the Engine energy as befits his recruiting role.

 The Urkin Shooter and Urkin Dragoon are up next.  The shooter has a supply of energy infused ammunition that his 'pet' clockwork squirrel seems to consume with gusto.

 The Urkin Dragoon has a blade seething with the vile energy and colorful crests in Nancy's favorite accent color to top off the faded glory of his military coat and trousers.

That brings us to a pair of Urkin Slashers.

One looks like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle in a Plague Doctor's mask on the attack and the other like a rabid fat kid still snacking on link sausage while charging his foe... I'mma beat you with my lunch!

I *Think the next thing up is to finish the doors for Star Saga and get a few Raging Heroes models built... along with some 3D printed terrain for accents.

Back to the desk!

Twisted: The Dickensians Set 1

 Twisted is a tabletop skirmish game from Demented Games.  My first foray into this alternate steampunk reality are the Dickensians.  A right twisted version of your favorite hoodlums from Oliver Twist and a little Voodoo too!

 The cannon fodder... er.. I mean to say the bulk of the faction are the Urkin.  Essentially hordes of orphaned children that have been twisted by their exposure to the energies of The Engine into evil, yet adorable, characters of their former selves.

Here, from left to right, are the Urkin Slasher "Torch", The Urkin Shooter "Blunder", and the Urkin Shooter "Scope".










I wanted to have this faction look impoverished but sort of radioactively festive.  They are basically gray with  some bright accent colors like pink, orange and green.

The wraith like Sowerberry is festooned with timepieces infused with the baleful energies of The Engine and Dodger has been fuse with some kind of motorized unicycle.





I used Verdigris (Secret Weapon) to represent the energies of The Engine which not only emanates from their equipment like, Sowerberry's time pieces, but even from inside the faction members.  Most of the members of this faction are bundled up from head to toe in protective gear and carry some form of gas canister and gas mask to sustain them when they are separated from direct exposure to the miasma that suffuses the Engine node in London.
Most of the Urkin show little skin, which I have depicted as darkened by the energies that twisted them, the one exception being the Bloodrage Urkin form of the Urkin Alchemancer.  This is straight up Jekyll and Hyde in a Voodoo mask.  The trousers started out solid purple (HULK SMASH!) but got stripes of orange to liven them up.

Which brings us to the Faction leader Bill Psyches and his English Bull Terrier Bullseye.  Bill's legs have been changed into mechanical powerhouses and even Bullseye sports a gas canister.

I enjoyed these figures and am torn between doing The Dickensians Set 2 or Minions of The Engine set 1 next... probably should do the minions so I can actually get a game in!

Kingdom Death Lion Kit Evolutions and some Twisted base inserts WiP

 Our Kingdom Death Monster Survivor settlement has grown to 30+ members... just in time for the Armored Visitors event which measures the population, helps if it is too small... culls if it is too large... the cutoff for too large was 9 or more survivors... DoH!

We chose to resist the cull which precipitated a visit by the Kingsman.  The Kingsman is a real pain to fight and has a lot of wacky mechanics... plus he's only partially painted at the moment!  Have to get cracking on that!

 These models show some of the tech improvements the settlement has Innovated.  They are a mix of White Lion, Bone, and Rawhide.  These materials are largely unimproved in terms of color etc... as dyes and painting are yet to be unlocked... although the survivors continue to expand the use of Blu/Black ink and to refine the pictographs. 

The spear is a big improvement as the White lions have become crafty and it is dangerous to close with them.

 Here you can see a survivor that has harvested the eye ink and turned it into a hair product and a medium for expressing the pictographs on his linen.  He is important because of the pick, which allows the group an opportunity to harvest some minerals, and the bone dart to defend a poor, unarmored, craftsman as he collects the critical ingredients he need for his trade.

I'm of mixed opinions on this pose.  I like the effect of the model peering over the top edge of the pickax while hefting a bone dart but I also don't find the pickax as shield idea very convincing... It does, however, clearly demonstrate who is carrying the mineral mining supplies.

I'm practicing this patterning thing and trying to get the  right sequence for highlighting and shading.  I think I need to underline, or accent, some of the patterns to make them a little more depth.  The ink color is mostly Nightmare Black (Reaper).

 The Watcher has been seen in dreams and the "watcher's eye" motif is popular in the settlement.


The bone materials are worked up from the Bone Triad (Reaper) and you can see the difference between the bone areas and the "shroud cloth" which was worked up from the Menoth White group (P3) with the aid of Military Shader (Warpaints) diluted 1-1 with Glaze medium (Vallejo).  I've been using the glaze medium quite a lot lately. Its handy for blending and reduces the vigilance required to prevent tidal pooling of washes and inks. It also just slows down the paint drying process and extends the amount of time I can work out of a dry palette.

 There are two sorts of skull helms in the parts mix.  One is a scary, horned, toothy predator creature and this human skull converted into a fashionable bit of war gear.

She also has mixed kit with Bone, Rawhide, White Lion and unarmored. She's experimenting with some red pigments and the survivors should get a bit more colorful as the settlement grows and innovated new ideas and motifs.

I'm hoping the addition of ranged weapons will help reduce the insanity level of the survivors.  The Screaming Antelope is coming soon and extracts a high price from the most insane survivors.  Our most experienced and effective hunters are completely bug nuts so we're trying to rotate some new blood into the hunting party. Fortunately the settlement's children are arriving with some perks to their skills which should help with getting a viable, low insanity, group together.

 Two survivors in full White Lion Kit.  One is sporting a pair of the Butchers Cleavers although the settlement only has one at the moment... I'm anticipating the arrival of the next one!

As the armor gets more advanced the occurrence of lanterns on the models declines.  In the White Lion set I decided that the curing process for the White Lion hides would leave them faintly luminous which makes the hunters equipped with that gear looks a bit like savage apparitions.

 Of course being a faintly luminous hunter in a land of gloomy twilight punctuated by regions of absolute darkness isn't terribly stealthy... but they seem to be working on the bait plan anyway.

To separate the Bone White from the Lion White I'm using the Reaper Bone Triad and Seraphim Sepia (GW) for the Bones and P3 Menoth White Base and Menoth White Highlight with Secret weapon Storm Cloud for the Lion Leather.  I also use the P3 Menoth White for the shroud cloth but process it differently using Warpaints Military Shader and retouching with Menoth White Base.

Its been interesting working with limited color palettes and getting them to show some texture and detail at tabletop viewing range.

 We had a "Savior" born to the settlement which we were very excited to see but... it turns out that these saviors don't last very long as using their abilities seem to 'age' them very rapidly.

This guy will probably represent our first savior... for as long as he lasts...

Rost the Elder got cursed with the Twilight Sword in the last session so I'll need to spin up a Twilight Knight themed model soon. Our fearless (literally) leader Dlenn was also cursed with an armored pelvis that destroyed her reproductive ability but is a sturdy bit of gear.  She just has to somehow avoid picking up the full set and transforming into a Kingsman. 

So the taint of Chaos begins to come home to the survivors.

 On the bench I'm working on the Steampunk themed bases for Twisted.

The base inserts are laser cut on a very fragile and fibrous sheet of cardboard composite.  Its spongy, flexible, and easy to get the bits separated without damaging them after which they recommend a combination of super glue and PVA for assembly.  Once dry very thin superglue is dripped over the material to firm it up and strengthen it.

In practice I omitted the PVA entirely and super glued each layer into position and then drip saturated it and allowed it to dry before moving on to the next layer. This has worked out well, if a bit superglue intensive, and the result was some very strong bases that are sand-able where required.

I'm generally happy with the results so far but a couple of things come to mind about it.








The main downside is that the cardboard sheet of nine base inserts is a bit on the spendy side and the cost is basically identical to, or even a bit higher than, resin at $18.00 for 8x30mm and 1x40mm inserts and the layers are designed to fit together in very specific ways.

With a little more work the layers can be recombined, or combined with additional materials, to get some additional patterns but it would have been a nice touch to make some of the parts a little more universally useful by doing things like making the cogwheel layers as a complete layer so that it could be turned a bit for different views of the worky bits.

Back to the desk... there are Monsters to paint!