Moloss and Minion

 Moloss and Minion from Raging Heroes is ready to join the Ubergrotesques of Urien Rakarth's Carnival of Horrors.  The mini would really work better on a 50 or 60mm base but I do want to use it as a Grotesque so it had to be convinced to accept a 40mm base.

Just prior to basing the mini I ... dropped it... on the floor!  It suffered a dent to the drum frame and some broken claws arms and had to be repaired and touched up.  Water effects were added last and were a bit tricky due to the crouching pose but I wanted to get a little depth and sink the fists in the muck a bit.  in retrospect I should have muddied him up in general... probably the whole army looks too clean to be crossing the Blasted Swamps!

For most of the army I made the assumption that they are evil fashion victims and had some eldritch means to keep the muck and gore off their spendy outfits and... more importantly.... out of their hair!  I think it works for Dark Eldar themselves to have that skill but the grotesques and the beastpacks are less easy to go that route...until... I decided that the Dark Eldar masters don't want muddy, gore splattered help/slaves/beasts messing up their spaces and have somehow extended the 'clean tech' to their entire force!  Problem solved!

Here you see the beastmasters starting their journey across the painting table.  The group of 3 Skaarlys SF versions, to cover a few weapon options, is also doing well though I forgot to photo them.

Dark Eldar Army Banner and Grotesque Music

 Here is the army standard/objective marker for the Blood Rain.  Its a complex kit from Raging Heroes.  In general it assembles relatively well but the banner is extremely fragile which makes it difficult to properly clean up.  Still its a stunning tabletop piece and I'm very happy to include it in the Kabal.

 To the right is a Blood Vestal (SF command ver.) also from Raging Heroes.  This model had some issues when aligning the raised leg and required a lot of green stuff to sort out.  I swiped a fan from the new Skyraa character model and really liked the motion and feel of the final pose.  Ultimately she required a lot of work to bring out details and I'm still not entirely happy with the result, but thats painter fail and not any fault with the model.

I went with the new style of Grotesque from Citadel for the Ubergrotesques of Urien Rakarth.  These are from the first run of Finecast and it really shows.  They were warped, quite brittle, and seem to be missing some parts which I replaced with fancy cut toothpick ends. 

 I'm experimenting with a few different necrotic skin types on these but wanted them to still work out as part of the same unit.  These are still WiP and large areas that will be metal are based in a sort of corroded wash just to set the tone.  There should also be a fair amount of green and yellow 'bile' in the different fluid vials that erupt from their bodies at various points and a lot of odd tubes and wires of various colors. 

I'm still looking for good alternative models for the rest of the unit.  Ideally I'd like something is roughly the same size and feel (like a big ghoul of some sort) with some more easily modifiable pose (or several base poses)  than is the case with the actual Grotesque kit. The official kit is sculpted in an unfortunately striking pose that is not easily adapted across other members of the unit, making it very hard to resist the 'Conga Line' effect.  It would also be cool if it rang in at something less than GW's hefty $24.75 per model.

Finally I'm working on another Raging Heroes model to use as a musician in the Grotesque unit.  Moloss and Minion is another complicated but very characterful kit.  The tiny, multi-armed (or clawed) drummer is tricky to get assembled as the arms can make it impossible to position the drums if you get too wild with their placement.  These will add a great deal of cool feel to the unit even if the musician has no actual game effect. 

Grotesque Wracks

 The Wrack group took a little longer because I spent some additional time on the bases. 

I've painted up a dozen old metal Grotesques and swapped out the spare weapons and arms from the Finecast Wrack set to make them look a little more like the current Wracks... of course I haven't added the namesake bony rack!  I'll do the next batch up basically in Gray on this same format of 5 new Wracks and 12 old Grotesques to fill things out.

I can still use the Grotesques as ... Grotesques!

Which will be handy until I replace them with larger models.  I know its more efficient to keep using the old models with their conveniently smaller bases but I like the idea of larger grotesques.  That said I'm not at all happy about the price point of the new Grotesque model... especially since it is cast in such a dynamic pose that all of them beyond model one will have to be modified to avoid the appearance of the unit being stuck doing The Monster Mash!  So I'm looking for a model to use in place repeating the Current official model 10 times.  I have two of the new model and think I would like to look at a half dozen alternative models that have the right ambiance.  Let me know if you have any recommendations.  I think Ogres would be workable of course but some of the Steampunk stuff that is out there might have application as well.  I'm not a tournament player so it can be a non-GW model if there is something out there especially cool and appropriately horrific!

 I had a great time working on the bases.  I was going for a swampy effect and am pretty happy with the result.  I still have some work to do with making the water effects deep enough to be convincing on this size and style of base but I think I can sort that out.  These did eventually achieve enough depth of water effect to make a believable surface texture and I was really pleased with the way the stones turned out... they even look a little mossy!

The skin on these fellows looks particularly mottled and unhealthy.  I like the pastiche of color and, although they are too textured and splotchy for the GW style, I think it has a good B-movie horror feel to it.