Showing posts with label Mail. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mail. Show all posts

Monday, June 3, 2013

Surprise Gift

So the start of my week has been very good.  My previous post with the Mound of Dead Bards received praise from Matt Vancil, and I got a little present in the mail.



T'ankwa, a female half-orc barbarian, was a Berserkon Kickstarter  backer reward.  I love getting exclusive minis and this one is going towards the top of my list to paint.

One of the first things I notice about this sculpt is that the musculature is VERY well done.  She's definitely strong.  The muscles aren't super huge, but they aren't so small as to just blend in either.  She's definitely a tough lady that you wouldn't challenge to an arm-wrestling competition.  The face is ambiguous enough that you could paint her up in normal skin tones as well.  I'll have to decide how I want to paint her.

Some downsides to her is that her ax is really tiny.  When I first looked at the piece in the plastic I thought it was just flash.  The proportions between her and the ax are really close, and it's kind of a shame since the ax fits her well.  I'm going to try and get it attached, but if it breaks it breaks.  She can still pull off the bicep-flex pose really well, and whether or not she has the ax, this model is very cheesecake.



Above pic is for scale.  She's small enough that she could be 25mm, but is close enough to the Sedition Wars to be in in the same scale of 28mm.  Behind them is another up and coming model for me to paint:  The Nightmare Edition Lord Chompy Bits, who is 32mm scale and a HUGE model for even that scale!  Right now I have a lot of awesome on my table to paint.  I might put T'ankwa towards the top as I imagine she'll go by pretty quickly.  Nightmare Chomps is also a good one to paint, but the 2nd wave of Sedition Wars kickstarter minis is coming soon.  I think I'm going to have to paint quickly!

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Happy Package

With the second wave of my Sedition Wars kickstarter supposedly hitting late June/early July I've been trawling through the Studio McVey forums.  A couple weeks ago I came across a thread where they were showing off some of the character sculpts from the upcoming expansion/stand alone game Arms of Sorrow.  AoS is compatible with Battle for Alabaster, but it is its own game as well.  Well, Mike McVey was going to have some resin sculpts at a miniatures convention called Salute (a wargaming convention held in the UK), and had let drop that people could send him a message to get some as he might have leftovers.  Even though Salute had come and gone by a couple of months I sent a message anyways.  He still had a few left and I was able to get my hands on them early!



Commandant Grist is the battle-hardened, Gnosis-suit wearing sculpt you see above.  It's a simple yet elegant sculpt.  A model like this with too many fiddly bits can become frustrating to paint as each of the smaller items ends up requiring its own attention, and it just begins to add exponential amounts of time the more little bits are on there.  Nice and simple but with plenty of variability to add more colors to keep things from becoming too boring.

While Grist is cool (and I am a big fan of robots/power armor/mecha), this next model is the one that really caught my eyes, ripped them out of my head, and held them against the screen.



Phaedrus Chiruge.  Oh my goodness!  Holding this model was incredible!  There is a level of complexity in this sculpt that pictures just can't do justice to.  I don't know that I've ever held a sculpt with such intricacies as this one.  There is a *LOT* of detail on this model, but unlike other, "detailed models," this one is a little different.  Rather than an amalgamation of bric-a-brac/equipment, the detailed bits are the same.  Muscles/tendons, ripped skin, carapace/plates, and so forth.  The details on this model will be consistent, which means less color swapping.  It'll still be time-consuming, and perhaps it's a personal opinion, but this kind of detailed model is one I take to rather easily.

Notice that guy in the background?  Yea, that's Lictalor Strongbow (well, that's the character's name, the mini itself is Arthal Nightblade from Reaper Miniatures).  I haven't glued either Phaedrus or Grist to their bases, and Lictalor is helping to keep Phaedrus on her feet.



Sedition Wars is done in 28mm scale, while Reaper Miniatures is done in 30mm. "Heroic Scale."  Heroic scale is about 32mm, but the two scales are close enough that they are practically interchangeable.  Scale can be pretty important as it helps to add to the overall illusion, lest your mighty ancient dragon the size of a mountain that has terrorized the kingdom for centuries stands only twice as tall as your character's minis.  Here's another size comparison:



In the background is my Drago (in need of arm repairs) to help give a better sense of scale overall.  Lictalor is standing on a 30mm base, while Phaedrus, Grist, and Drago are on 50mm bases.  Drago is standing right behind Lictalor, and you can see how much of a difference in scale there is.  I've worked in both scales before so I'm not worried, and am still rather excited to add more Sedition Wars to my collection.  I look forward to both the second wave (which has a lot of the exclusive miniatures), and seeing more for Arms of Sorrow.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Silver lining

Real life was lying in wait as I exited my apartment.  Ten hours later and I'm dragging myself back into my apartment after a day of driving and working in the sun and heat.  I wasn't going to make it out to Bloomington for Malifaux night tonight, which was very sad.  However I had this waiting in my mailbox.



With nothing else to do except sit in my chair and not make any sudden movements while contemplating the joys of Ibuprofen; I decided to open it, and to what should mine eyes appear but a bevy of metal miniatures!



All of that is an order I placed with Agents of Gaming for Babylon 5 Miniatures.  Even though the company itself went under years back there is still a representative selling off excess stock.  There's still a decent selection left, and I highly recommend getting in on the ease of finding these Out Of Print miniatures while you can!

Now to go through and take an inventory as I did make a rather large order!