Just a short note to let you know that my 28mm Predator review has been updated with two more models from Predastore – the Jungle-Predette and the Chasing-Hunter. See the review post for details and comparison shots.
Jungle-Predette
Chasing-Hunter
Archive for the ‘Miniatures’ Category
Hive pageant – Aliens game board update #2
February 13, 2012After my last post I’ve received very good comments regarding the hive walls. I agree that the first test piece was lacking that biomechanic look so iconic to the Alien franchise, so I went to work on different prototypes. I bought some electrical wire (as it’s very cheap and holds its shape) and using blue foam offcuts and Tetra paste I knocked together three prototypes for hive wall styles. I’ve shown them painted, with everyone’s favourite smartgunner Drake for comparison. What do you think? They’re still lacking all sorts of lumps, holes, glue-goo, gloss varnish, ribbing and things like that, but these should give a rough idea. None of them are quite right, but I have a feeling I’m getting there. They are a bit sparse, for one, so I really need to add a lot more stuff in.
First test - While I like the spinelike ribbing on the vertical struts, I quickly noticed that the background desperately needs texture. It’s also a bit too spider web looking.
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Second test - In this one I like the organic look of the tubes. It’s much too sparse, though. The addition of a simple texture to the wall makes a huge difference.
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Third test - In my opinion this is the most Gigeresque of the test pieces. I like the ribbed texture on the wall. A lot of the wire was left exposed to create a smooth look. I used some heavy drybrushing to emulate Giger’s airbrushed style.
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In my own opinion there are good elements in all of them that could/should be combined. I hope you’ll agree that these are much closer to H.R. Giger’s aesthetic than my previous outing. There are two styles of hive wall that I’ve spotted in the films. One is a very random, swirly, gooey one, whereas the other one is very much straight-off Giger with less “bio” and more “mechanical”.
Here are some shots from Aliens to illustrate the look I’m trying to achieve. There’s obviously a lot of randomness, as well as plenty of organic looking strands of Xenomorph resin. Of course I’ll need to leave some original walls showing through as well to create a contrast between the man-made and the alien.
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Now’s the time for comments. As you can see, I’m teetering between different options so input is very valuable at this time. Don’t be afraid to be critical, either!
Dry heat – Aliens game board update #1
February 10, 2012The Aliens board game game board (tee-hee) project I announced a while back is going strong. In this post I’ll take a look at what’s happening with it.
The board
In the previous post I wondered about a suitable flooring texture – brass and resin alternatives were too costly. I considered textured styrene sheets, but couldn’t find a suitable texture. In the end I settled for a cheap and easily handled material: plastic bug screen. It provided me with a nice mesh texture, and perhaps most importantly it was dirt cheap. I bought a large offcut sheet for 5€, and it’s over twice the size I needed.
Yesterday I cut a suitable shape from the sheet and glued it over the board with watered-down PVA. I left the staircase portion unglued. After the glue had dried, I carefully removed the rectangle with a craft knife. The bug screen has the added bonus of showing through the markings I made on the board earlier.
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Today the mailman brought me the magnetic sheets that will be used to attach the terrain pieces to the board, so today will probably see some test fitting – not to mention testing whether the magnets have a strong enough hold. If they don’t, it’s back to the proverbial drawing board.
Accessories
The game board is clogged with various obstacles, and I’ve slowly gone to work on them as well. Shown below are some of the things I intend to use.
Various scifi bits and bobs from Ainsty. I bought these earlier to use in my Triton-4 Aliens/Predator/Colonial Marines campaign – which might or might not return. They’ll serve their purpose wonderfully here as well.
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Scratch-built junk. Every miniature gamer hoards up things they might need one day. Lo and behold, this is “one day”! Out will come the random bits bought from hardware stores, beads, offcut pieces of sprue and miniatures and things like that. This project is a fine way to use them, since a lot will be covered more or less with Xenomorph gunk (more on that below). There is one innovation I’m actually proud of, and that’s using my Mantic bases. I’ve assembled quite a few from ghoul and zombie sets, and until now I’ve had no use for them. Now I’ve combined them with some of the extra bug screen I have, and they make wonderful exhaust vent -type thingies. A slight problem is that in the board game all obstacles block line of sight. In Aliens, however, there is steam billowing all around the reactor room (“Yeah, but it’s a dry heat!”), so I’m thinking of using craft wool to simulate steam issuing from the vents.
Alien gunk. This gave (and might still be giving) me a hard time. While I love the biomechanical Xenomorph look, it’s a bastard to recreate in larger quantities. Ready-made resin sets exist, but that would rapidly escalate the costs of this project – something I definitely don’t want. My current choice is to go with Tetra paste, which is a somewhat elastic paste for sealing windows, bathroom tiles and the like. This doesn’t produce a neat, organic surface, but rather a creepy, gooey one. It can be crudely shaped and takes paint well. Below is a quick mock-up using a blue foam offcut and some paste. On the right you can see the same piece with a quick, patchy paintjob (black with grey drybrushing, ink wash, I’ll later add some strands of glue for that sticky look) and a Marine to give you an idea of how it looks. Definitely let me know what you think. In my opinion it looks nice enough, even if it is a slight departure from the source material.
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Miniatures
Unsurprisingly I have a whole lot of Colonial Marines. All I needed to do was pick out a suitable selection to match the characters in the film. I took some liberties to save me some time. What I needed was Apone (flamethrower), Crowe (pistol), Dietrich (flamethrower), Drake (smartgun), Frost (pistol), Hicks (shotgun), Hudson (pistol), Vasquez (smartgun) and Wierzbowski (flamethrower). Surprisingly I had less than half of suitable minis for these fellows painted. Like the Marines in the film, the lack of pulse rifles proved troublesome.
Here are the painted ones. Apone and Drake are from em4, while Crowe and Hudson are from Copplestone Castings.
L to R: Apone, Crowe, Hudson, Drake. Click for a larger version
And the unpainted ones. Apart from Frost they’re all Woodbine designs models. Frost is an as-of-yet unfinished conversion of an em4 plastic trooper.
L to R: Dietrich, Frost, Hicks, Vasquez, Wierzbowski. Click for a larger version
That’s the project so far. Comments and critique, send them my way!
Blood Bowl-a-rama #10 – an unkindness of Ravens
February 1, 2012Did you know, that a flock of ravens is actually called an “unkindness”? Really! Read a column on the subject here.
Anyway, this curious piece of linguistics brings me to the main point of this post – namely my completed Blood Bowl team. There are a few extra models, and I have one werewolf pending a repaint. Other than that, here are the Drakwald Ravens in their gothic glory.
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As you may have noticed, there are some players in the photo that haven’t been introduced yet. They are:
Arthur Schopenhowler the werewolf. I simply love this model from West Wind, see the review here.
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A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.
- Schopenhowler
Jürgen Habermassacre the flesh golem. The model’s a tank zombie from the FU-UK sculpting competition a few years back.
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One never really knows who one’s enemy is.
- Habermassacre
Georg Henrik von Wight the..wight. The model is a custom build from GW plastic parts.
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If one is satisfied with things, one doesn’t complain about the downsides that exist, either.
- Von Wight
There you go! An actual, completed project. Should I need another werewolf, I’ll simply give the pants and base of a previously painted West Wind critter a quick repaint.
This time it’s war – in 3D
January 13, 2012With my Blood Bowl team pretty much done (pictures coming up soonish), and armed with experience gained from building my BB pitch, I’ve decided to start a new project. I went through my boxes of old stuff some time ago, and dug out the old Leading Edge Aliens board game that I bought for a pittance years and years ago. I’ve played this game so many times in my teens, due to its solo play option. I remember sitting in my room at the age of 14 or 15, and just playing the game over and over and over again.
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It wasn’t too difficult to form the following chain of thought: “Hmm, I really want to play this game again” to “I have loads of Colonial Marine and Alien miniatures” to “I wonder if the playing board accommodates 28mm miniatures – no” to…oh, you know how it goes. So now I’m looking to build a 3D gaming board to recreate the main – and in my opinion best – scenario from the game. It’s of course the reactor room one, where most of the CM squad is ripped apart. It’s a pretty difficult and brutal mission, but perfectly captures the feeling of the movie. Don’t believe me? Try the Flash version and come back!
With this in mind I picked up a sheet of blue foam and the Aliens game board and did some calculations. The original board is 14 by 25 squares. When I translated the squares to 30mm ones and left some extra room at the sides, it amounted to a 42,3 cm by 75,3 cm board. Perfectly reasonable size, only a bit larger than my Blood Bowl pitch. Storage is always an issue for me when it comes to wargaming scenery. Or rather, it has started to become an issue due to not being an issue before.
The Blood Bowl pitch project certainly taught me something, and that was to be careful with measurements and cutting. As a result, the Aliens board is much more symmetrical and the square grid much more even. I used the same push-pins and string -technique to build the grid, and used a felt-tip marker to mark the corners of the squares. Much more fun an easy than with the pitch.
After doing the grid, I marked down or the obstacles on the board so I know what to build and where, and that’s where I’m now. I’m thinking of attaching the various bits and pieces of the game board – at least the larger ones – with magnets, so they can be removed for easier storage.
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(No, it’s not that irregular – the camera angle’s doing some nasty tricks there!)
What’s next? I’m thinking of buying a suitable plastic or metal mesh to use as flooring. While there are some nice stuff in resin and etched brass out there, I’m trying to optimise the cost/looks ratio. For the obstacles it’s going to be lots of scratch building, green stuff and some resin accessories I have stashed away. That’s one great thing about starting projects, especially thematically similar ones: you can use leftovers or stuff bought for something else easily. And of course I have all the Marines and Aliens I need already.
Ideas, comments, insight and encouragement warmly welcomed.
Blood Bowl-a-rama #9 – Zombie incursion
January 9, 2012I’ve been painting like crazy lately. Our 2012 Blood Bowl league has kicked off, and the Drakwald Ravens have already faced off against the Lustrian Swamp Shamans. I managed to field an almost fully painted team, but still have two half-finished models to go. The main step my painted team took forward was me painting six zombies in pretty much two evenings. I pretty much used my basic zombie recipe, and I think it worked fine here. As usual, flat colours only for the “uniforms”.
So here we go, new additions to the lineup: Martin Eyedigger, Friedrich Dark-Engels, Immortal Kant, Gore Marx, Gut-lob Frege and Hurt Gödel. Of these guys poor Marx and Gödel never made it past their first match and Frege is yet to make an appearance.
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While we’re talking about the match, man…it was for me Blood Bowl at its worst. Or no, not really, so let me rephrase that. It was a good game of Blood Bowl, with my luck at its worst. Let me just put it this way: the most amazing moment of the match was poor Ludwig Wightenstein missing a trivial block against a weaker opponent, going down on a roll of double skulls, re-rolling those into another set of double skulls and receiving a shattered hip permanent injury. I should at this point note that the probability of such a chain of events is considerably less than 1/100 000. Needless to say, my opponent Joonas (of Dusty Gamer) had a field day.
To use a quaint expression, the lizards tore me a new one. A whole bunch of new ones, actually.
Oh well. At least my team is pretty. In a ghoulish, dead sort of way.
From the painting desk #13
January 5, 2012Yes! My Hürn from Heresy (see the Predator review for more info) is finally finished, after sitting half-painted on my desk for ages. Seriously, I’ve written on July 14, 2011:
Here are my Predators, sans the wonderful Hürn from Heresy, who sits almost finished on my painting desk.
Weird how you sometimes just hit a wall with a particular miniature, even if it isn’t annoying to paint. For some reason this happened with the Hürn. As usual, once I finished it I was left wondering what was so difficult. It’s a neat model, and turned out just fine!
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This version of the Hürn has unfortunately sold out. I’m considering buying the new, helmeted variant for different weapon options. As if I didn’t have enough Predators already.
From Dawn of the Lead with love
January 2, 2012I decided to start off this new year with something special. As every miniature gamer knows, we tend to accumulate far more miniatures than we can paint. I got a fair few freebies for my Colonial Marine review, and while most will end up in my own use, there are a few that are simply extra. In this case, the Fenryll Science Fiction Troopers.
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From my review:
French resin miniature manufacturer Fenryll has six more or less obviously not-CMs in their science fiction range. It has to be said right at the start that these miniatures are very big. While the Fenryll site lists them as 28mm, the models actually measure 33-35mm from top of base to top of head. The size is a real shame, since the miniatures are very nice. The sculptor Dominique Seys has done a nice job with the troopers’ faces and gear, and resin produces beutiful, crisp detail. There is one thing about the first pack that bugs me a lot, and it’s the way the troopers hold their pulse rifles. They’re all holding them one-handed (two of them are holding a grenade in the other hand), and the guns look entirely weightless. This gives the troopers of the first pack a very action figure-ish look, which I’m not partial to. The troopers in pack 2 hold their guns much more sensibly with two hands, and I prefer this pack to the first one. The models come with separate guns and backpacks, and they’re all on square integral resin bases, with some sculpted detail and texture. There were some casting flaws, with quite a lot of flash and mould lines/misalignment.
The size of the Fenryll troopers will probably put a lot of people off. As the comparison pictures below show, they’re very tall, standing head and shoulders above most other miniatures in this review. While this might make them unappealing to a fair few gamers, their large size does mean that they’re a perfect match size-wise for the Horrorclix Aliens or the Heresy Hurn, which tend to be pretty big compared to most 28mm miniatures. In terms of price the troopers are at the higher end in this review, with a pack of three models costing 10 EUR, which amounts to £8.40 at the time of writing, or £2.80 per miniature.
The latter part is why I’m giving them away. While wonderful minis, they’re simply a bit too large to fit in with my other models. They’re still very nice, and really should find a nice home.
How to get them? Simple, just drop me a comment on this post. Using magical powers (and a random number generator) I’ll pick the lucky winner and notify them. The winner will need to pay postage, which should at most amount to 2-3 EUR or something similar even for overseas delivery – the Finnish post office is quite cheap and very reliable. Payment via PayPal is preferred.
Good luck!
Blood Bowl-a-rama #8 – Two ghoul for school
December 28, 2011First of all, pardon for the awful (if there is another kind) pun in the title. It was my rather quaint way of letting you know that I’ve completed two new models for the Ravens. Let me present to you… Karl Eye-Popper and Oswald Strangler!
Both are ghouls from Mantic (reviewed here), and lovely miniatures to paint. What made them even easier to paint is the fact that I made the conscious decision to leave the uniform colours without shading to convey something of a game piece vibe as opposed to something more realistic. So, plain black and purple it was. To counterbalance this, I did some extra work on the skin and the self-inflicted wounds, trying to make the former deathly pale and dirty and the latter nasty and infected. I’d love to hear your comments on whether it worked or not.
Here are my new players, along with their thoughts on their existence.
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Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.
- Karl Eye-Popper
This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us; to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves; to act in such a way that some part of us lives on.
- Oswald Strangler
Blood Bowl-a-rama #7 – A new star
December 22, 2011Another player has joined the ranks of the (painted) Ravens: Ludwig Wightenstein. Ready to beat down opponents not only by reducing philosophical problems to linguistic puzzles, but also with his mechanical claw of nasty death.
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Ludwig is an all-plastic conversion composed of several bits and pieces. The torso and pauldron are from GW’s Empire knights set, while the head, left arm and legs are from their classic (80s-90s) plastic skeleton set. The right arm is from GW’s zombie set, and the right wrist with the claw comes from Mantic’s ghoul sprue. I also greenstuffed tattered remains of clothing around his waist to mask the join between the legs and the torso. Wightenstein’s right arm still bears old, undead flesh – no doubt kept in its state by some vile magic in the claw.
He was given a quick, simple paint job. I went for a rusty, old armour look. The clothing (or rather lack of it) posed a problem, but I tried to convey the black and purple uniform of the Ravens nevertheless. I’m fairly happy with the model, but less so with my progress with the team. The league is scheduled to kick off soon, and I’d love to field a fully painted team for once.
