Wednesday, February 21, 2018

You May Experience A Burning Sensation: Reaper Fire Giants, Elementals & Other Red-Hot Scorchers

Showcasing a mix of fiery figures painted over the last few years.  Why now?  Because I'm sick and tired of winter.  Just END, already!
 
Huge and medium Fire Elementals
 

 
Another huge Fire Elemental


 
Custom built Thoqqua, for fans of obscure D&D monsters


 
Flame Cultists and summoned Elemental


 
Fire Mage and Goblin Minions


 
Fire Giant Warrior


 
Fire Giant Bodyguard


 
Fire Giant Princess and custom built scenery



Group shot of another set of them with a Mordheim soldier for scale





Sunday, February 11, 2018

Stargrunt 15mm Armored Alien Infantry (or are they Battledroids?)

Just a quick showcase of my latest stab at painting Ground Zero Games' Crusty aliens in armored environmental suits.  I've painted these several times over the years, and I think this is my favorite color scheme to date.  The models are single piece casting with an optional separate backpack with odd "mantis claw" arms on them and what might be jump jets or just extra air tanks.  In this case I've left off the packs since I wanted the model to look a bit less busy.

 
There are three different sculpts of the basic trooper with energy rifle, sold in packs of six models.

 
As well as a special weapons pack with three each of two different weapons.

 
The backs of the models are fully detailed, which you can't see when the backpacks are glued on.  With them left off they're a bit less alien looking but still pretty clearly non-human.

 
Personally, I think they'd also make pretty good alien combat robot types, and would probably fit in a Star Wars game comfortably as a battledroid of some kind.  So, pretty versatile, maybe more so than the "naked" Crusty models are.

Monday, February 5, 2018

Dreadful Things: Mashaaf

Latest model off the workbench, Reaper's Mashaaf from their first Bones Kickstarter.


A VERY large model, seen here re-based onto a 120mm base with some added alien eggs from Troll Forged Games/

 
The figure is Bones plastic, and really exemplifies the main beef many people have with Bones.

 
Mashaaf is only about $30 retail, much cheaper than it would be in metal or resin, which is nice.  Comparably sized GW plastics would run at least twice that, maybe more - and the model is a boxed set rather than a blister, which probably added a good $5 to the cost.

 
But the little side claws (which are part of the main body casting) and the two bigger claw arms (which are separate) are not well served by being made of Bones.

 
They're disturbingly flexible, much like the weapons on many smaller Bones figs.  Admittedly they're almost impossible to damage, but it still feels very wrong.

 
Reaper could have (and I would argue should have) cast the flexible bits either in metal or the harder plastics they've been using on some Bones scenery and terrain pieces.  A multi-media kit might have driven the cost up another $5 or even $10, but even at $40 this thing would be a bargain - and making less fancy custom packaging could have pulled the cost back down.

 
I've seen several people replace the claws with hard plastic Tyranid parts, which indicates I'm not the only one who disliked the bendy Bones plastic.

 
Still, it's inexpensive enough that I can't say it's an outright bad buy.  Just feels like a waste of an opportunity to make a good kit even better by going with a multi-media design.  Very typical of Bones-era Reaper decisions, where they regularly sacrifice some quality to keep costs down.

 
Mashaaf was a first-wave Bones release though, so maybe now that Reaper's had more experience with the stuff maybe we'll see them do multi-media at some point down the road.  The material is best for the big chunky parts of any model, not good at all for finer detailing like hair and faces.

 
It does loom menacingly over your average 28mm trooper, doesn't it?