Sedition Wars Kickstarter

This last week the first shipment of the Sedition Wars Kickstarter arrived at my doorstep.  Sadly I haven't had as much time as I would have liked to work on it, but I did get all the extra figures from the Biohazard reward level assembled.

Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster is a board game similar to Space Hulk in that they use 28mm miniatures on modular tiles that can be rearranged to form different battlegrounds to play in.  I've not yet had time to play, or even time to assemble all the miniatures yet, but it looks like it'll be a pretty good game from the rules skimming I have done.


First we have the strain, a bio experiment gone wrong or some such on Alabaster Station.  (I haven't had time to read through the setting fluff.  So can only go on what I've gleaned from following the Kickstarter.)  Personally they're awesome models, With nice variety in bioforms, even if each style of creature only has a single pose. 



The Strain have a large number of large based bioforms, the pride and joy of the spokesman for the kickstarter being the Grendlr.  Which while an impressive model, is a royal pain to assemble.  It starts off with the two halves of the body, which as you can hopefully see to the right (click image for larger view), do not line up what-so-ever with each other and require a near-boiling water bath to soften up one side or the other to reform it.  As the halves are already deformed and deformed more to get them to fit back together, the maw bit then also needs a bath to fit on the newly shaped maw socket.  There's also a design issue here where part of the alignment plug (either on the maw or on the body) needs to be removed so it has a chance to fit.  The legs luckily fit in their sockets fine, though they no longer all line up where the flat parts are to connect with the base, again a near-boiling water bath fixes this by getting it's legs soft and holding each foot against the base while they cool back down.



I think my favorite of the larger bioforms is the Brimstone, it reminds me of the 'dogs' from Ghostbusters.  And the Scythe is my favorite of the smaller Bioforms.







To fight the infection we have the Vanguard.  While they have a variety of weapons, there are only three body poses (two female, one male).  I'm hoping that this is due to having only assembled the Biohazard extra figures as, while I like a mostly female force, I can't really believe the Vanguard forces are 2/3rds female.  One of the two female poses needs a near-boiling water bath as well as the arms are too far apart to equip the basic rifle.  On the plus side I received an extra basic rifle for the female sculpt, and an extra male torso in my biohazard set.  Sadly the female rifle and the male torso aren't immediately compatible so no easy extra model there, but nice anyway.




Generally I'm happy so far, other then the models are in that annoying new spin-cast plastic/resin stuff that doesn't glue well, sand well, or basically do anything well.  I'm guessing it's much cheaper then good ol' polystyrene.



Battle for Alabaster logo used without permission from The Sedition Wars website.  Biohazard reward level image used without permission from the Sedition Wars Kickstarter page.

Zombie Vixens Review

I picked up a box of Zombie Vixens by Wargames Factory from The War Store over the holidays and figured I might as well give them a quick review as I've gotten around to assembling one sprue worth of zombies.


First thing is the zombies are cast in the more classic polystyrene plastic allowing standard plastic cement to bond them together.  This is a great positive to me what with all these hybrid resin/plastics and such that require superglue to put together.

The details on the models are muddy,  which from prior experience with Wargames Factory is to be expected, and while the miniatures themselves are multi-part, they don't go together as well as other figures I've seen.  It feels like a number of miniatures were designed then cut up to put on the sprues without thought for mixing and matching them, even though extras are provided.  Shoulders are arbitrarily on the torso or the arm, making large amounts of trimming and/or gap filling required for fitting them together.  Mold lines are visible but a quick filing or lightly gliding a hobby blade over them clears them up nicely as is pretty usual for the plastic.

The poses themselves are nice and dynamically zombie, and with some work you'll end up with a nice varied range of additional zombies for cheap.  I paid $15.99 for the box making these figures about 44 cents a unit if you count the 'crawlers' as figures.  The vixen's heads are connected to the torsos with a pair of (mostly) matching flat spots greatly limiting the pose-ability of the heads.  This also means they are not immediately compatible with the company's first zombie set which used ball and socket joints for the necks.  This makes the broken necked lolling head pose much harder to achieve with the vixens.  I don't know if it's just my lack of in-style knowledge, but most of the hairstyles look like they came out of 80s sitcoms and are far too neat for a zombie.  I can't imagine these vixens dolling up their hair before going out for a flesh hunt.



 Inside the box are three identical sprues meaning the box has 3 each of 10 unique poses (12 if you count the 'crawlers').  There are 15 unique heads, 32 total arms, (7 stubs that could potentially be used on either arm and and a roughly even split of right/left arms a number of which are simply mirrored for right/left hands,) and 3 accessories, including 2 handbags and a serving tray. 


All in all, though it sounds like I'm mostly tearing down the figures, I'm happy with them as they're a dynamic, low cost, and flavorful addition of female zombies in what I've found to be a generally male zombie horde.  They'll likely make appearances in many of the skirmish games my gaming group is looking at running.  Sadly we still haven't found a system that suits us.


Additional zombie vixen photographs.

Dancing Floor

Bases for my Showgirls, yay!  They're actually made from coffee stir sticks cut to arbitrary lengths.  This was mostly to produce more interesting bases, but it happens to also be how my hardwood floor came for my old bedroom.  I'm not yet sure how I want to finish them, I have some left over scraps from the manufacturing process to test with, and I have some wood aging stuff coming to try.  I'm hoping to age the wood a bit to draw out the grain, then either a real varnish or something to make them look more dance floor like.

The process evolved a bit during construction, initially I'd laid the sticks out and used other sticks as cross supports to hold them in place.  However after cutting the support off the second base and having to reposition the fiddly little pieces constantly, I realized I could use a paper backing for the flooring as seen in the picture above.  Using the paper backing sped up the process immensely and I got four or five bases done in the time it took to make one.

To get the right sized inserts, I made with a circle cutter.  The 30mm base one had to be sanded down a bit as it ended up being a bit too large.  These were then laid out on the stir stick floor and traced around.  they were then cut out using a combination of old sprue cutters, xacto saw and xacto blade.  I should've gotten more pictures of the process, and I'll make sure to when I make more bases, but I have enough bases for my entire collection of showgirls, which is a Colette du'Bois starter, a couple packs of Corphees, and a pack of Mechanical Doves.

Ork Mob paint WIP

Yay for basecoats.  I haven't actually gotten much done this last week what with the holidays, I did manage to paint some more base colors on a (mostly) random selection of orks.  I've been working on them off and on for pretty much the entire time I've known about Special Operations Killzone.  There isn't really any theme unifying them into a single mob, but as they're a skirmish kinda gathered as they went, I feel that fits.  Their (as yet unchosen) bases will be their unifying feature.  A number of them are supposed to have additional armour plates that I've made, but not yet attached (or even primed yet).  I have 2 more of the looted weapon(?) orks similar to the one on the far right of the picture and another big shoota boy that were supposed to be part of the mob, but have no paint at all yet.  Painting random colors on 13 different orks is an interesting process and getting the red for that pair of pants was a pain.

They were (are?) for Special Operations: Killzone, but I haven't really thought about that system in a while now.  I don't know when I'll get around to working more on them, as I finally have all the parts for my Showgirls crew in Malifaux so I'll probably have some updates on assembly and painting ideas soon.


Oh, also does anyone have any experience with the Savage Worlds Showdown game engine?  It's a free miniatures ruleset available here.

Tentacoos and more Tentacoos

After seeing 40kaddict's article on a cheap and quick alternative for the tentacle maker I couldn't help but make some myself for my Slaanesh daemon princess.  I've run two batches so far, and tried a preliminary tentacle ball beast weapon thing on the daemon princess herself.

Above is the first batch of tentacles, and most of them ended up rather thick.  So I worked out a second set (below) after the first had cured. Which turned out better, I tried twisting a couple together in this batch trying to figure out how to pose the tentacles while the greenstuff is still uncured.  I'm sure a few cycles down the road I'll actually start being happy with them.

I have a couple Slaanesh project ideas currently, to use tentacles in, so i figure many will get used anyway.  I'll probably end up placing these and making more to mount while still uncured to make them look like they fit better together.

Gun Gal

Woo, finally actually painted something.  Sadly I haven't been able to get any good pictures, they're all making her hair way to red and washing out all the shades and highlights (at least on the camera preview screen and my desktop's screens).  Not a great paint job, but I haven't painted anything in...  well, sense El'Larrun for the character competition back in June 2011.

She's as yet unbased and unnamed, but will hopefully be for a small skirmish scale campaign tentatively called Altered Realities some friends and I have planned.  We're still trying to decide on a ruleset to use for the campaign.

Mantic Undead Review

Long ago when Mantic first released their ghoul models, they sent a sprue to me as a sample.  The ghouls were of high quality, except 3 of the 4 base hands on the models had broken fingers.  It didn't bother me as there was a variety of other hands that could be glued on in their place if one cut off the base hands and they were shipped to me in a bubble envelope from the UK.

Fast forward to end of June.  A couple of friends and I placed an order for a number of Mantic models.  We ordered one of the Morgoth's Revenge sets and a box of Orc Axes.  I received this order about a week ago now.  My part of the set was the undead, while the dwarves went to one friend and the orcs to another.  After assembling a couple of the models from the sprues I hadn't seen before (Skeletons, Revenants, Zombies), I would recommend them for anyone looking for cheaper alternatives to GW undead.  They're at least as detailed as the GW skeleton plastics, though much less customizable.


The Mantic skeletons vary from 2 piece to 6 pieces per model (excluding details like pouches), with a large number being in the 2 or 3 piece range, the parts on the command sprue half have the largest variety.  The Skeleton and Revenant sprues are also interesting in that they're designed as sprue halves.  There is a base skeleton half, a base Revenant half, a line trooper half and a command half.  Any individual sprue will have either the Revenant or Skeleton half with the other side being the line trooper or command half.  The 4 sprues that came with Morgoth's revenge had one of each combo, giving me 2 of each type of sprue half.  (I wish I'd taken pictures before cutting everything off the sprues.)  There is a total of only 4 unique legs, 2 with chainmail, 2 with rags, meaning that from the waist down there will be little variability.  The upper torsos however appear to each be unique (so 5 unique torsos per sprue half).  They are extremely close in scale to the newer GW skeletons, and I've already assembled a mantic body with a GW sword arm, only a little GS is required to fill the cavity the GW arm has for the connector nob that doesn't exist on the Mantic model.


The ghouls seem to just have a problem with shipping, of the 5 sprues that came in the set (totaling 20 open hands),  11 of the open hands had 1 or more broken fingers.  As there are only 2 ghouls per sprue (though they do have separate torsos and legs), with 3 head options and 3 replacement hands, there isn't much in the vary of variation if many of them are fielded, expecially when over half their basic/open hands are broken.  I'll probably try mixing them with the zombies for variation.

Which brings me to the Zombies themselves, which while look nice on the sprue have some of the strongest criticisms from me.  They come 3 models to a sprue, (2x torsos + arm, 1x torso + 2 arms), with 6 head options and 3 arm options for the 2 torsos with only 1 arm molded on.  it also comes with a spine and pile of organs with looks like it should slot into a set of legs, and a base that looks like it can slot a torso missing legs and trailing guts.  This could potentially bring the models up to 4 zombies per sprue.  There are 2 major problems with the zombies.  First, the torsos and legs do not fit together well at all.  They're going to require quite a bit of gap filling to fix the poor looking connections.  The second is how the heads connect to the torsos.  with the flat connection there is little in the way of posing the head, and this is most noticeable on the torso with 2 arms as any head attached looks like it's staring up at the 2nd or 3rd story of a building.  The neck would work alright if the torso was placed almost horizontal on the ground, but not even the legless base positions the torso that far down.  An interesting aside, is a arm holding a head.  I only counted it as a arm as I was unable to fit it on any of the torsos at any angle to have it look right as a zombie holding it's own head (either still attached to the body or truly floating free).  With some conversion it can be made to work, but I'm not sure how many people can sculpt good looking severed necks (never tried it myself).

All in all the models are pretty good, and i do recommend them for anyone looking for yet more undead to add to their force.  It's kind of a cruel irony that the Zombies are the worst of the bunch as they had the most cross-game utility in my book.  All the models (except the Zombies) go together quickly so assembling a large force in limited time should not be a problem. So far the best part of the entire undead range, in my opinion, is the Undead Giant Rats (Dogs?) models (that is the official title for them too).

About the image:  The back 2 models are Skeleton/Revenants.  The one on the left has the GW sword arm.  The middle 3 models are the Zombies, which look nice, but don't go together too well.  The blurry front most models are the Ghouls.  the dog sized undead critters are the Undead Giant Rats (Dogs?).

Tauchikoma Broadside

She is pieced together from both a regular XV8 Crisis Suit and a Forgeworld XV88-2.  I liked how the Forgeworld Broadside weapons look, and after inadvertently learning they could be easily mounted on the backpack mounts of a normal suit (the connector bar for the arm slots right into the backpack groove), I couldn't get the image of the broadside Tauchikoma out of my head.

I started with the normal tauchikoma body and trimmed down the FW Broadside 'heatsinks' to glue to the normal backpack's jetpack arms, trimming down some of the nozzles.  The space between the jetpack and heatsinks was filled with greenstuff.  I left the bottom-most nozzle open, figuring it might be fired when the railguns fire to help stabilize.

I had to ponder for a while to place the second array of missiles, the first set was obvious in the space the normal tauchikoma carry their primary weapon system.  I ended up attaching them to the 'screw' nubs on either side of the backpack where I suppose normal tauchikoma would have line launchers like in GitS.  This should allow the existing line launcher power and control interface to fire off missiles without having to run any new control circuitry.

Looking over the pictures, there are resin bubbles in the railgun muzzle vent things.  Those are going to be a pain to clean out >.<

As an interesting aside, I went hunting for the tau'chi'koma that were my inspiration, and while I believe I found the thread they were in; all the images have been removed.  I recall there being a broadside or 2 in that set, but can't verify it or compare the 2 units.  ;.;

Edit: Hahaha!  Thanks #2501 for reminding me that you were the one!  Here's his Tau'chikomas.  Though this does lead me to wonder what the thread I found was...  It's here by the way.  Anyway his broadsides are quite a bit different then mine, but that's ideal.  And my second one will look different from either as I don't have any more spare FW Broadside torsos (which is odd as I have another set of railguns >.> ). 

 

Real Life Delays

Well, sorry I still don't have the tauchikoma up, I'm still adapting to the new job and haven't had the time to photograph miniatures.

In more upbeat miniature news, the Kings of War starter set arrived in the mail yesterday right before I went to work, so I'll have zombies and skeletons to assemble and finally have the mooks, sorry, 'henchmen' for my Mordheim warband, hopefully I'll find some time over the weekend to catch up on miniature related stuff.

El'Larrun places second.

Well, I'm thrilled, I placed second in the Gifts of Mork Character Competition. I wasn't really expecting to place higher then honorable mention if I was lucky.  I will say congratulations to all the other winners of the contest, especially Dan1789 for being the Winner and Misty Rain (Honorable Mention: Rules) for doing a tribute to the Tau Guru Tael (and for doing a Tau entry at all).  ^.^

I'm planning on finishing up my Tau army now that I've had interest in it rekindled (I think I burned myself out trying to assemble and paint it all at once.)  And managed to assemble another Tauchikoma, this one outfitted as a counts-as Broadside.   Expect pictures...  probably Tuesday, depending on how my 4th of July day goes. 


In unrelated information, I apologize for not having a post ready for Thursday.  I was busy getting ready for a job interview and didn't do much miniature stuff anyway.  Oh, I also now have a job.

El'Larrun Painted

Well, she's painted and submitted to the Character Competition.   I could definitely tell I haven't painted anything in a while as I struggled through getting her painted.  For my fancy attempt I tried the camo-field (dis)engaging effect.  the Camo part turned out well, but I'm not super happy with the energy border.  Probably need to add a white core to it or something.  Oh well, next week should be on to something different, then a quick back to this post with the results from the CC (hopefully).  Then who knows.

The drones still make me giggle though.

Grr, forgot to 'publish' this post so it didn't appear on Thursday like it was supposed to.

El'larrun Special Character

Whee, assembly done.  Not super happy with it, but that's just my skill not reaching up to where my wants/desires lie.  I started with a stealth suit and cut it into many, many pieces.  Some of you might recognize the legs from the old O'larron sculpt which was cannibalized for this.  The rail rifle she has equipped came from a Sniper Drone (I believe, not positive). Her head is a daemonette head from the new plastic range, sadly her nose is crooked.

She's going to be painted green to match the rest of my army, though I think I'll try the partially disengaged stealthfield effect for her.

Tau Robots

While waiting for greenstuff on my entry for the Character Competition to cure, I built this little guy from a memory.  Sadly I don't have any Necron Warrior arms with which to complete it. (I have 7 other sets of Warrior Legs, and 16?  scarabs, but no arms ;.;  Imagine the back half of the basic Gauss Flayer and the long barrel of the Tau Rifle, maybe with some odds and ends to bulk it out.

I should have a couple posts up in the following weeks for the CC entry, and sorry for neglecting to post, was dealing with a Great Grandfather's passing, so got practically nothing done the last couple weeks.

Iron Corsairs SOG

I finally managed to paint my Iron Corsairs to playable...  About 5 weeks ago now (this post keeps getting pushed back as more pressing matters pop up).  I would've posted about it sooner, but I just couldn't get good enough pictures of them.  I'm still not quite happy with the pictures, but this last batch came out alright.  Everyone excepting the Leader (front and center in the picture above) has modular arms so it's relatively easy to change gear (important for my small collection of marines and with Killzone being a living manual with a campaign system in the works.  I couldn't get the crackle paint to work on a fine enough scale to do the weapon cowling, so I kinda tried to freehand the effect.  I need to get some gloss and go over the cowlings to make them shine.





The leader of the Team was a pain to remove the Dark Angels iconography.  He did pick up a large gear pendant as it was easier then completely trimming off the rope.  The sword is the Terminator Power Sword from the Dark Angels upgrade sprue and the arm had a mace originally, probably also from that sprue given it had a Dark Angels pendant.


The heat-stressed metal of the melta barrel looks much better in person.  I got the idea from someone's blog where they had done something similar to their dreadnought's assault cannon. (I can't remember or find it... if anyone knows what I'm talking about, please send me a link to the blog post so I can provide proper back link credit for the idea.)  I also noticed while I was taking this picture that I forgot to drill out the barrel. >.<


The rest of the team in no particular order.

edit: ok, so blogger is still acting up, this was supposed to be scheduled for tomorrow, not posted now with a date reading tomorrow >.<

A shift to Infinity

I've been drooling over infinity models off and on for years but nowhere nearby carried the miniatures and for various I reasons was unable to order any online.  Thanks to the recent surge of interest in Infinity (and other games) I learned the Infinity rules were freely available online just before my FLGS started carrying the Infinity starters.

I haven't yet purchased any as they don't have a Nomad set yet, and my fun budget is currently dedicated to a scifi cosplay I'm working on.  However, I've started the process of poking through the rather large number of pdfs available from Infinity (here if you're interested as well).  Interestingly, while looking for an official image for bloggers to use (didn't find one, I kinda stole the one i'm using off their website) I ran across a fan project that organizes the rules in a printer friendly form.  I haven't looked at it yet, but the other comments in the thread make it sound promising.  It can be downloaded from here.

I've considered posting progress shots of my cosplay work as it progresses, but as it's not miniature game related it feels inappropriate to post about it.

Noise Marine Progress

Also during this last month I managed to progress some on my Noise Marine.  The guitar, and the two arms aren't glued down, though the greenstuff might have forced her(its?) right arm to be still.  I still need to finish the guitar itself and adjust the left hand to be gripping the guitar neck.  I really wanted a different right arm, but after a week of hunting didn't find any suitable and I lack the skills to sculpt a pointing right hand.  Originally I wanted the guitar held in her left hand by its neck, right where the neck comes out of the body (maybe the body resting on the knee guard) and the right hand pointing out at the fans like rock stars sometimes do (at least what little of rock stars I've seen.)