Maledrakh does the entire Mantic Crazy Bobby’s Craaazzy Bonanza Box of Craziness!!!! Complete!

Project Blog by maledrakh

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About the Project

It is Black Friday 2017. Maledrakh (miniatures addict) orders "Crazy Bobby’s Craaazzy Bonanza Box of Craziness!!!!" (official name of item in webstore and on invoice) on a whim. His wallet cries out in pain. The Mountains of Minis prepare to yet again increase in girth and weight, threatening a repeat of the Great Miniatures Avalanche of 2015. As self-inflicted punishment for this thoughtless indiscretion, Maledrakh takes a solemn oath to paint every single one of the miniatures in the Bobbybox, no matter if they are copies of already owned miniatures or maybe even those terrible atrocities known as Plastic Basilean Men At Arms. This is the long drawn out tale* of this self-flaggelation. *most of this is simply copied over from the old BoW forum. This is done because the bobbybox miniatures were not entirely finished when BoW upgraded the site. This way it all gets collected in a neat project.

This Project is Completed

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Completed!

Oct 27 2018

aaaaand they’re done!

It is the end of the line. No more! No more I say ! Phew. Free at last!

The Bobbybox: 126 random older dead stock Mantic minis plus 13 casualties, small animals and such.

I must admit, getting these done was a bit of a slog in places, and I really needed the longish break painting the LAF contest entries over the summer.

Some of these minis will be added to existing armies, some might very well form the start of new armies. I suspect most will end up gathering dust upon the shelves of oblivion and get thrown in the bin as soon as I am gone…a fate I fear they will share with most of my painted miniatures. What am I doing with my time and money? The horror of it all! Better to crawl back into my little fantasyland where little plastic armymen have some value. They do! They dooooo!

Oh well.

Next up in the painting agenda: ANYTHING NOT BY MANTIC!

The bobbybox pt 17: The Mars Attacks! remainders

Oct 24 2018

Woot! The rest of the minis are all done!

All of them from Mars Attacks!

Blaine, Ron Manning and Judge Dreck-ack-ack!

Blaine being the mysterious persona that gets a KS excusive figure in almost every KS Mantic has done, and the Mars Attacks / Judge Dredd crossover mini! (yes, it is a thing!) The helmet is a bit too large, and needs to be trimmed slightly to fit before I glue it down.

…and all the back pictures were too fuzzy to use. Oh well.

The Flaming Cattle token. Such a bizarre and excellent miniature. And, Yes, this is also a thing. Those Martians are cruel!

Another one of my bespoke 3D printed bases used here, resized to 60x35mm.

And for last, the two human soldier casualties and the mechanic as pilot. The part fits in the Martian Saucer and also the Big Stompy Robot. Just need to get round to painting those up…

All of the above are made in PVC / Board game plastic.

and that is the end of the Bobbybox! Took me almost a year to finish, albeit with pauses of many weeks.

It might be a while until I do any more Mantic miniatures!

The Tally so far:

Finished from the Bobby Box: 126 / 126 (+13 / 13 casualties, small animals etc)

Just 0 left to do! FINISHED AT LAST!

Bobbybox pt 16: The Dwarf Ironclads

Oct 24 2018

Continuing on with the Bobbybox, we come to the Dwarves. Or “Dwarfs” as Mantic call them.

I went with a dark blue and a dark purplish red colour scheme for simplicity’s sake. Could just not be bothered to do any more detailing. A bit tired of Mantic minis right now…

Again, my own bespoke 25mm lipped 3D printed bases.

Closing in on the last few minis in the bobbybox!

The Tally so far:

Finished from the Bobby Box: 122 / 126 (+10 / 13 casualties, small animals etc)

Just 4 left to do! (plus two modern soldier casualties and the mars attacks pilot without a vehicle)

Orctober! The Dungeon Saga Orcs & Goblins

Oct 19 2018

It’s Orctober! Cue token painting of some random orc minis…luckily the next in line from the Bobbybox are the rest of the Dungeon Saga Orcs and Goblins.

The orclings and the mawbeast were done earlier. Here is the rest of the set.

The Armoured Troll

The three orcs

and the three goblins.

Did them in gworc green and did not bother with colour variations here, as I have three more sets of these still unpainted from the original Dungeon Saga Kickstarter, and I will do each set in a different scheme.

This wraps up the Dungeon Saga minis from the Bobbybox, leaving some Kings of War Dwarves and some Mars Attacks! specialty minis left to do before the ~~journey towards the dark side~~ Bobbybox will be complete!

The Tally so far:

Finished from the Bobby Box: 117 / 126 (+10 / 13 casualties, small animals etc)

Just 9 left to do! (plus two modern soldier casualties and the mars attacks pilot without a vehicle)

Bobbybox pt 14: The Skeletons of the Lost Crusade

Oct 14 2018

Picking up work on the rest of the bobbybox minatures, untouched since before Easter(!), here are the contents of the Skeleton Troop Sprue:

10 skeleton infantry, a skeletal dog (or is it a rat), and the top of a skeleton dragging itself up from the grave

I already have (the start of ) an Undead Army for Kings of War called the The Lost Crusade themed slightly along the lines of Templar Knights with white robes and shields featuring red crosses.

So here is another unit or an extension to an existing one.

I based them with my bespoke 3D printed 20mm round lipped bases for older mantic miniatures that both make them round based for skirmish combat and keeps the 20mm footprint for Kings of War or Warhammer Fantasy Battles ranking up. Also, they are easier to rank up since the round bases let me adjust the positions.

Miniatures in HIPS polystyrene plastic.

The Tally so far:

Finished from the Bobby Box: 110 / 126 (+10 / 13 casualties, small animals etc)

Just 16 left to do! (plus two modern soldier casualties and the mars attacks pilot without a vehicle)

Bobbybox part 13: The Vehicles (and another one)

May 26 2018

Originally posted Apr 8, 2018

Not too much time dedicated to painting anything this week, but I did manage to get the vehicles from the Bobbybox done. These were all from Warpath, and included an old school Orx Raptor trike and three new-school (is that even an expression?) Veermyn Tunnel Runner monowheel-things.

While I was at it, I decided to include another Raptor that I had lying about and paint that up as well.

The Orx Raptor is one of the earliest, if not the earliest restic vehicle kit Mantic made. Stylistically it is obviously made as a substitute Space Orks buggy, and as such is actually a quite nice representation of a crude, ramshackle speedy light vehicle weapons platform.

Like all Space Ork vehicles, reality gets left at the door. I mean, putting the radiator and air intake for the engine directly behind the front wheel of the trike, without any mudguard, would probably lead to the engine failing catastrophically due to clogged intakes in short order. The little front windscreen the driver is supposed to see out of, is completely blocked by the massive engine. Probably why it is called an engine block. The gunner has no seat, handholds, rails, straps, or anything to hold on to apart from the rocket launcher itself, so that makes it really easy to aim when bumping around in a speedy buggy…speaking of the rocket launcher, it points by default directly into the front wheel by way of the engine…but this kind of élan is what makes an ork vehicle orky, isn’t it?

Anyway, the kit itself is rather crude, with large parts that did not fit together at all. Every major restic part was warped to some degree. Getting the parts to fit needed a bit of boiling water to soften the restic and some bending into shape before dunking in ice cold water to set the new shape. I recommend to do parts that need to fit together at the same time, and hold them together in the correct position when dunking in the cold water to set them.

In the end, the kit cleaned up well.

The Veermyn Tunnel Runners are rather newer kits, from the recent (well, it might be as much as two or even three years since) Warpath kickstarter.

The space skaven equivalent of bikes. They are made in a newer pvc plastic and not restic as such. Still, two of the three I got needed to be put in hot water to straighen out warpage and make the parts fit. When immerded in hot water, they warped back into their correct shape by themselves.

The kit itself is very intuitive and easy to put together, the main body of the thing being a one piece casting, with only smaller parts like the arms, head, guns and outside blades needing to be glued on. Very nice details, much sharper than on the Raptor.

I would wager a pretty penny that the Raptors were originally designed the old fashioned way by the designer making a physical model that was used to make moulds from, while the tunnel runners are obvious digital designs.

I painted them by undercoating black, and drybrushing a series of different metallics before dotting in details. The Raptors also got coloured ink washes to add some colour to their main bodies. This is a very quick way to do such vehicles and I did not want to spend too much time on these so I kept the weathering to a simple drybrush with earth brown. Which is more effective than it sounds, really.

The Tally so far:

Finished from the Bobby Box: 99 / 126 (+10 / 13 casualties, small animals etc)

Just 27 left to do! (plus some small bits like casualties and the half skeleton . I think I might have counted those wrong, as I seem to have 4 of those left, not three)

Bobbybox part 12: Warpath Orx and KoW Goblins Spitters

May 26 2018

Originally posted April 2, 2018

The time has come for the Warpath Orx Marauder Command figures, and the Kings of War Goblin Spitters.

There were two sprues of the old Marauder Orx Command, each with parts to make two miniatures plus extras for the bits box.

When Mantic first was set up, they had a clear made-for-Warhammer-but-much-cheaper-to-buy profile. The Mantic minis being closer to so-called “true scale” with much more realistic proportions than the comic-charicature “heroic proportions” of Warhammer minis. I would speculate that the reason Mantic chose this style for their minis might have been fuelled by a desire to not be litigated into bankruptcy by making minis that were both stylistically and proportionately not to be confused with GW miniatures. (This was before the infamous Chapterhouse court case that effectively opened up the third party market for all comers as long as they did not use GW’s trademarked names or just carbon copied/recasts of actual minis)

This meant they made Orx (with-an-X-not-a-K) that are a far cry from the Space Orks of 40k:

However the scale, the Orx were still brutes that seemingly were equipped from the scrap-heap, just like Space Orks. They were also sci-fi versions of their fantasy Orx and made in hard plastic by Renedra, as most of the other early (pre-kickstarter) Mantic minis were. And as such they are actually really nice minis with good details. The bases are 25mm.

In recent years, Mantic has been edging more towards the heroic propotions, especially with the Orx.

This is pretty obvious when compared to the more recent DeadZone commandos. These are supposed to be from the same army…the commandos seem to have developed pandemic hydrocephalism together with much longer arms. And incindentially, look much more like Space Orks than the older Orx do.

And speaking of hard plastic minis we come to the Goblin Spitters:

20mm bases.

These are some of the infamous Kings of War hard plastic goblins made in China after the first Kings of War Kickstarter. Presumably, Mantic turned to an unproven Chinese factory for manufacture instead of the proven UK-based Renedra both to save a significant amount on the tooling and manufacture costs, but rumor also has it that Renedra might not actually have had any open slots to make anything for Mantic at that time anyway.

Together with the even more infamous Basilean Men at Arms, the hard plastic goblins were apparently a product of bad communication, misunderstandings and lack of quality control before signing off on production. The hearsay goes that the Chinese manufacturer was not able to use the 3D-files correctly, and traced them into their systems manually or similar. This causing a significant worsening of details and all that. Insistent rumors also tell that the manufacturer had said things like that they had extensive knowledge and experience with making such miniatures, without that being true. They seem to have botched the job because they did not have the necessary skills. At any rate, Mantic must have signed off on production without looking too hard at the results (probably a mix of naivete and time pressure to deliver the KS), and I can just imagine the expressions on the faces of Mantic when they got the shipment with the sprues in. That is a sunk cost, if I ever saw one. They would not have been able to afford not to release neither the Basileans nor the Goblins, even thought they must have known the flak they would get for them.

In truth they are simply horrible miniatures. Soft details, badly fitting parts, mould lines like you wouldn’t believe. It’s like they were parts for some cheapo boardgame in the 80s. Yes, that bad. And the Goblins were better than the Basileans, I can tell you that.

I am very glad that there were no more of these Goblins or even any Basileans in the Bobbybox.

Also, it seems that Mantic have learned their lesson with all the newer hard plastics being significantly better in every way. A hard learning curve, that Flying Frog of Shadows of Brimstone fame also have had to climb.

The Tally so far:

Finished from the Bobby Box: 95 / 126 (+10 / 13 casualties, small animals etc)

Just 31 left to do!

Bobbybox part 11: The Deadzone Marauders

May 26 2018

Originally posted Mar 31, 2018

Powering on with the Bobbybox, we come to the DeadZone Marauders. I got 5 Orx Commandos and 2 Goblin snipers.

In the Warpath universe shared by the DeadZone game, the Marauders are green-skinned, brutish-looking aliens that are highly disciplined militaristic mercenaries that function both as shock troops for corporations and also follow their own agenda. A rather different take on Space Orcs and Space Goblins than the rust-bucket Space Orks of Warhammer 40k.

So, disciplined military in thought, and in a half-baked bid to move the Marauders away from the Waargh! Orks, I did a scheme inspired by the British colonial army of the late 1800s Zulu wars, with white leather straps, gold piping and all.

Took ages to paint. Gah! But it does give them an interesting look as a group.

…and the camera would not cooperate fully, leaving these the only pictures even close to viewable. This time my photography let me down.

Not very sharp pictures at all, I am afraid. Sorry about that.

The Tally so far:

Finished from the Bobby Box: 86 / 126 (+10 / 13 casualties, small animals etc)

Just 40 left to do!

Bobbybox part 10: The Deadzone Rebs!

May 26 2018

Originally posted Mar 28, 2018

Easter and a day or two off from work and all that. At last some time to get some serious painting in.

We continue the Bobbybox saga with some Deadzone Rebs minis.

In the bobbybox there were 4 little bags of Rebs minis, totalling 10 minis in two sets of 5 identical pairs.

As I am not a fan of painting identical minis identically, and the Rebs are a wonderfully diverse group of individuals, I have done them all with different uniforms etc, while keeping the weapons in the same simple gunmetal style as one way of unifying them.

Mal on the right with Wash on the left. They aim to misbehave.

Ken Obiwan to the right and his sidekick Mustapha Obiwan on the left.

“The Dog” Zebulba and his evil twin Zebulbo. In the Warpath universe this race is called Sorak (not Dug). Which I always found make me think about a Vulcan Curry.

The first of the two different Yndij minis I got. I gave them Mayan names.

Itzamatul “He who has the grace of the sky” to the left, and Ix’Kaknab “She of the sea” to the right.

To the left we have Aa’po “He who is father of many nations” and to the right Fair’uza “She who is triumphant”.

The blue ones are, obviously, inspired by the Na’vi of the movie Avatar (2009). If I ever get around to getting the new Yndij team for DreadBall, this is how I will paint them calling the team The Azure Avatars.

As the bobbybox minis were baseless, I based them all on my own bespoke 3D printed 25mm bases I made specifically for older mantic models. You can get them from Thingiverse here.

All these minis are made in Restic.

The Tally so far:

Finished from the Bobby Box: 79 / 126 (+10 / 13 casualties, small animals etc)

Just 47 left to do!

Bobbybox part 9: The Mars Attacks! Martians

May 26 2018

KS! MARTIANS

Originally posted Mar 16, 2018

I have spent a couple weeks without painting much. Time to continue chipping away at the Bobbybox. Now we come to the The Mars Attacks! Martians.

My eyesight is not what it once was, and I found I struggled mightly with the smaller details such as eyes on these. In the end I gave up trying to correct an eye for the umpteenth time, so some of the faces are not really good. Sigh.

I already have the DreadBall team painted up for DreadBall from earlier, so I chose to base this Martian DreadBall team as normal minis instead. They work quite well, seeing as several of them are armed, holding knives or rayguns behind their backs.

If their clear dome-like helmets seem a bit wonky, it is because I just slapped them on without glue for the sake of taking picures. You can see that some of them are not properly in place, leaving gaps and whatnot. I will glue them on after I get some varnish on the minis come springtime.

Two of them are not wearing helmets, as they are Special Forces that have breathing apparatuses in their high collars and don’t use helmets.

The alternate pose General Tor. How I know he is a Hero? He has one foot up on a (admittedly small) rock! (Which I promptly hid in the undergrowth.)

There are some signs of stepping (little lines from the original master minis’ 3D printing process) apparent in his cloak…did Mantic rush these minis?

We come in peace Ack Ack Ack!

The Supreme Leader. You know, I could have sworn I had painted the front bluish bits properly, but the close up cam belies that. I will have to go over those bits again.

Also the eyes. OMG I tried and tried. I simply am not able to see properly anymore and therefore control where the brush goes when the bit to be painted is smaller than half a mm. I mean, I had no problems doing the white eyeballs, but then the smaller red dots with even smaller black dots inside. No. Just no. Sigh again.

At any rate, Mantic seems to not have bothered to do the prepwork on their 3D print before casting the masters. Look at those stepping lines on this cloak! Damn.

The Martian zombie. He seems to have A Case of The Stubborns, refusing to lie down when deceased. I would have loved to have an extra clear helmet I could chop a massive crack in and put on his head.

Someone once said “The only good Martian is a dead Martian”. Here are three good Martians.

The two amputees are casualties from the DreadBall Team, while the one with a leaky brain is also to be found in the “Civilian Slaughter” expansion pack where also the Flaming Cows are to be had, together with a couple human soldier casualties and some civilians.

Painting:

The Martians are actually really rather quick and easy to paint.

Over a black basecoat I do the entire uniform in old Citadel Swooping Hawk Turquoise, with gloves and boots in Citadel Averland Sunset or Army Painter Goblin Green respectively. Then I do the chest details and hoses in black. The air canisters I do in Citadel Mephiston Red with a second coat of Army Painter Dragon Red. Metal bits, weapons and piping in Army Painter Shining Silver. Then a wash of Army Painter Dark quickshade ink (the matt dropper bottle one that dries in an hour or to, not the stinky shiny tin one that dries in a day or two.) The head I painted in Reaper Vampiric Skin and gave the top of the head a wash with Old Citadel Purple Glaze, and again when dry to get the desired definition and depth of colour.

Tidying up the faces with some Reaper Creamy Ivory, eyesockets and nasal cavities in black and then the eyeballs and teeth in Reaper Vampiric Highlight (offwhite). A dot of AP Dragon Red in the eyes followed by a dot of black (at least, that was the intent. The eyes did not really turn out well for most of the minis.). Scale75 Toxic Waste Green for the Martian blood.

The heroes were taken a step further with some more highlighting.

The Tally so far:

Finished from the Bobby Box: 69 / 126 (+10 / 13 casualties, small animals etc)

Just 57 left to do!

Bobbybox part 8: Abyssals

May 26 2018

Originally posted Feb 25, 2018

I have not posted for a while as I have been off on holiday to sunny Spain. And then I came home to Norway with a lovely freezing -11 degrees below C and a thick carpet of snow that needed to be shovelled away by hand. Hurrah!

But before I left I completed the remaining Abyssals from the bobbybox and also a set of the four Dungeon Saga lower abyssals together with a moloch and a succubus. I just did not get the time to post.

So here they are:

The first abyssal warrior I painted earlier is included in the picture for completion’s sake.

This is basically what you get on a Lower Abyssal sprue. Five Lower Abyssals and two little imps.

There are many more options on the sprue, such a different armaments, a drum and a standard, but this is what I built out of it. There are some bits left over that has gone in the bits box.

I based the imps individually on 15mm bases I printed out for them, the imps stand about 10 mm high to the eyes.

In comparison, the lower abyssal warrior is mounted on a 25mm base and is about 26mms to the eyes, slightly less than 30mm at the horns.

The Flamebearers.

The Abyssal Warriors.

The minis in this batch turned out a bit paler than the first one, as I used a different paints for them, and also went more sloppyfast on these.

At the same time, I also started on the Dungeon Saga Abyssal forces I have left unpainted, and I have 5 sets which I have divided into 5 groups that contain one of each mini per group. Not present are the Tortured Souls that were completed some time ago, and the hell hounds that are still set aside for now as I think I want to do them in different colours.

At any rate, I have started the groups in brown, flesh, red, blue and green (but I am thinking of restarting the greens with black instead, as the next group to do after all the abyssals are the greenskins/orcs and goblins and I don’t want them to be too similar.)

There are three different Abyssal Warriors, one Flamebearer, one Succubus and one Moloch in each batch.

This first batch is done in Doom Imp Brown like the Kings of War abyssals.

This Moloch has been repositioned on the base to look front and center, as it were.

The Succubus

The Flamebearer

The Lower Abyssal Warrior with Scythe

The Lower Abyssal Warrior with spears. (Or are they spades?)

The Lower Abyssal Warrior with sword and shield.

The Dungeon Saga minis do have slightly softer details when compared to the hard plastic Kings of War ones. Quelle Surprise.

As I wrote above, these are done sloppyfast to get them painted, they did not take many minutes each, and they are a bit uninspired maybe.

The only one I spent a bit more time on was the Moloch as it was larger. It seems when it comes to board game plastic / Bonesium PVC and similar materials, larger models tend to have better quality details when compared to smaller models in the same ranges and material.

Also these pictures illustrate a problem with my photography. As can be seen in the different background colours, the camera does change the colours a bit, in addition to the harsh and stark lighting. I only have one lamp and that is becoming a problem.

I will be getting a second lamp to illuminate the models better as soon as I can. And maybe look into a more suitable camera.

The Tally so far:

Finished from the Bobby Box: 58 / 126 (+7 / 12 casualties, small animals etc)

Just 68 left to do!

Bobbybox part 7: Elven Bowmen Regiment + Mawbeast

May 26 2018

Originally posted Jan 28, 2018

Polishing off the rest of the elves from the bobbybox today.

These were done in much the same fashion as the spearmen: Basecoated with Vallejo Model Air French Blue (I have made a mistake and written the wrong name of the paint in the earlier post, sorry about that. I can feel my memory going, Dave. Please stop, Dave. Shall I sing you a song? Daisyyy, Daaaiiisssyyyyyyy…)

All I did differently from the spearmen was to reverse the colours on the shields, and do the bows in mainly gold.

Presenting The Golden Bows:

When I originally looked at the sprue, I did not see that the big cat was to be on the same base as one of the champions. This became apparent when I built them, though. But my small 20mm round bases were not wide enough for the cat’s stance.

So I based that figure on one of the plague hound bases I had left over. Now the cat fits, but the mini does not fit in the movement tray, and looks a bit odd there on the end. No matter, it works. However, if I ever do any more of these, the cat will get it’s own base.

…and I should not have glued them down before painting. It made it rather difficult to get at some bits.

The elves did not want to be photographed today. They mumbled something about the pictures stealing their immortal souls or something, and kept moving about, blurring all the individual pictures. So there are none to show off here. Not that the paint jobs are worth going on about anyway, so it is not a big loss.

…and the three elves that refuse to participate in the violence and protest by lying down dramatically. Bloody poseurs, the lot of them.

Also today I did the Dungeon Saga Orc Mawbeast:

These are so leonine, what with the mane and all. So, naturally, Lion.

I have painted three of these from before, and did this in the same style but different tones so they are not all the same.

This one also did not want to be taken a picture of, and this is the only pic that is not too blurry.

As I have not finished most of the other Dungeon Saga Orcs I have from before, I am thinking maybe I shall do them at the same time as the bobbybox ones, making it four of each mini to do. This way, I will try to use the impetus to do them while I still have said impetus. if not, I fear they might never get done as other projects take my fancy. (I find my interest in continuing the bobbybox is somewhat challenged by Mythic Battles Pantheon that just arrived…)

Anyway, (most of) the greenskins and abyssals are all that remain to do from the Dungeon Saga kickstarter, so this should cut that down to just the abyssals. Which is a good thing. Maybe I even will be doing the Dungeon Saga Abyssals in parallell with the four remaining Kings of War Lower Abyssals from the bobbybox, and get all the Dungeons Saga done in one swell foop! If I can manage to hold off diving into the world of greek gods and goddesses…hoo boy. Not going to be easy. It is almost a good thing that the Rise of the Titans was missing, as Typhon is the one I am most looking forward to and I do not think I could have held off on him very long. Lets see how much I can get done until the replacement shipment arrives.

The Tally so far:

Finished from the Bobby Box: 54 / 126 (+5 / 12 casualties, small animals etc)

Bobbybox part 6: Quick Elves Spearmen Troop + Orclings

May 26 2018

Originally posted Jan 22, 2018

These last couple weeks I have been down and out with seasonal Manflu. Urgh. Must have been those Plague minis.

So I have not been able or in the mood to paint much, and what I did do, took ages longer than usual.

When I first saw the Mantic Elves these minis struck me as a bit boring, being all reedy and stick thin. Not that I mind their esthetique as such but I would have liked them to be a bit more chunky, which would translate into deeper details. I like deeper details. They are easier to paint.

I have a couple of elven sprues in my mountains of minis, but I have not bothered with building them before now. In the bobbybox, I got three sprues with 30 of them plus some casualties.

I wanted to do these super fast, so I would not get fed up with them and the bobbybox already.

For some reason I basecoated them in Vallejo Game Air French Blue. This metallic colour turned out rather stronger than I had thought after just one coat. Which is good. I can work with that.

My thinking was that the strong blue would permit me to drop the wash or shading stage entirely, and keep the highlights to a single drybrush, dot in some skin, hair and other details here and there, and hey presto.

And it worked a charm. Actual painting time per mini after the blue metallic coat was on is reduced to just a few minutes each.

A drybrush plus some hightlighting here and there with Army Painter Shining Silver. The gold bits are Vallejo Glorious Gold. The Shield and spear needed two coats of both silver and gold to cover the blue properly.

The skin is Reaper Fair Skin, washed twice with army painter soft tone, and highlighted with more Reaper Fair Skin. Blonde hair is Vallejo Plague Brown hightlighted with Reaper Dirty Bone, brown hair is Army Painter Oak Brown with mixed highlight. Eyesockets are black with leather white dots. In my dotage I am finding it increasingly difficult to do eyes. I simply can’t see as well as before.

I have found that so long as you do the skin and face properly, you can skimp on the rest without it being too noticable at first. Especially when doing mass-battle units.

I used my own 3d printed bases 20mm round lipped with 15mm hole for older Mantic minis.

The round bases look better than squares when used as individuals, and allows for fast ranking up as you can rotate each mini to fit next to the others, which square bases do not allow for.

I think I will be doing the 20 bowmen in a similar style, but with reversed colours on the shields and weapons. I tried drybrushing a bowmen with gold, but that turned out bad. I think I will do silver like the above.

oh, and I also finished the single base of Orclings from Dungeon Saga:

A bunch of miniscule goblins crowding a 20mm base. Not the easiest to get at to paint.

Cute little tykes.

The Tally so far:

Finished from the Bobby Box: 33 / 126 (+1 / 12 casualties, small animals etc)

Bobbybox part 5: The Plague

May 26 2018

Originally posted Jan 16, 2018

The Plague. A virus-like alien condition that invades and takes charge of an unsuspecting host, causing growth to parts of the body, thereby changing said host to make it much stronger than before.

The earlier one gets infected, the more alien and changed one becomes. The first and second generation are massive hulking beasts with sharp claws and hard exo-skeletons and no wish to use tools of any sort. The 3rd generation -those infected by 2nd generation victims- are the most human, and retain a certain degree of their memories and skills from before they were infected. They can use advanced tools and weapons and even pilot vehicles. These make the Plague a spacefaring species. And therefore a very high danger to the galaxy as a whole.

I have finished the rest of the plague minis from the bobbybox.

“But Wait!” I hear you say. “There are two plague swarms in the picture, I thought you only got one such swarm in the bobbybox?”

Correct. I added one from my stash as I thought what would be better than to use this opportunity to bring some love to my collection of unpainted minis?

So now there are two plague swarms.

This must be the singlemost gribbly mini I have come across. If this had been a living thing, it would give me the screaming willies.

A furious pack of horrible nightmarish animals such as giant millipedes, slugs and rats all rolled up into a ball of snapping pincers and rending claws! Rushing around with one powerful determination to spread the disease and defeat the enemy of the Plague. Gribbly!

The one on the left is the original, built in the manner Mantic intended. The one on the right is from the bobbybox. I intentionally built it a little differently because it does gets boring with identical minis.

I based them both on a 40mm 3d-printed base and stuffed some tufts in here and there to make it look like they are coming though the undergrowth.

The mortar team. I chose to base the mortar and the obligatory pointing guy on the same base, but keep the loader as a seperate piece, so the team can be used for different games.

The 3rd gens typically have distended upper bodies with a shrunken pinhead sticking 90 degrees out on an elongated neck from between the shoulders.

Two sets of three identical models with slightly different poses thanks to the hot water trick.

The skin on these is done in the same way as the dogs; different skintones, mostly browns and beiges, slathered in Citadel Druuchi Violet and Carroburg Crimson washes, then lightly drybrushed with skintones. Apart from that, my thinking is that the victims are not composed of a cohesive force, but rather a semi-random assortment of unlucky individuals that got in the way of the plague vector.

Such as Guile, the Street Fighter:

Seriously. How could a guy with this profile not be painted as Guile?

Apart from the Plague,

we have Esteban Ramires from Mars Attacks!:

This dude looks so much better IRL than when magnified in these pics. Sigh.

and the first of the Kings of War Lower Abyssals:

Painted in classic Doom Imp Brown with white horns and spikes.

I think this paint scheme works well. Quite quick to do as well.

WIP:

So here is a conundrum: I have basecoated the entire elven population in this metallic blue, which seemed as a good idea at the time. I need a paintscheme that is super quick and with as little going back to fix everything as possible on each mini. There are 30 of them plus casualties.

I am thinking the bowmen will be “The Golden Bows” and the spearmen will be “The Silver Spears” to differentiate them by colour.

I have given each of them a very dry drybrush in gold and silver, respectively, and painted the weapon and shield in same.

The question is: Where to go from here?

The Tally so far:

Finished from the Bobby Box: 22 / 126 (+1 / 12 casualties, small animals etc)

Bobbybox part 4: The Plague Doggies

May 26 2018

Originally posted Jan 8th, 2018

Today has been a day full of Star Wars Battlefront 2. I really am not too fond of the infantry part of the game, which seems to consist of alot of waiting for it to start, then running forever to reach the battle arena, just to get murdered as soon as you close in on the enemy. I have big problems even seeing what I am supposed to shoot at, much less get enought shots off to actually kill anyone before getting one-shotted by some twitching 13 year old. Gah! I am simply too old and slow for that.

But the starfighter part…ooh yeah, thats the stuff. That brings me right back to the good old days playing X-wing vs Tie Fighter on local LAN.

I still tend to get shot down by some twitching 13 year olds, but anyway. It is fun. At least is has been so far. I will probably soon tire of the incessant grind this game actually consists of, and I absolutely refuse to spend any money on buying random upgrades. It is not thatgood.

I really wish that they could remake the old goldies, such as the X-wing and Tie Fighter singleplayer mission based games with this kind of graphics. That would be epic.

Right. Rant off.

In between bouts of getting shot down in flames, I have painted a little.

The six restic plague hounds with quick and easy PJs.

I used the hot water method to bend and reposition four of the dogs somewhat, so they look more like individual dogs and not just three identical pairs.

These ended up close to the “official” pinkish colour scheme. I was not really going for that, but there you are.

The one to the right has been eating grass again… Only it is not at all well. Let’s hope it doesn’t go on the carpet.(I seem to have gotten som glue on it’s mouth when flocking the base. And now it is dry. Oh dear. I will have to cut the flock off and repaint that bit.) The other one has a cropped tail, as attack dogs often have. I regretted doing this almost immediately, as now the mini should have been much farther back on the base, and looks unbalanced. Bah!

I think this pair ended up the most like actual dogs in the colouring. Yup, Doberman dogs are really vicious looking even without the plague making them rabid.

I painted them this by using different tones of brown and beige underneath and liberally washing with Citadel Druchii Violet wash, with some Citadel Carroburg Crimson wash slopped on here and there while the violet is still wet, finishing with a light drybrushing of the different skintones after the washes have dried.

The results are the fleshtones you see. From here I drybrush different fleshtones and others to give them the plagueridden look.

So, the question is; did I overdo the rabid froth-effect or not? Maybe I should have put some putty on to make bubbly foam?

These models are really not Mantic’s best when it comes to the quality of details. The faces, mouths and paws in particular are not very well defined. I mean, they are perfectly servicable, you see what they represent, but they are not very good models. I think most of this is the material not being able to hold the detail, or the mould making process not being up to snuff for these, or a combination of such factors.

The weedy “true scale” that Mantic makes the minis in really seems to exasperate the soft detail issue. Details tend towards shallow in this scale, and the minis are noticably smaller than eg Warhammer miniatures. I am pretty sure that restic (just like the Bones material) would work better with larger minis with deeper details. One needs only look at the deep-ish details on the Plague 3rd gens anatomy to see how much better the details are when they get deeper or more pronounced. Now imagine if all these minis were Warhammer size and scale…

I have not got any of the new HIPS plague dogs from the 3rd gen sprue, so I cannot make a comparison shot. I expect I will once I get hold of such a sprue.

so, on to the other stuff I have been working on to day. Here is a WIP shot:

The first of the Kings of War Lower Abyssals in the middle is almost complete. Trying out the “Classic DOOM Imp” brown with white horns paint scheme, I think it worked fine. Next to him is Mars Attacks! Esteban Ramires with the minigun, and a partly hidden base of Orclings from Dungeon Saga at the back. Apart from that there are some 3rd gen plague troops, basically the same skin tone variants as the dogs.

The Tally so far:

Finished from the Bobby Box: 10 / 126 (+0 / 12 casualties, small animals etc)

Bobbybox part 1: Open sesame!

May 26 2018

Originally posted Dec 20 2017

Every year, Mantic games does a so-called “crazy box” which basically is a mystery box of “random” miniatures -older miniatures that are not selling very well and that clutter up their warehouse- at presumably a steep discount if one were to calculate the retail prices of the contents.

This year, Mantic offer up their normal GBP 25 Fantasy and Sci-Fi boxes, but also the GBP 99.99 “Crazy Bobby’s Craaazzy Bonanza Box of Craziness!!!!” (actual official name on the invoice), which was touted as a massive stack of minis and each box was to include one “super value item” such as current rule books, base game sets or even newer resin premium large minis such as the treeman or the dwarf behemoth. Also a few boxes would include a gift certificate for GBP100 making the box effectively free. One box would include a golden ticket where Mantic will make an actual miniature in the likeness of the lucky buyer!

I might have bought one or two of the smaller crazy boxes in years gone by…I am a sucker for those sweet, sweet Loot Boxes and their allure of secrets and mystery!

So naturally, in a moment of weakness this last Black Friday, I lost all self control and ordered one of these big bonanza boxes together with a discounted Walking Dead KS set and some other black friday goodies. I mean…the Loka game set for 10 pounds? Yes please!

Even though I know full well that such crazy boxes always, always, always for the main part contain the dead stock crap they cannot manage to sell at full price, and work as a vehicle for them to get rid of said dead stock while at the same time getting in some much needed cash. And opening them inevitably is a bit dissappointing as all the stuff is old (well, duh!). But then there is the anticipation and the rush of the opening itself, so maybe it is all about feeding an addiction? Oh dear….

After the initial rush of rolling the dice by placing the order subsided, the regrets started coming: Thinking about it I imagined I could expect to get some of the old terrible basilean footmen and other older KoW sprues, some of the modular terrain sprues and a crapton of older KoW, Dreadball and Deadzone restic -just like last year, only more of it! …and at least one rulebook or Dungeon Saga expansion I already had. Why oh why did I order this?

I decided I would need to make penance for this moment of weakness. And how better to make penance than to actually force myself to build and paint the stuff? All of it. In a timely fashion. Publicly. Even if I already have the minis from before. (Groan.)

So now I need to know, like Brad Pitt in Se7en, “What’s in the box?”

Good thing it arrived today then.

The mystery box. What does it contain?

Open sesame! Half the box was packing material I chucked out before taking the picture.

Immediately visible was a few sprues of KoW plastics and a crapload of those little plastic baggies with grey and red bits in them. No surprises there…

The spread. On the bed. The damage doesn’t look as bad from out here.

So….it contained the following:

No certificates. Not that I really expected to get one, but hope springs eternal. I wonder how many of these boxes actually are made and sold? 10? 100? 1000? I imagine the true number is closer to a hundred than to a thousand, but there is actually a real possibility that maybe it is even closer to 10 than 100. Mantic is after all, a much smaller company IRL than they give the impression of being online. This is all just guesswork anyway. It is completely possible that all these crazy boxes are somewhat bespoke and built out of some preset options as the orders come in during the sales period.

No terrain! This was a bit of a surprise. I was looking forward to building a randomly modular house or ruin or something out of just what I got. But I didn’t get any this time around so there we are.

No ancient Mantic Journal! I guess that means they finally have run out of the print run ?

Back to the box. At the bottom were some books:

Warpath new edition rulebooks (boxed set including Warpath, Firefight and Sourcebook)

Which I actually did not have already, as I dropped out of the second warpath kickstarter due to reasons. I count this as a win! Also, I guess this was the “super value” item in this box. Good thing it was not one of the many Mantic books I already have!

Dungeon Saga: The Black Fortress booklet that I did have from the DS KS and therefore is a miss.

Odd bits: A pack of the original style Dreadball clear hex bases, 24 in all. Which is OK to have some extra of, I guess, especially since the two DreadBall KS I participated in delivered more minis than I have bases for.

Speaking of Dreadball:

The Mars Attacks! Martian Dreadball crossover team, together with the original referee bot. The refbot being the only mini in this box that came loose, as in not in a baggy or on a sprue.

Yes, the clear helmets were included, just not in the picture as I have squirreled them away for safe keeping.

Too bad I already have painted just such a team. I probably won’t be painting them for DreadBall use this time around.

No other DreadBall minis. Which also was something of a surprise. I would actually have bet on getting some third tier obscure MVP or three.

Mars Attacks in PVC, refbot in restic.

Dreadball mini count: 9 minis + 2 casualties

Mars Attacks!

This was interesting. Most of these minis are KS exclusive and/or Mantic Point scheme special minis . Might they not be moving much or at all then? Not surprising, considering it is a niche-within-a-niche game and that there has been no support to speak of for the game since it’s release several years ago. I wonder how much longer the Mars Attacks! licence lasts? (and how many players actually exist for this game? Is anyone still buying expansions or minis for this at all?) At any rate, it is a fun and lighthearted game and I like it alot. It would be a shame to see it go.

In the box there was:

Flaming Cattle (Possibly my favorite Mantic model of any range!)
1 martian + 2 human soldier casualties
Mars Attacks Blaine
Martian Zombie
Martian Judge Dredd
Martian General Tor Alternate Pose w/ spear
Martian Supreme Leader
Don Manning (jet pack guy)
Esteban Ramires
The mechanic-in-cockpit part, but with no vehicle this is not a complete mini. I would have appreciated a UFO or even a big stompy robot for him to drive. Oh well.

All these are made in PVC board game plastic.

8 minis plus 3 casualties and the mechanic-part.

I do have them all from the KS, but they are fun enough so that is not a problem.

Next up: Kings of War and Dungeon Saga

30 Elves, consisting of a sprue of 10 each of Bowmen Command, Bowmen Troop, and Spearmen Troop. Plus 3 casualties and a big cat. Good quality details. As long as you accept the reediness of the stick-thin elves. I would have preferred them to be larger, but all in all don’t mind this aesthetic, so this is OK.

I think I have a couple of unbuilt elven sprues from before (not sure which), so this could possibly be the start of an army or a sizable allied contigent.

5 Dwarf Ironclad. Good quality details. I have an unbuilt dwarven army set I bought with the original KoW KS. I can use this to start that army off and decide on a colour scheme.

10 Undead Skeleton Troop, plus 1 half skeleton and a skeletal dog (or is it a rat?) Good quality details. Love these skellies and look forward to adding them to my existing KoW undead army.

5 Lower Abyssals and two small imps. These are actually rather recent models from the second KoW KS. Are they perhaps not selling as well as projected or are they mainly included to increase the percieved value (over older sprues)? Good quality details. Yup, have some from the second KoW KS. never got around to building or painting them though. This will be a starter. So…red or blue devils? Brown you say? Like the imps in the original Doom? Yes, that might very well be just the ticket.

5 KoW Goblin Spitters. It looks like something in the middle there is missing, but some Google-Fu shows it is just some more sprue that has come off. These minis are infamously soft in the details. Not good. Luckily this is the only sprue of this generation of bad quality hard plastics (consists of Basilean men at arms and all Goblins -to be avoided unless REALLY cheap!) included. And incidentially the only KoW-minis in the box I do not already own some of.

And the Dungeon Saga Orcs and Goblin assortment. 1 each of 9 different sculpts. These are the only Dungeon Saga minis in the box. I had excpected Abyssals, as they were prevalent in the crazy boxes last year. But these are good as well. Love the ~~snotlings~~ orclings although they are difficult to get at to paint, being preassembled and all.

All fantasy minis count: 64 plus three casualties, a big cat, a skeletal dog, two small imps and half a skeleton.

And now we get to Warpath and Deadzone:

Orx Marauders!

2 old sprues of Warpath Marauder Command, 2 minis in each.
1 old restic Raptor trike vehicle. One of the earliest restic minis they produced.

Deadzone Marauder Commandos in restic:

2 identical commando in a running pose

3 identical commando with two rifles

2 identical Goblin snipers.

There were two pairs of identical baggies, one with the runner alone, and the other with the two-gunned commando and the goblin sniper in it. And then there was one seperate baggy with the just the two-gunned commando without the sniper in it. Which was strange.

I must say it is a bit of a bummer when there are several identical poses. Also I have all of these from before (which is true of all the first edition Deadzone minis).

Total count: 9 orx marauders, 2 goblins and a vehicle.

The Plague

Since the second warpath KS funded the hard styrene plastic plague 3rd gens and dogs, the first edition Deadzone restic ones probably have stopped selling completely since the plastic ones are so much better…

So naturally, there are several packs of both restic dogs and 3rd gens:

Three identical packs each of two dogs and two 3rd gen troopers; and a pack of 3 3rd gen heavy weapon troopers and a plague swarm.

Total count: 9 3rd gens, 6 plague hounds and 1 plague swarm.

Rebs:

Here also, pairs of identical packs:

4 human troopers, 2 Sorak, 4 Yndij for a grand total of 10 minis.

Asterians:

A single pack of 3 first edition restic Asterian Cyphers.

and the crowning coup de grace in this mystery box:

Three -3- of the spanking new Veermyn Tunnel Runners! Woot!

These I do not have from before, but I do have the makings of a Veermyn army from the second Deadzone KS, so this is a definate win! Made in PVC, not restic. Another win!

I don’t actually think restic is as bad as it’s reputation, but I am not looking forward to the prepwork getting all those mouldlines off all those fiddly bits. On the other hand, I do this hobby to relax and take my mind off things, and the manual work of prepping is about as soothing as the painting, so I do not really mind. It is just something to keep the hands busy, I guess.

As there are no bases for the minis, I will be printing my own.

To sum up:

GBP 99.99 for the new Warpath rulebooks and 126 more or less random miniatures across several lines (138 including casualties, half-skeleton, imp, cat and dog. plus some parts for the bits box and 24 Dreadball bases.) Of this there are 4 smaller warpath vehicles and a Burning Cattle.

Not too shabby value for money there at all, really. Unless I start thinking about that I already own most of the minis and what else I could have gotten for the 100 pounds. 1 Mortarion? Two start collecting boxes? One base pledge for some overstuffed KS game such as Massive Darkness, Conan or Mythic Battles Pantheon? (Feels like an unfair comparison, but is it really? After all we are talking X money for Y miniatures? and those games’ minis are arguably of higher quality.) Taken my family out to dinner at a restaurant?
yeah…Lets not go there. I could have spent it all on actual gambling. Or drugs. I believe this is a better addiction to have than that. Much cheaper as well.

Did I need these minis? Not really. But many, if not most of them, will find use once I get them done.

Do I regret buying it? To be honest…yes, a bit. Mainly because I had most of the minis already. And they are older mantic minis… which means not the best quality there is to be had. Some of those early restics have soft details and horrible mould lines that need a lot of work to remove. All of which I knew when I ordered it. (Damn those alluring loot boxes! Shiny syndrome, ho!) On the other hand, this could have been much “worse”, with, say, a Dungeon Saga expansion I already have and old restic from factions I do not care that much about (such as basileans or the enforcers). So I am really not dissappointed in what I got.

I did buy the box in the spur of the moment, even though I really knew better than to do it. If I just pack these away into the Mountains of Minis I will have just wasted my money completely. So now the punishment is due. Time to own up and get to work.

*…One might surmise from this post that I have bought heavily into several Mantic Kickstarters and not really built or painted much of the heaps of minis I got from them. And be for the most part correct. Which is one of many reasons I have not participated in the later KSs. Apart from Star Saga that I received at the same time as this mystery box. (I can officially state the Star Saga minis are of higher quality than earlier mantic minis, and are good sculpts to boot. Even though some of them still need a hot water bath to bend bits back to their proper shape.)