From the Vaulted Realm of Pluto

My command group has been interesting. All the figures come from Brother Vinni and is composed of an officer, musician, standard bearer and the last hoplite I ordered long ago. I thought having a warlord on foot like this would offer a change from the Arabian Knights command or the one for Shay’s Zulu. Not much going on other than the original plume on the leader’s helmet snapping because it was too thin. I replaced it with one from a helmeted skull in the Warlord “Children of the Hyrda’s Teeth” box and it seems to have withstood my cackhandedness during the whole process of assembling the bunch. The magnet in the base is not too strong as to force me to yank it from the carrying tray for the sake of the resin standard pole. I don’t want to keep repairing parts.

There is more work to do and it’s slowly coming around. The final units are in the process of being finished as I am. I pity the fool who assembled this army… oh yeah.. that’s right. Ugh!

An addition of maeneds from the Shadowforge line I showed off before are now complete. I figured if I were to put on a unit for the “We Obey” rule (if I remember properly) there are figures to act as wound sponge bodyguards. Not much out of the ordinary with these ladies and they are a random part of mythology I wouldn’t have known about before this project.

A side note after I got these done disaster steuck. With it being winter I’ve found how easy the resin of my figures is to snap when they are cold. I dropped my brush case accidentally into my army box and hit my phoenix, the Warlord on beast and a new addition to be featured later. Marie snapped at the weak join where the beak met the base and it wasn’t a surprise. The warlord snapped cleanly at the neck and where the upraised sword arm was pinned. I am grateful that the damage was minimal but I do warn that if parts do get pinned with resin they are apt to shatter.

Working on multiple parts of the project at the same time to keep my interest I finished up another big bird, this time on an 80mm base. Here for your viewing pleasure I offer the phoenix, Marie. She’s a lovely bird if I may say so myself.

As I mentioned before the issue of weight was a worry for balance as she has an impressive tail raised high for all to admire. It seemed to be unwarranted as the resin is light enough to stand up the entire fire puking chicken. The join for the model sits right under the beak and above the smoke plume. The keying was good to sit without too much issue from the printing and only needed slight scraping. Really, it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary and only needed minor gap filling after superglue.

I tried my hand at going about the plumage with glazing to get the shift in color value. Anyone interested in trying the same here are the paints I used:

• Proacryl Pale Yellow
• Proacryl Orange
• Vallejo Scarlet Blood
• Vallejo Scarlet Red
• Cuttlefish Colors Sacrificial Red
• Cuttlefish Colors Bruised Ego

I touched up the separation in the feathers with some of the Pale Yellow and hit the underbelly with some spots of white to broaden the value scale. To tie the flame gout in with the rest of the model I went with most of the same colors.

Thinking the flame should have had an effect on the model base I flocked the model as normal with the Geek Gaming Scenic mix Mediterranean Soil and went back with a thinned down black though the airbrush. I added Gamer Grass medium Scorched tufts to stand in for the other Autumn and Mixed Green ones to also add to the burn patch credibility.

All in all I like how punchy this monster has come out and hope that the manner I’m now taking photos shows that appropriately. More fun is in store as I bounce between the final units. Really, I promise that I have no more planned beyond what I have. In truth I can’t fit any more on the transport tray so it’s all finalized.

So the Sythyrs from Shadowforge I got through Eureka Miniatures are all done. These ladies are a departure from the previous fauns and I like them much better for the scale of detail. I also like the fact that these are metal instead of plastic. The only issue I had was the fact that all the figures have tails like Scandinavian trolls. All of them needed to be attached and using epoxy resin instead of superglue has yielded sufficient resilience to some dropping. It also helps to bend the tails so that they don’t point into deep space away from the models. This is also an issue when dealing with trying to either rank up of put them on the unit base as shown.

Beyond all that I found it difficult to try and find ways of keeping the green accent color included and tried to draw the eye with the jewels. I think it might work but only on the 3″scale versus the one of 3′. Lenticulur highlights are a pain in the ass. I might skip this kind of thing in future but as a challenge I might keep at it. This remind me of the movie Hook and a dialogue between Cpt. Hook and Mr. See on “Don’t let me do it”…. “Pundancer, don’t let me do this”.

So I had thought about a way to bring in a bipedal beast into the army outside of the minotaur and had this cyclops printed. Using the troglodyte from Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (running on from the Arabian Knights project) I decided to keep the Harryhausen theme in a different way. I thought the original monster, now 3D print, was a good anchor point and used Polyphemus from the Odyssey as another great bit from Greek mythology. Since I had some sheep sitting around I used this as opportunity to justify buying them way back when (Past self “See, there was a reason you bought them”).

Here be the metal centaurs, replacing the previous plastic ones, all outfitted for fierce battle. I tried initially to break the shapes of their musculature into distinct areas but I gave that up after I sat and thought they weren’t sculpted that way. I went back to the same thing I did for my gray dapple mount of the Mordheim knight painted some time ago and began stippling. I just needed to make the color transition for areas stand out.

Horse skin aside, I had the same issue with the human bits. Thankfully, they are similar to all the hoplites I’ve finished so I needed only worry about armor and armaments being different. No bother for transfers for the shields as I kept the provided ones for distinction. It gives me an idea of how better to work NMM for other things as I look at them now.

I have found another Scourge for my collection of armies. The Harryhausen Hoplites will be getting an Incredible Thunder Chicken unlike the last one for the Arabian Knights. Thanks to my being vigilant for minis and thinking this army will need something big and flying I found a phoenix.

Keeping with the theme of Greek mythology it was just something I felt needed to be done. Given the Black Friday sale I was compelled to buy the files for future printing. Dwayne, the Roc, will not be my only feathered friend to field. This will also mean I need to be creative with plumage once again and think about fire. I’ve worked on Justin’s Khorne demons and painted them for the heated metal effect on their swords. I just need to transpose that idea and process onto a bird.

Right now I only have the issue of whether or not I use the flying model or the one barfing a fireball. The first one looks stable enough to stand unsupported. The second one, eventhough it looks badass, I have reservation on the strength of the supporting gout of flames. I’ll weigh this idea out as I work on other stuff in the meantime.

Nope, no clothes here to hold back any movement. This has been a good mental balance to Warren’s Celt gesatae and I’m glad for no tattoos. I did a few mods on these figures. I added LBMS transfers to the Brother Vinni figures as I thought they would fit the shields. I was right and wrong on that point. I didn’t want to deal with the issue of snapped resin spears I replaced them with steel ones from Warlord Games.

Anyone buying these figures will see that they are perfectly sized to Wargames Atlantic hoplons. The difference between them is a sculpted laurel detail around the center for the Brother Vinni offering. The edge of the LBMS transfers sit right where the laurels come up from the otherwise smooth surface. It’s a very close fit and most times it was enough for the transfer to pull back from the edge and not adhere to the shield fully. To try and address this I added extra clearcoat to act as a filler. After drying fully it didn’t work. Its only noticeable on very close scrutiny.

Beyond that I will freely admit to finding deadly mould lines along the rear leg of some models which I failed to remove beforehand. Its on a side my opponents don’t see and there is plenty enough going on otherwise that the detail in question can be overlooked. I’ll be sure to address the issue on other models in future. As a preamble to the UHH.. bugger off 😆.

As an update for other figures, the sythyrs from Eureka have all been pinned to their bases and magnets inserted to make sure the figures don’t end up getting tossed around the carrying tray. There were a few arms to pin but generally the sockets fit well enough that you could get away with just gluing. All the figures of the unit have tails and they are quite fiddly. The use of solder might’ve been a damn good idea but melting temperatures is something I don’t want to mess with. I opted for using glue to attach them and it’s worked so far. Pictures to come when they’re painted.