Night Terrors from Shadows of Brimstone

I have been slaving away here and there on the Brimstone figures. They key I think is not to see them as wonderful miniatures or models, but as boardgame pieces. Nicely sculpted, 3D boardgame pieces, but boardgame pieces nevertheless. This way you can gloss over the somewhat vague details and large mold lines on some of the models.

All the miniatures from the two boxes in various stages of painting.

I still try to do my best and yes, the biggest gaps need to be filled. But I have no intention of re-sculpting details that have been marred by mold lines. On the Night Terrors I filled in the worst spots with milliput, namely around the groin and neck, doing my best to match the fur texture.

The Night Terror before painting, the worst gaps have been filled with milliput.

I also tried my hand at converting one of the three Night Terrors to get some variation, you will see the finished model at the end of this post.

Dear (secret) Santa

This year I signed up for the "Secret Santa" that Ian of The Blog with No Name is arranging. Basically you are buying a christmas present for another blogger while someone (you don't know who) is buying one for you. A sure way of getting at least one games related pressie :-)

So, dear Secret Santa, here is my wish list.

• WW2 in 28mm: anything British or German that can fit either North Africa, France 1940 or 1944, or Operation SeeLöwe.
• WW2 in 20mm: almost anything for western or eastern fronts, anytime. Yes I'm a WW2 whore, and I can't keep faithful to one scale either.
• Wild West in 28mm: I have a friend who plays Dead Man's Hand. I'm thinking of slowly building a gang so interesting characters are of interest (they can also be used in Shadows of Brimstone as alternative heroes).
• Fantasy in 28mm. I love dwarves. Anything that would fit with old GW or Marauder Miniatures dwarves from 3rd edition is welcome, but other stuff like orcs, goblins or oddballs that can be used in skirmish or roleplaying games are welcome. (Avoid current GW models as they are overpriced and look like crap.)
• I like building terrain, so any terrain items that can be used with the above is good.

Got that?

Warlord Games 28mm Universal Carrier review + build

I'm taking a short break for all the Shadows of Brimstone stuff to bring you my views of Warlord Games' Universal Carrier.

Looks quite alright, doesn't it? But yet it looks strangely familiar...

When Warlord released their plastic SdKfz 251 Hanomag about a year ago rumours emerged that it was really made by Italeri. A rumour that I can't substantiate or offer my own views on since I haven't built the kit and as far as I know Italeri does not have a Hanomag in 28mm or 1/56th scale. However, early this year Warlord and Italeri announced a partnership that would involve Italeri making four vehicle kits for Warlord Games: a Sherman, a Panther, a Cromwell and a Puma (you can read my views on the Panther here). The deal allows Italeri to sell the vehicles as well as Warlord Games plastic miniatures under their own brand while Warlord also can sell the vehicles under their own brand. Both companies are credited on the box covers though, so there is no doubt.

So when Warlord Games released a plastic Universal Carrier I was intrigued. Was this too manufactured by Italeri, or was it something else? I was then utterly confused when I saw the box cover, it looks exactly like the Plastic Soldier Company model available in 1/72! (You can read my review of that kit here.) So I had to order one to compare.

Assembling the Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death miniatures

After rifling through all the components of the City of Ancients box I turned to the Swamps of Death. I won't do a proper unboxing since most of the tokens are the same in both boxes; contents are similar although some of the floorplans are different, and of course the theme-specific cards and tokens are different too. (If you missed my City of Ancients unboxing click here.) Instead I will be focusing on the miniatures in this post.

All the models in the Shadow of Brimstone games are cast in a semi-soft plastic. Not as soft as the traditional soft plastic figures like Airfix, but not as hard as say Games Workshop or plastic model manufacturers like Tamiya. They take both plastic glue and super glue and are supplied with 30mm round bases for the most of the figures. There are some mould lines on the miniatures that need to be cleaned up but generally the casting is good.

I couldn't resist starting with the big baddie, the Harbinger.

Both core games contain four different Heroes, six Tentacles, six small monsters, twelve "hoard" monsters, three medium monsters and one large monster. Some of the larger monsters have 40mm bases and the big bosses have 60mm bases. The heroes and monsters are different between the core games except for the tentacles.