First catch of the year - Black Scorpion Miniatures Review

Nine days into the new year the mailman delivered my first catch of the year; a box of goodies from Black Scorpion Miniatures.

Ooooh, pressies! Well, I did pay for them but I can hardly remember that so it's almost like a present!

Black Scorpion make quality resin miniatures in the popular "Heroic 30mm" scale, which means they are around 32-33 millimeters in height as are most other manufacturers' figures nowadays. Their ranges include pirates, fantasy pirates, fantasy football amongst others. They also have a bunch of special figures included Winston Churchill and a duck with a Machine gun...

 I ordered a bunch of packs from their Tombstone range, which features Wild West style figures. There's no "fantasy" element in this range, but the subjects can be a bit tropey. (I'm no expert on the period though.)

Last ditch of 2014 painting part 2 -- A thrilling triple trio.

So, the last day of 2014, and the last chance to accomplish something. Some of these were finished some time ago but lacked basing, or just one splash of colour or... well, the days since Christmas I have really tried to finish as much stuff as possible. What I really wanted to do was to paint my Secret Santa panzer IV, or start building the Stompa I bought for the Christmas money I got from my mum.

Can't wait to build this bad boy for my orks. Question is... Zimmerit or no Zimmerit?

So today comes a mixed bag of stuff really. Pictures after the break as usual.

Dipping disasters! Secret Santa Surprises! Tentacle Terror!

So the end of the year is coming and I'm desperately trying to finish all those nearly-there figures. Last night I was putting the finishing touches to a bunch of Perry's Desert Rats that I started just befor summer but have been virtually untouched for six months.

As the previous Desert Rats had been painted using Army Painter Dip I decided to try dipping the Stranglers from Shadows of Brimstone too. When I opened the can I noticed that a thick crust had formed on the dip, apparently I had not closed the lid properly. Getting rid of the hardened layer I stirred the dip, noticing it had thickened quite a lot. Using an old wash brush I dabbed it onto the first Perry figure. It went on ok but a bit thick, and as it wasn't as runny as normal it didn't really flow into all the crevices. Using the brush I managed to smear it around so it looked ok.

I decided to try and dilute what was left of the dip and tried first Thinner, but it didn't mix properly. I then figured I could try Future Floor polish (that I have been using when making my own dip) and first it looked like it would work. I didn't dare try it on one of the beautiful Perry figures, instead I gunked it onto a Strangler.

The ugly, the ugly and the ugly.

As you can see from the pictures it didn't work as well. While the dip was a bit less thick, the paint itself glooped together inside the varnish/dip mixture and didn't flow at all. The middle figure in the picture above was the first try. Not perturbed by the horrific result I tried again, this time wiping most of the gunk away with a cloth moistened with thinner. Slightly better result on (on the right) except that the thinner took off the base coat as well in some places. I gave up and binned the can of Army Painter and mixed my own wash, which I used on the left strangler.

So what happened to the Perry figures?

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.

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.

Shadows of Brimstone unboxing and first look.

So on Wednesday the mailman had tried to drop something off at my place when I wasn't at home. He left a note saying I could get it at the local post office the day after on thursday. Strange, I hadn't ordered anything large, or had I? I did some thinking and thought that maybe... just maybe it could be my Shadows of Brimstone kickstarter finally being delivered. (If you have no idea what Shadows of Brimstone is about, in short it's a co-operative dungeon crawl boardgame, with a cross-over Wild West and Cthulhu theme. If you follow the link you can watch the nice intro video, then come back here.)

Maybe "S...ws B...stone... C... of the Ancients" could be a clue?

Come Thursday I rushed home from work (after picking up my wife at her work, shopping some winter clothes for the kids, shopping food for me and wifey) to get the package. It was BIG and HEAVY.

Still can't really make out the text...

And yes it was the first delivery from Flying Frog Productions! Would the games be as good and as shiney as the kickstarter promised? Click to see more, but beware, lots of pictures after the break.