Krakon Games - Multi Part Fomorians (Fimir)

Recently Krakon Games were kind enough to send me some sample of their new multi-part fomorians from their successful kickstarter.

Krakon has made fomorians before, warriors, spellcasters and so on, but this particular set has me pretty excited. Why? Well, as you can see, the fomorians bear a startling resemblance to my favourite cyclopenans bog-dwellers, the fimir. There are very few large (ogre sized) fimir available unless you go hunting for the original range, or pick up the Forge World offerings. Even then though, there aren't too many variants. These fellas change that.

Krakon had quite a few nice stretch goals in this kickstarter. Shields, trident hands, new tails, new bodies, new heads, command hands, tathlum hands (a concrete ball on a chain for throwing) severed head hands, whips hands, sickle hands and loads more.

So what this has done is given fimir fans and players options. Command models for starters. Ranged units. Heavy infantry, nobles, spears and so on. I had a little play with the parts I got. Bear in mind this is only a small selection of the full range.

Tathlum and Hand Weapon: I really like this option, it allows for a sensible ranged unit for the fimir. This guy has a sword as well, to employ once the ball has been thrown. As these are resin you can easily bend the chain to change the pose and make it more dynamic.

Tathlum and Shield: This is the option I'd probably go for. I like the idea of a unit of six fianna fimm launching these in at close range, arrows skidding off the massive shields. All of these examples are on 40x40mm resin bases (not included).

Spear: Perhap a light unit of fianna, scouts of skirmishers.

Pick and Shield: Using the same body, we have a noble with hand weapon and shield. There are several armoured and unarmoured heads.

Tathlum, Sword and Shield: Another tathlum throwing fianna fimm with his shield across his back.

This is five minutes of playing with only a small selection of the new multi-part fomorians. The kickstarter is now funded, but I'm sure if you contact Krakon they might add you as a late pledge or some-such. They're great to deal with. They had a load of add-ons as well, such as oozes, mimics and grudges (undead fomorians).

So, rejoice fimirian lovers, for large scale variety is yours!

Hobbymad - A Treasure Chest of Hobby Goodness

Living in the rural West of Ireland, I'm used to ordering a lot of my hobby supplies from overseas. This isn't usually a huge deal, but as we all know, international shipping has been creeping up over the last few years. I became aware of Hobbymad a while ago, but my recent dealings with them has made me a big fan.

I base all my minis with magnetic base bottoms. Why? Well, there are a few reasons. Number one is transport and storage. When a model is transported in a box lined with sheet steel, or indeed in a metal biscuit tin that model is going nowhere. For frail models like Man O'War, with those masts, or many of the more recent GW minis, this is paramount. 

Some of Hobbymad's range of magnetic base bottoms.

Peel off the paper...

Look at that. LOVELY.

No sliding off the dead tray for these guys. Plus you are sorted for those battling down the fridge games.

This again is super useful if you use movement trays. Line the tray with sheet steel and base the models with magnetic bottoms. Once in the tray, those lads are on there good. No more standard bearers toppling over or half the unit falling out on a hill, or, Gods forbid losing a few lads when lifting the unit. I used to transport my army in a large box with the units already sitting in the army trays, ready to deploy. The magnets kept everyone safe and sound.

The sheet steel in the tray keeps these doggies in line. Sit! Stay! 

Another reason I use them is the finish off the miniature nicely. No untidy under-base, just a nice flat black base. A little obsessive? Yep.

I used to get my base bottoms from Litko. This was fine, but shipping has skyrocketed from the States, and so that was the end of that. I experimented with cutting my own, that proved to be a huge pain in the arse. Cue Rob from Hobbymad and his new groovy router. Now I have access to very well-priced magnetic base bottoms from Ireland with free shipping over €10. He can also cut and etch a bewildering array of materials with it, so tokens, custom shapes, paint racks etc are all now on the cards, including custom orders. I may have cried a little. If you're like me, you love all the paraphernalia of gaming aside from the minis themselves, so access to custom tokens, counters, rulers and so on from a local supplier is a gift from the heavens. 

I do have to say, in addition to this new machine of wonder, Hobbymad carry a truly massive range of paints from Vallejo to the glorious effects paints from AK Interactive. Tools, scenery, putties, dice bags, gaming mats, model kits, basing materials, books, magazines, glues and a teetering pile of other stuff, much of it often hard to reach but incredibly useful products you chase over half the web for normally.

So, certainly for Irish, but really for anyone in reasonable shipping distance (those base bottoms are otherwise only available in the US as far as I can see) do give Hobbymad a look. 

https://www.hobbymad.ie/

https://www.facebook.com/hobbymad/

Kickstarter - Shieldwall Fine Shields

A distinctly oldschool flavour to today's post. Some pals of mine are currently running a kickstarter for shields and shield inserts. You can check it out here. Shields are fun, and for those that like to freehand intricate designs on their shields, more power to you. As I get older, however, I'll take any shortcut I can get. Behold, this is one of those delightful shortcuts. Along with swanky shields you get themed inserts to suit most fantasy factions. Here are a few examples, though there are several shield shapes in addition to the rounds you see here.

Personally, I would probably paint the shield face wooden, then maybe fray or cut down an insert to show damage/weathering, then pop it on with the wood underneath showing through. A little run of ink around the edge maybe to blend the edge of the insert into the shield edge, and done. Swanky shield, minimal effort.

The kickstarter runs for another 24 days at the time of posting.

Circus of Corruption - Jim Carter and Coilin Brown

Finishing my triumvirate of Circus of Corruption sample minis we have two more of the players, Jim Carter and Coilin Brown, a puppeteer and acrobat from Old School Miniatures recent Kickstarter. You can still order the Circus from the website at KS prices here.

Jim Carter is a nicely creepy fellow. He looks like he is having no fun AT ALL. I only noticed when painting him he has a hand on his belt, a right hand. The same hand he's puppeteering with. Eeeeeew.

I quartered his motley to ramp up the circusiness. I do love the contrast (I can't bring myself to say juxtaposition, too much art college.) between the jolly circus theme and the depressed faces, pus-filled sores and ragged gear. To expunge all subtlety I added a rat to the base and gave the puppet a happy sprinkle of glitter on it's little robe. Hooray!

Our next player is Coilin Brown, an acrobat, tumbler and dog breeder. Okay, not a dog breeder. His older brother got the family dog-breeding business while poor Coilin was forced to strike out and make his own way. Seems things could have gone better. If only he'd listened to that nice barkeep in Wurtbad and headed South. Oh well.

He's quite a simple model, so I was tempted to add a little something by giving him badly soiled hose. Like Bridesmaids bad. I resisted though. Not sure if I made the right call, but I think it was the way to go. Gazing at his crusty hoop might have been too much for some gamers.

Again, I added a little rat to the base. This one is not sure about what's going on at all. They are great little guys for bases. From the Hellpit Abomination kit if I recall correctly. Not every rat has to be a skaven spy. These guys are just rodents. It's worth mentioning too that both the players are on 32mm bases. Bigger than usual for this kind of mini, but I thought it suited them better. They still fit on a 25mm base fine though.

I'll switch gears again now after that little trip to the circus. Something bigger next.

Dracula's America - Review

Last weekend I travelled down to Cheetor's place in Cork. Myself, Cheetor and TheOttoVonBismark had planned a weekend of Dracula's America. In Space. The posses were painted, the terrain was ready, the rules were read and the beer was in the fridge. Off we went.

I'm not going into a blow by blow account of the games we played, more a general overview of how we felt about the system, the posses we used and what we're planning next.

Sean (TheOttoVonBismark) brought a very tasty Slaaneshi chaos cult using the Crossroads Cult rules. This fit very well indeed, with a Keeper of Secrets (Major Entity) appearing in the first turn of the first game. That made me sit up and take notice pretty rapidly, as only a twelve foot four armed one-boobed skull-faced daemon can.

Paul (Cheetor) has a huge gang of Ratskins, which straddle the settings of Dracula's America and the quasi 40k sci-fi setting we chose for it perfectly. In this particulat scenario they are trying to protect a Jokaero from getting murdered by the other posses. The gorgeous terrain is all from Cheetor's collection.

My own posse are The Shadow Empire, Lo Pan's (from Big Trouble in Little China Lo Pan) underground criminal organisation. They match up seamlessly to the Shadow Dragon Tong faction. In this iteration of Lo Pan's existence he has managed to gain access to eldar technology and is retro-engineering it to suit his own foul purposes.

The Doctor will see you now.

We played two games of Dracula's America, Shootout and Escalation. What struck me immediately was how smooth the rules were. As with all reasonably casual rule-sets a modicum of common sense is required, but assuming that we got into the rules nice and quickly. Building posses is easy, especially when starting with a campaign posse. There are three levels of character, Novice, Veteran and Hero, each using a different dice for tests, a D6, D8 and D10 respectively. You buy the posse weapons (only basic weapons for a starting campaign posse) and that't it. The layout of the book jarred a little, flipping between historical and supernatural sections, but that's a minor quibble.

The card-bases initiative system is a lovely mechanic, even more so when you take the hunting grounds into account. The encounter rules for two players using the same card adds another interesting but not obstructive element, though Cheetor might disagree having been robbed of an opportunity to riddle Lo Pan with bullets when a gloom fell and reduced his weapon range.

We didn't use the hunting grounds in these games, but I like the rules for it a lot.

The progression system is very intuitive and pleasant to use. Rolling for injuries, advancements and so on is straightforward and entertaining, including robbing territory from your opponents. Even those who don't advance gain experience which makes it more likely they will advance after subsequent games.

+++THE NEXT MEATBAG TO CALL ME A FLOWERPOT GETS IT IN THE FACE+++

There is one expansion so far, Hunting Grounds, which introduces new rules and factions, including the Shadow Dragon Tong that I was playing, as well as outlaws, mercenaries, new skills, gear and so on. I'm certainly going to be playing more games using these rules, I've already got plans for an addition to the Shadow Empire, an 'undead drifter', or in my case a reanimated eldar that Lo Pan is plying for secrets.

What a jerk he is.

Cheetor is playing with the idea of something vampiric next, but I'll let him loose details on that as he fancies. TheOttoVonBismark is thinking of something orkish. Or genestealery. Or both maybe.

All in all I couldn't recommend Dracula's America highly enough. As you can see, you can play it Weird Wild West style, or go Weird Wild West in Space, or whatever you fancy yourself and it works just dandy.

Kissing 2016 Goodbye - A Year in Review

So there we are, another year gone. The sands of time slip through my fingers, never to return. What do I have to show for it? Well, a fair bit. Up yours angst.

This year I vowed to double my 2015 total of 32 painted minis. How did I do? This year the total is 60, so ALMOST double last years total. Many folks paint a lot more, but for me that's great progress. Next year we'll shoot for 100.

I started off with this big fellow. I had great plans to paint more of them, but there's just so many things to distract one in this hobby, isn't there? I was glad to see the game getting taken up again though. Ironclad Games have taken over the property and are the process of revitalising the game. Good luck to them with that, I'd love to see it brought back to life.

Early in the year I was quickly seduced by Frostgrave, and took it upon myself to build a warband. I'd always fancied doing something Deadite flavoured, and this seemed the perfect opportunity to do so. Sticking to Bob Olley sculpts where possible, I painted up a group of Kandarian evilness.

The warband was built for a game at KnaveCon where I meet many of the Scale Creeps/Wipsters for the first time. Scale Creep was born in February, and the fellows there had already been a source of inspiration, encouragement, support and jibery for some time. The chat runs almost 24/7. Long may it continue.

As well as the Frostgrave game, our Rogue Trader RPG hit the table for the climax to season 1. Below is my own character, Techpriest Samdai. He was a pretty battered looking lad when I got him, but some careful GS reconstruction and a new chain axe and he was as good as new. I plan to add some more Adeptus Mechanicus to Samdai's retinue in time to build up a small explorator team.

I painted up some jetbikes for Macrocosm (An excellent company, incidentally) in the Spring, which I had originally developed the concepts for, among others.

The Mumbling is my hobby blog, but I'll quickly and briefly veer off on a wee tangent. This year saw me work with a a number of excellent folks on various miniature-related projects, which was, frankly, great. April saw the Pantheon of Chaos kickstarter, something I had been working on for some time with a group of artists and sculptors. This was a great success, and it was a privilege working alongside such a talented and excellent crew of fellows to produce what became a rather big range! I've had several great sculptors produce work based on my concepts, which is mega satisfying. Added to that seeing boyhood heroes like Bob Olley and Kev Adams produce models based on my work is a major bucket list tick. To anyone I worked with during the year, a big thank you. Here's a taster of some of the concepts I worked on, many of which are now finished miniatures.

Now, back to the hobby! The Judgement Day project hung up it's (tight) boots this year, the last entry coming in April, a Copplestone mini I'd had and gamed with for many years, the rapscallion and mercenary, Odysseus Jones, It was great to finally paint him up. Cheetor and I may return to it at some juncture, you never know. Especially as I picked up a few Mechanismo robots and street judges recently.

I have several unpainted characters from my gaming youth I would love to hurl back into the fray, maybe this year Lord Vortag and Stern Fluxbringer will rise again, if the brushes will it.

In May was delighted to be invited to add a painting tutorial by Geoff Sims for sourcebook The Woods: Legends of Shandisholm. This guy is available in the Myeri clan box, which is chock full of characterful minis, the mushroom picker and smith being some of my favourites. He is based on Alan Lee's Fomorian painting. You can find Oakbound here, and their Facebook page here. 

I'm also throwing the occasional article at The Golden D6, a new gaming magazine, the latest mag featuring an article on my current main squeeze, Dragon Rampant. You can take a look at the magazine here.

During the Summer the aforementioned Dragon Rampant took me to it's warm bosom, and I set to work on a project I had long incubated in the damp recesses of my to-do list. The Shadow Empire, ancient army of LoPan, disciple of Ching Dai and evil sorcerer.

I've had elements of the army in storage for years, and it finally came together this year as a take on what LoPan from Big Trouble in Little China might have been getting up to in China thousands of years ago, not long after he was cursed by the first emperor.

So far I've painted up three units of terracotta warriors, and the first couple of members of LoPan's retinue. Right now I have three Yaoguai Chinese demons on the painting table.

This year I deliberately decided to take breaks during longer projects to paint one or two models for other games/factions etc. This has worked well, stopping me losing enthusiasm during the slog of drybrushing dozens of terracotta warriors and allowing me to paint up some 'palette cleanser' minis at the same time. This chaos thug below was one of these, painted up to fight for me in the Gorechosen game by Games Workshop. It's tremendous fun, a great casual game.

Arnuld here got me interested in some old school Khorne guys. I have a whim to build an Age of Sigmar warband from the General's Handbook. It would be small enough to be achievable and would give me a Realm of Chaos/Dragon Rampant warband at the same time. Happily, my entry for the Scale Creep HeroQuest hero quest fitted in nicely.

The HeroQuest hero quest has seen a lot of hobbyists paint up a HQ mini. It's rather fun seeing the set slowly painted up by the community. Go check it out, I tell thee. 

As well as a fine gargoyle, this lad will make a good bloodsecrator (heh) or greater warbeast. At a push he could even see action as a terracotta statue of Ching Dai. Utility eh?

The final mini of the year is my chaos Santa. I've been meaning to paint up a seasonal mini for years, and again, the Creeps shot out a selection of Christmas themed minis, and so I finally got him painted. Next year I'll give him a wee friend maybe.

On the gaming front, it was a good year. I got a good few games in with some mighty folks. There's nothing like taking your newly painted warband for an outing, having some laughs and a few alcoholic refreshments. Rather than give you a tedious blow by blow account, I'll show you some pretty pictures and you'll get the vibe.

So, what for 2017? Well, right now I intend to finish the Shadow Empire. I need to add some cavalry, a chariot, some vampires and the three storms. After that, I think my genestealer cult could do with some love. With the new kits out, I'm very keen to paint up some new hybrids. I have half a dozen other projects I'd like to continue as well, there are the cylons, some more Sov judges, a few more fimir, a Bloodbowl team, a titan or two... 

Who knows what the hell I'll get up to.