Awesome Kickstarters

I joined in on the first Heresy Girls Kickstarter, and am incredibly happy with the Models I got from it. Even if I haven't actually got around to painting any of them yet. But the casts were fantastic, they were very close to the  original designs, and the operator was great about communicating when the project hit some snags. The second one looks even better.

The second one, I don't have any experience with the people doing the actual casting, but they have a good track record, and the designs are done by Ana Polanscak, best known through her blog, Gardens of Hecate. For those who aren't familiar with her work, she has an amazing imagination, and a wonderful sculpting style for all sorts of creepy-cool little daemons and creatures. I got distracted and didn't get this up as early as I meant to, so there are only three days left in this KS, but it is fully funded.

I highly encourage all y'all to go check both of those projects out. Until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Alternate Fiend of Slaanesh and Flesh Hound Models from FFG

Fiends of Slaanesh are a really cool design and concept, but with only a single sculpt available, in resin, at US$25 each, they're kind of awkward to fit into an Army, and they look sort of wimpy next to their counterparts that have been updated to plastic kits, like the Beasts of Nurgle and Bloodcrushers. Flesh Hounds are in somewhat better shape, with 5 sculpts in the box, and a couple of plastic ones teased along with Korghos Khul and Magore's Fiends, but are still US$10 each on their own, in resin only.

A while ago, I stumbled across the Uthuk Y'llan for FFG's Runewars Miniatures Game, and was struck by the potential in some of their options for use as Chaos Daemons, particularly the ones I'm discussing here. It's not entirely surprising, as the Uthuk Y'llan make use of a great many summoned daemons (tho they call them other things), and almost certainly took inspiration from some of the same places GW did.

First up, we have the Spined Threshers, which feel pretty much perfect as an update for the Fiends of Slaanesh. Not as much of an improvement as I might like in terms of variety and price, since the two available sculpts are designed to be built one way, and the plastic used is very hard, but they are still an improvement in those regards, and their size and presence are vastly better.

Apparently in the Runewars fluff, they're made from multiple summoned daemons bound together into a single form, which is why they have multiple mouths all over the place. One mouth remains for each daemon that was bound into a given Thresher, I guess so they can individually feed or something. IDK, I haven't actually paid much attention to Runewars except for the Models.

Now, as I've mentioned, and as shown in the pic at the top of this post, they are much bigger than the current Fiends. But they are about the same size as the current Beasts of Nurgle, which were formerly close to the Fiends in size. So I feel like they'll make a pretty good alternate. I plan on knocking half an inch off any measurements where the larger base would benefit me, and since they have no shooting attacks, the greater height and profile are pure disadvantage. They can actually just barely squeeze onto 40mm bases, but it looked stupid, so I put them on 60s.

Flesh Hounds, as I said at the start, are in better shape, but can really suffer from lack of variety, especially when running multiple packs at once. I like to use a ton of them in minimum-sized packs, so I've made a practice of getting as many possible varieties as I can, to help keep them sorted out. The Flesh Rippers summoned by the Uthuk Y'llan seemed about perfect to form up another pack, since they have an aesthetic that's entirely compatible with Khornate stuff, but are distinctly different from any of the specific GW designs. They also cost about 60% of what the GW ones do.

Unfortunately, there are again only two sculpts, but they actually mix up fairly nicely when not ranked up, and it should be less noticeable when they're one of 8 Packs on the table. The other disadvantage is that they come attached to the rectangular bases you see here, but those are much softer plastic than the Models themselves, and so relatively easy to cut away. In terms of size, they match up quite nicely with GW Flesh Hounds.

Thinking about it just now, they'd probably also make good alternatives for Drukhari Khymerae as well. I'm looking forward to getting both lots of these painted up, but since (as usual) I have far too many projects going on, who knows when I'll get to them. When I do, I will put pics up here.

I have a couple more of the Heroes from Silver Tower ready to go, and several of the monsters very close to completion, so hopefully I'll get them wrapped up and photographed soon, and then I'll do another post of those to wrap up Neglected Model September. I'm also working on building and priming the stuff from the Rogue Trader boxed set and the Heresy Girls Kickstarter, so those are going to be my major goals for October. Until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Check out this Excellent Wargaming Terrain Kickstarter

Worldsmith Industries is doing a third production run, and it's up on Kickstarter to fund materials for the production molds, resin, and all that. The first two Kickstarters were both successful and fulfilled ahead of schedule, and this one looks to be no different. The first two Master molds are already made, Jim's got time set aside to do the casting, it's just waiting on the funding for raw materials.

I didn't have the cash at the time to back his first two efforts, but I've seen his products in person, and they're great. The price points are all kind of high, but that's because they're all pretty large pieces.  Looking around, they seem comparable in cost to other resin terrain sets of similar size, and Jim's work is some of the best I've seen.

It's all masonry-type stuff, but given 40K's aesthetic, that works just fine, especially if you add a few touches to grimdark it up. The core design, tho, is for Ranked Combat games like 9th Age or Kings of War. As such, almost all of them are set up so that the major chunks can be removed to allow Units to move freely across the area, and then accurately replaced.

One unfortunate caveat: due to how international shipping prices from the US have skyrocketed lately, he isn't offering international sales at this time. For those of you in the States, tho, definitely go give it a look.

Until next time, y'all have a good one now, y'hear!