Brokentooth's Guide to Goblin Greatness: Cowardly Giants. & A Review of Foundry's Giant

What the snag? Huh? Ack! You youngins still here? I'd just nodded off to a nice sleep and some kobold lasses were just about to.. oh nevermind that now.  Small use to be king of the goblins when you can't drift off for a well deserved nap.  I've completely lost my caravan of thought.  

Seeing a few dozen gleaming red eyes looking up at him anxiously, he continued.

Alright then.  We'll talk more about the biggest and best fighters you can muster! 

"Orcs?" piped up a bent-nosed scraggler.

Ack! No! Spit those orcs! They're no good and that's fer sure. You don't want them around unless you want no food or shiny bits for yerself when fightin's done.  They's a greedy lot who completely exaggerate their own worth. 

No, one of the best biggest is giants.

"You already told bout them!" hacked the bright goblin girl.

Oh. Yes, that's right, I did. But I didn't talk about the best giants: the cowardly giants!

"How's a coward good for a fight?" asked an uncommonly dense stupid boy.

Oh someone kick him! And quit interrupting! Cowards are great for fights! Any fool can go charging off waving a sharp stick and caterwauling at the enemy.  A coward knows enough to do what's smart to keep himself alive.  Just threaten them enough so they know it's safer not to run, and they'll fight smart. Now, you don't want all your army fighting smart, or you have to feed and pay them all.. you want a good amount to die so you save more valuables for yourself of course, but you also want to win and for that you need cowards!  

"But won't they be afraid to fight?" asked the uncommonly dense stupid boy.

Brokentooth let out a heavy sigh.

Yes! That's the point! That way they'll kill the enemy before they can get to them to fight! 

Brokentooth figured he'd keep an eye on that boy, and put him in sharp stick caterwauling training.

Some giants are such thorough cowards they've become exceptionally good at rock throwing! 
Like Trolls that throw rocks, only they can throw even bigger, heavier rocks. Plus the enemy can see them a good way off and it scares the breakfast out of them! 

......................................

When I saw the giant from Foundry, and I was ordering some paints, I figured I had to get one to add to my goblin army! 

Technically, it is called a Troll, but they are such big, tall gangling trolls, they're really more 'giant' than 'troll'. 

The one I picked out, to be either a Giant in the army, or a Stone Thrower, was this one: 

So I'll walk you through the unpacking & assembly process: 

Tutorial:

Here are all the parts. It is a very big kit. 

The first thing I noticed as a potential problem is heavy parts with small contact points. 

The connection for the foot however is a very large deep tab.  Nice.

Stands up on his own without a problem.

The waist looks like a pretty deep contact point, but the connection isn't very flush.

It needs to be filled either at front or back, depending if you want him hunched forward or not. 

The wrist: that's not sufficient in my opinion for a solid bond.  The fist weighs more than most minis.

The rock-hand is worse. I'd not advise just gluing and expecting it to hold with a bit of knock around.

There was also some miscast to the mini: part of his side didn't fill, so I filled & resculpted with green stuff.

So I got out the dremel and sank some very deep pins.  

You could use a hand operated pin vice, but that's a ton of work.

Using deep pins also allowed me to extend the head out on a longer neck and angle it to look more where he was aiming his rock throw.

After a pin connects the hand & arm, filling will be required.

Almost done!

All the pinning and gluing has been done, and a base made for him. 

The contact at the waist seemed a poor match.  I bent him forward, so sculpted the gap in his back.

Since I'd made a longer neck to angle around to see where he was throwing, I also needed to sculpt some more to his neck.

All the filling & sculpt work is now done.

Special Delivery! It's a Rock! 

Oh! I ruined the surprise.

And the wind-up...

Posing with his 'little' rock-throwing troll buddy. I love the variety! 

And he'll serve great as an additional combat giant instead of a catapult if I need.

Review: 

This is a massive kit with a ton of character.  I just love the result.

As you probably gathered however, building him was a ton of work.  

I would not recommend this miniature to a novice. If you don't feel confident in pinning and simple sculpting of gaps you might want to practice on less expensive miniatures than this one first. 

I'd also highly recommend using a dremel or other electric drill for the pinning: this would be a serious pain with a pin vice.  I have a dremel flexible shaft extension, model 255, which lets you use a smaller 'pen grip' which makes things so much easier. 

So, it is a miniature that requires extra time & work, but I think it is easily worth it. 

More Goblin Mayhem to come! 

Tuesday Two Beastmen: Psychedelic Furs Team intro: Minotaur Edition! With Ramos Minotaur Review

The Biggest Tuesday Two-Beastmen yet!  Literally, since we now come to the Minotaur.. but not one, two Minotaurs!

The team has finally started seeing some paint.. skin/fur is 90% done.. some may get some markings, depends how much time remains when everything else is done, and they all have black shorts, next is the pink armor, then details: straps, metal edges around armor, the horns and hooves, bases.

So let's meet some Minotaurs!

This is the minotaur that comes with the Willy Chaos team.  It's a beautiful sculpt. 

He is surrounded by re-roll counters. Considering Minotaurs have the 'frenzy' and 'loner' traits, he probably needs all of these for himself. 

Here is the Ramos minotaur. 

It was originally made for an Australian tournament, and soon it will be available from Impact Miniatures.

It is cast in a 'restic' resin plastic, so this kit (not including the base) will be sold for less than $20 I think. 

The sculpt is gorgeous. Great detail and I love the hunching, rounded almost 'cute' minotaur. 

The material used I found to be easier to work with than the restic that Mantic uses: not as hard to cut & clean, not having a rubbery-resistance to filing. A bit more like traditional resin but not as brittle. 

Quite nice really. 

As you can see, he comes with 3 arm options: hand, tentacles, and claw.  I magnetized mine:

I did build up the connection spots on the arms with green stuff, to make sure the contact would be flush when magnetically attached. 

My only complaint was some defects in casting.  The tentacles had some gaps to fill, both kneecap armor pieces had not filled all the way, so had a curved piece at the bottom missing from them.. which wouldn't be seen often at the angle you would look at it, and the loincloth was missing a large piece in the center.  I filled all the problems, except the cloth, which was very hard to get in to recreate. As you can see in the 2nd picture where he's turned around, instead I opted to make a single shredded piece to fill in the gap just a bit and go with a 'tattered cloth' rather than try to recreate the complete cloth. In assembly, the tail tip broke, and he lost a fingertip, but a bit of glue & green stuff fixed that up fine. 

He comes with an icon of a hawk (?) in flight on his shoulder pad.  So I carved & filed that off, since I wanted it smooth to have room to paint an icon. This was very easy. Took about 1/10th the effort & time it would have taken if it was a metal miniature.  

So yes, more casting issues than you'd expect to find with metal or standard plastic sprue, but not too bad really, and for the price for a large big guy with kit of 3 arms it is more than acceptable. 

Plus the advantage of magnetizing the arms since it is a plastic miniature is beyond valuable. 

The question for me now is, which Minotaur should I use?  They are both great.  The Willy Mino fits the team best, but it's not so 'off' to have the one big guy be a bit more different, so I'm not sure which I'll use. 

I'm looking forward to a tournament someday with a high enough team value that I can take the star minotaur and have both on the pitch at once! 

Here they are together: 

Together they're ideal for a Strength 6 star minotaur (minostar?) and a strength 5 rookie minotaur. 

At Left is Mr. Jones.  His first name? You'll know that when he's deemed you worthy to know it.  

Fair warning, the process of being deemed worthy often proves fatal. 

On the Right is Pretty N. Pink. I'd advise against teasing him about his name. 

Mr. Jones is being painted with black fur and skin that transitions from almost black to grey-tinted caucasian.

Pretty is being painted with almost-white fur & skin, flesh tones at details around his face. 

Which Minotaur do you think I should use? 

Only one more Tuesday Two Beastman to go,where you'll meet the Cheerleader & Coach.

Until then, enjoy the minotaurs' personal songs!

Rotten Tomatoes: Miniatures Review of Squig-like Things

Been awhile since I reviewed some miniatures, so here we go!

Recently I stumbled across some 'not-squigs' on Ebay when I was looking for some Squigs for a project.

These were called 'Demonic Tomatoes' which is hard to resist right there.

This is a set of 7 alien beasties, much like GW squigs: same scale and size.

Priced at $25.50 with $5.50 shipping,which seemed reasonable shipping since they were coming from Russia.

Each one is unique (no duplicate sculpts).  No bases are supplied, but that isn't much of a problem for most gamers: we tend to have a lot of extra bases around.

The sculpting is good, and anatomically correct: they have both a mouth and the opposite opening... don't ask where ketchup comes from!

Casting is in resin and is smooth with only a few minor bubbles.

If you're in the market for more squigs and want variety, these should add to your collection nicely.

I found them on this Ebay store, though at the moment looks like there are none for sale there now- but there might be more in the future: http://stores.ebay.com/bdstd-miniature

Here they are:

The one in the bottom right is in 2 pieces, his mouth goes all the way around, so you can position the head in any way you like, he has 3 eyes in the front and one in the back.

another view:

Galacteer War Rocket: Review & Tutorial

Time flies.  I was very surprised to realize it was almost a year ago that I did the first review of a War Rocket faction, the Zenithians.  I still have to do a full review of the Pirates, but at the moment, let's take a look at the signature fleet, the Galacteers from Hydra Miniatures.

The Galacteer faction is the shining protagonist of the setting: Earth's finest, protecting our planet from the multitude of dangers in space. In design they show their evolution from Earth's aircraft.  They are the second most maneuverable fleet in the game, outclassed only by the Zenithians, but they're a bit sturdier than Zenithian.  The Galacteers seem a good fleet for someone who enjoys flexibility of movement over a 'stand firm and exchange punches' style of play but without being a complete 'glass cannon'.

I bought the fleet pack deal, which comes with 9 Class I rockets and 3 Class II rockets. 

While I do have 'full' fleets including Class III & IV rockets for Zenithian, Imperial & Pirates, the Galacteer and Valkyrie fleets I've only bought the intro fleet deals.. for now. 

Opening the pack and arranging the parts, this is what we find. 

The Class I rockets are single cast, and the Class II have separate dorsal and ventral fins. Unlike some of the other fleets, there isn't any easy tell by engines or fins to identify the classification of the ships, but the size differences are distinct. 

Unfortunately I did find a few casting errors in the set.  Here are two Class I rockets, with the one on left hasn't had the nose filled completely. I had to use green stuff to build it out.  

A miscast thruster pod on a Class I wing.  Again, repairable, but still regrettable. 

The flight stand attachment works the same way as the other fleets: the hole is bigger than the stub on the flight stand, best to cut the stub off, and attach with a bit of green stuff to get a tight fit. 

As seen on the Zenithians:

Just for added balance on the table I add weight to the base by gluing in extra metal from cut bases and tabs of other miniatures. Save everything and you'll find uses for it.

And the fleet is assembled:

I have used a few taller flight stand stems from GW kits, to give some height variety.  

I don't have any Class III or IV rockets for this fleet yet, but they look like this:

Eventually, since I'm a completest, I'd like to have higher Class ships for this fleet than just the I & II, and Hydra Miniatures did just have a sale, and I was very tempted. I am still indecisive though,because I really do like the Class III (teh 'X' wing design is quite cool) but not crazy about the Class IV for some reason.... the wide hull loses the aesthetic to my eye.  And since I have three fleets that have Class III & IV rockets, I'd realistically need the same for Galacteer and Valkeeri, but I'd rather have two Class III Galacteers than a Class IV... so would that mean I'd be ordering a Class III & IV for Valkeeri and three Class III for Galacteers?  That started adding up to more than I can spare at the moment... especially when I wanted some of the Retro Raygun and little plant aliens too.  So I'm holding off on the higher class rockets for these two fleets for now.  

I have in mind to run a multi-scale game at a game con next year, where each player would command a small fleet of ships, all trying to race to, and prevent others from reaching, a planet to send down a small strike team to obtain an ancient artifact.  The game would have space combat as well as warrior vrs warrior action on the planet surface.  Different human, alien and robotic factions in a free for all.  

So I'll be painting the Galacteers up as squadrons in accent colors of Blue, Red & Green with a Class II and three Class I rockets each.  

Additional Uses:

It's always useful to consider what additional uses miniatures you buy might have, beyond your initial intention.  The Class I rockets would make nice 'near future' fighter aircraft for example, and would work well in a game like Epic 40k.  The Class II rocket would make an ideal 'Luxury liner' in any space combat game.  With all the round windows down the side, looking a lot like a passenger jet or cruise ship, it could easily stand in for a civilian space liner that needs to be protected (or raided) in any spaceship game, like Battlefleet Gothic, Full Thrust or Firestorm Armada.  

So how do I rate the Galacteer fleet? 

Rating:

Casting: 7/10
Cleverness of design: 9/10
Aesthetics: 8/10

Thanks for reading! 

Enjoy!

A Look at the Occulites: Review of Darwin Games' Palaudis Tribe

Back in April I did an overview of Darwin Games range of Occulites. I'm a big fan of characterful & quirky miniatures, so they had easily caught my eye.  Now that I have had some in my possession I thought it'd be nice and possibly useful to have a review of the miniatures.

The miniatures of this review are the Palaudis Tribe of Occulites: those who live in the swamps & wetlands.
There are four other tribes of Occulites, each from a different environment, as well as a diminutive race called the Luftles.

You can find out much more about all of these at Darwin Games, as well as in my overview from April, linked at the top.

On opening the package of Palaudis Occulites I find five single-cast metal miniatures.
My first impression is one of impressive solidity.  These are not frail scanty miniatures.
They have a lot of weight and metal to them. The set of five are unique miniatures: no repeats.

Note: This includes a Luftle (smaller miniature in the foreground) which is not part of the Palaudis set.

Taking a close look at the miniatures I was very impressed with the cleanness of the cast.
I found no casting flaws.
Flash was almost non-existent and the mold lines were few and easy to clean up.
They have textured, integrated bases, which are pretty thin so they'll be fine for gluing them to other bases.
The minis are also quite '3-D' for being single-casting, not the flat 2-D so common in many.
So all in all for casting: nicely sculpted, good variety and very clean. Any novice would have no problem at all getting these minis ready for gaming.

Here is detail from the back of the chieftain miniature.  Some nice detail here!

One thing I noticed is that not all of the Occulites are the same size:

Look at these two.  Similar, but a noticeable size difference.  I like this!  Size variation is something most miniatures don't take into account, mostly because variation is obtained by swapping heads on the same standard bodies, or from plastic kits with the same size parts.  The one on the right to me looks like a young adult of the species, or perhaps a female? Or for that matter, perhaps a male in a female-dominant species? 

Whether from sexual dimorphism or age difference, it's nice to see some variety.  

So once the miniatures are inspected & cleaned up, you have to decide how to base them, if you're going to.

You could of course decide not to base them, just using the integrated textured bases, like old style RPG minis. They're plenty sturdy enough if you want to go this route, but most people prefer to base miniatures for added protection and a uniform look.  

Therefore, let's take a look at some common bases for options:

The standard 25mm round slotta base. 

The integrated base would need to be trimmed, and it'd be a close fit, but workable.

A round 25mm plastic base without bevels. 

A better fit than the beveled base. Some might need slight trimming, the mini does overhang some still.

A 30mm round mdf base without bevels. 

No base trimming needed and only the most extreme parts of the minis overhang the base. 

A 30mm round-lip base. 

Some integrated base trimming will be needed.  Less area for ground-work than the base above. 

I didn't photo with square bases, but you can estimate from the pictures.  A 25mm square base does give more room to work with than a 25mm round base and would probably be the base size to chose for square. 

Whatever your base size preference for what you commonly game, you can probably use fine for these minis

For me, I chose the 30mm mdf bases. Reason being, I like the base size to give some room around the miniature for groundwork, so that it isn't too tight on the base.  Also, a 30mm base gives it the right footprint for Hordes, and I could image using these as proxies for Bog Trogs.  Also, I have in mind to use these for the Pulp Prehistory rules I'm writing and for those minis I've been using 25mm, 30mm & 40mm round bases without bevels or lips, so they'll fit well with the rest of them. 

Here are the minis after basing:

With some texture and stray rocks they're ready to go.  The smaller Luftle is on a 25mm base. 

Here's a comparison shot of an Occulite with a Copplestone Cave Man:

I'm sure I'll want to try out the Rise of the Occulite game, but from this I can see they'll also make a fun and unusual addition to the world of the Paleolithic! 

Price:

The Darwin Games site sells them for $7.95 each for most and $10.95 for the chief, Australian dollars, or $40 AUS for the set of 5.  Splintered Light also sells some, maybe more convenient for those in North America, but availability might be more limited than it was in April when I last looked.  

So how do I rate them? 

Rating: 

Casting: 10/10

Cleverness of Design: 9/10

Aesthetics: 10/10

I'm quite impressed with these quirky miniatures.  I can't fault them on the cleverness of design category, since they are well designed within the limits of single casting.  It might have been nice to have some multi-part options, which could then give potential for more variety, but considering that there are 5 unique miniatures in a set of 5 it wouldn't be much of an issue unless getting 3 or more packs.  Since there are several other tribes to chose from I don't find this to be a significant issue.  Aesthetics is of course up to personal taste, so speaking for myself they appeal to me. 

As I said in April, in addition to their intended Game, I could see these easily fitting in with Fantasy, Science Fiction, Pulp and Horror settings.  Never a bad thing to have multiple options for your miniatures. 

In the near future I'll paint these and give you a look at how they turn out.

Thanks for reading!