1/72 Multiverse

Scale Chains

2012-01-31T22:18:00.000-08:00

Chains are often used in detailing models and miniatures, but finding the properly sized chain can be a bit of an issue without a point of reference. The given dimensions of a chain can be misleading as well, since sometimes they refer to the length of a link, while at other times they refer to the pitch. My preference is to use links per inch (lpi) because it makes approximating the size the chain fairly easy. For example, the anchor chain of the Mauretania (below) could be represented by a chain of about 4 lpi. A common everyday chain is about 8 links per foot, so in 1/72 it is represented by a chain of 48 lpi.

Starting from top to bottom, the following chains are: 9 lpi, 17 lpi, 21 lpi, 27 lpi, and 42 lpi. The 42 lpi chain is the smallest that I've found, and is the chain that is the closest to a regular chain in 1/72 scale.

The silver and black chains are jewelry chains that I picked up some time ago (I don't remember where they came from), while the three smaller brass chains are produced by Model Shipways.

While on the subject of chains, I've included an in progress conversion for a Chain Devil. I've taken a Dreamblade Iron Thug (Base Set #38), and will be adding hooks, blades, spiked balls, etc. to it. So far it only has the two plastic venom chain flail bits from some Dark Eldar kit attached.

I don't particularly care for the D&D version of the Chain Devil, because it just looks like a guy wrapped in chains.

But I really like the appearance of this D&D Chain Golem, which is how I envision a Chain Devil as looking.

Ammonites

2012-01-22T23:42:00.000-08:00

Supernatural powers have been attributed to the fossilized remains of ammonites at various times by cultures in North America, Europe, and India.

Ammonites of course, are the extinct relatives of the squid, octopus, and nautilus. The largest of the early ammonites in the Jurassic were probably fairly similar in size and shape to the modern nautilus, but by the late Jurassic, larger species were emerging. The largest species (with increasingly elaborate ornamentation on their shells) appeared in the Cretaceous.

There are a couple of miniatures that can be used to represent these giant ammonites in 1/72. On the left is the Grenadier Kraken (Fantasy Lords 186), while on the right is the Kaiyodo Pachydiscus (UHA Dinotales series 1, #17).

The Kraken is definitely a fantasy creature, since it has octopus-like tentacles, and doesn't look like it can fit completely into its shell. The Pachydiscus is more properly known as Parapuzosia seppenradensis, since it was reassigned to a different genus. Specimens of P. seppenradensis have been estimated to have shells that were 2.55m in diameter, which is very close in scale dimensions to the Kaiyodo model.

SOPA Blackout Day

2012-01-18T00:00:00.000-08:00

I don't publicize my political views very often, but opposition to internet censorship is one of the causes that I've been supporting since the EFF started their Blue Ribbon Campaign in response to Title V of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, aka the "Communications Decency Act".

While I am against the theft of intellectual property in principle, I do not always agree that everything our laws define as IP actually qualify as such. What I do believe though, is that SOPA and PIPA are not solutions.

From what I can tell, the people who drafted H.R. 3261 do not appear to have a clue of what a mess they will cause if the bill is enacted. If you want a preview at how things will turn out, you don't really have to go any farther than looking at the absurdities that occur with various eBay policies:

Policy against items that promote or glorify hatred, violence or racial intolerance

Ban on RMT for virtual goods

The customer is always right

Not for resale

The way these bans are enforced is often arbitrary, and totally open to abuse. Anyone with an axe to grind can get items pulled and accounts frozen, while dozens of other violators continue to operate with impunity.

I have an axe to grind

A 2005 study regarding the current DMCA reported that 57% of takedown notices sent to Google targeted business competitors, while 30% of takedown notices were of questionable validity. I see the same type of thing happening with SOPA, but the most alarming part is that SOPA implements a mechanism to restrict the ability of people to access information on top of that.

SOPA one-ups the DMCA by attempting to hold search engines and ISP providers as facilitators of piracy if they do not "voluntarily" take action against perceived piracy. I find this a ridiculous standard, as gun manufacturers are not accountable for crimes committed with guns, nor are car makers responsible for accidents involving their cars that are not a result of mechanical defect. Even tobacco companies seem to be now exempt from private liability over health issues due to tobacco use, so long as they do not engage in certain advertising practices.

Then again, if the bill is enacted, maybe I'll finally have the legal backing I need to sue The Times (and block their website from search engines) over that damned reporter who plagiarized huge blocks of text from an article I wrote and passed it off as his own work.

I can't make out who the artist is, but I modified the image, and am using it without permission. Does this usage fall under parody/satire/irony? Do internet memes fall into this category?

MENG Katsuodori Ram-Jet Fighter

2012-01-13T21:01:00.000-08:00

I picked up a package from Hobbyeasy of Hong Kong at the post office this morning. I was rather impressed by their use of packing straps to secure the box.

In the box were the Meng Katsuodori kits (among other things) that I ordered last month.

Each box contains two individually bagged aircraft, a bagged sprue for the clear canopies, instructions, and a sheet of decals.

The main sprue has 31 pieces, including a takeoff dolly/ground trolley, and parts for attaching the Katsuodori to a mother plane. The only thing missing is a pilot, but that's not too surprising in a modern aircraft kit.

Below are some comparisons between parts from the Meng Katsuodori and the Unicraft Katsuodori.

The fuselage of both kits are quite comparable in size and shape, but the wings, stabilizers, and booster rockets of the Unicraft kit are much larger than those of the Meng kit.

Looks like my plans for the weekend have been set.

Shambling Mound

2012-01-10T18:15:00.000-08:00

The Shambling Mound is a mass of animated vegetable matter that originated from the comic book characters Man-Thing and Swamp Thing. Both Marvel and DC comics released their characters at roughly the same time, and there was much controversy over which creature was the original.

With regard to size, both Man-Thing and Swamp Thing are listed at 7' tall, but they often looked a lot taller (9-10 feet tall) in the comics. Shambling Mounds start out at 6' tall (as described in the AD&D Monster Manual), but lightning can cause the creatures to grow 1' and 1 HD each time they are zapped, so their size can be considered to be variable. If we go by this criteria, pretty much any Shambling Mound miniature can be used with 1/72 figures.

All of the metal Shambling Mounds I have come from Grenadier. The first is the Shambling Mound from the Denizens of the Swamp boxed set (Grenadier 2010), followed by the Vegetation Beast from the Horrors of the Marsh boxed set (Dragon Lords 2010), and last is the Quagmar from the Monster Manuscript Vol.VIII boxed set (MM69).

The Grenadier Shambling Mound is very close to the Sutherland illustration from the Monster Manual, which is vaguely reminiscent of Man-Thing. The Quagmar on the other hand, is a bit closer to Swamp Thing.

The final miniature I have is from the DDM game. It is a Stormrage Shambler (Unhallowed #24), which I present as an example of what happens to a Shambling Mound after it gets hit with 1.21 gigawatts of electricity.

New Year's Eve Progress

2011-12-31T15:56:00.000-08:00

This is my final post of the year, and I want to thank everyone who has been reading my blog. 2011 started out slowly, but in the second half of the year I managed to build up some momentum, and get to my two entries/month goal. I hope to be able to continue at this pace, but who knows...

Some of the milestones of the year include finally reaching 100 posts, having 40+ people sign on as followers, and getting 60,000+ visits to the blog.

Anyway, as typical of how I pursue this hobby, this post isn't particularly cohesive, and is just a bunch of random stuff that I've been working on. Hopefully though, it will be able to give people ideas for things they would like to do for their own projects.

To start out, I want to report that I've completed magnetizing the heads for my SLM skeletal war mammoth.

Originally I wanted to have swappable heads for the mammoth and skeletal construct, but the small magnet I mounted in the cervical vertebrae of the construct proved to be too weak to support the metal head.

The head is so heavy, that now that it's glued in place, the construct cannot stand up without falling over (a bit of UHU tac is keeping the miniature upright).

From undead mammoths, we now proceed to undead dragons. After searching for a nice, cheap option for an undead dragon, I came upon the Heroscape Su-Bak-Na miniature (Orm's Return expansion). Su-Bak-Na is actually the rider of the unnamed skeletal dragon, but I chopped him off, and gave him the heave-ho.

The miniature is quite toy-like, with the claws and pelvic area in particular need of improvement.

Su-Bak-Na's legs were cut away, a little carving was done, and some kneadatite vertebral spines were added.

The claws were given more definition with a soldering iron hot knife, and I stuck some heated needles into the miniature to serve as anchor points for new pelvic bones created from plastic sprue (modeled loosely after T-rex).

Now the dragon serves as a mount for Maleficent.

A couple of recent purchases were a Blazing Skeleton from the Castle Ravenloft Board Game, and a HeroClix Blazing Skull (Avengers Marvel #018). I was interested in these miniatures because I wanted to have some translucent flaming skulls as spell effects.

Both miniatures were decapitated, and the skulls were mounted on clear plastic sprue. The flaming skulls are shown below with a DDM Flameskull (War Drums #29).

I don't know much about the Flameskull, other than it is a 2nd ed. monster. I added a little dilute blue paint to the Blazing Skeleton skull so that the details would be a bit more visible, and used acetone to remove the paint from Blazing Skull's skull.

Last is an ahu that I'm building from Styrofoam and cardboard. The ahu is a ceremonial platform that was used by the Rapanui on Easter Island.

The pieces were glued together with Hold the Foam! Moai from the Twilight Creations Easter Island game were then placed in the triangular slots.

I'm still trying to decide whether to use Styrofoam, plastic, or cardboard for the ramp of the platform.

In closing, I want to thank all my readers again, and wish you all a Happy New Year!

Blemmyes

2011-12-29T20:14:00.000-08:00

                           "And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
                           The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
                           Do grow beneath their shoulders."

                           - Othello

The Blemmyes were originally a sub-Saharan tribe from a region that is now part of modern Sudan. Somehow over the ages, they came to be known as a legendary race of headless people. In later accounts, such as in The Romance of Alexander, they are described as giants covered in golden hair.

Blemmyes are sometimes also confused with Anthropophagi, but this is due to improper parsing of a line from Shakespeare's Othello (see above). This is further confused because the description of Anthropophagi from The Histories of Herodotus is often ascribed to the Blemmyes, but in fact, Herodotus is referring to a Scythian tribe, and makes no mention of headlessness.

My pet theory is that stories of headless Blemmyes with faces on their torsos came from sightings of people wearing large ceremonial masks.

Below are some of the miniatures that I have of Blemmyes, though they are different in appearance from those shown in medieval illustrations.

The first miniature is of a Toadec Spawn (HOT62). I originally bought these for a frog warband, but upon receiving the miniatures, I realized that what was painted up as big protruding lips on the 15mm.co.uk website was actually an eye. I figured that these miniatures must have originally been designed as Cyclops-Blemmyes. What really confirmed this for me was when I came across the East Riding Minatures Blemmyes (the next two miniatures), which are also described as Chest-Eyes. The ERM miniatures are clearly of the same origin as the Toadec Spawn. The first one is a Blemmye with spear FT-25, followed by a Blemmye leader armed with a khopesh from the ERM Fantasy Personalities set (FT-40). Anyway, they are too small to be used as Blemmyes in 1/72 scale, but can be repurposed as toadmen if you wanted to paint them up that way.

The final figure is a Grenadier Grunch (Fantasy Lords 031). The torso is spot on for a Blemmye, but its legs are digitigrade, which is not so typical. The Grunch is more suitable for use with 28mm figures, but I think I'm going to use it as a giant Blemmye.

The Four Elements

2011-12-27T19:41:00.000-08:00

Elementals were derived from the classical Greek elements of Earth, Water, Air, and Fire by the physician and alchemist Paracelsus back in the 16th century. He described them as beings that occupied a position somewhere between man and spirit, in that they were physical beings, but had the ability to translocate themselves in the manner of spirits.

In fantasy role-playing games, elementals are typically animate forms of their respective element, while the Paracelsian nomenclatures (pigmy/gnome, nymph/undine, sylph, salamander) are used for related, but completely different types of beings. In addition, fantasy gaming has many other classes of elementals, paraelementals, quasielementals, and such, that I won't get into.

Earth

The earth elemental is also known as the Gnome, or Pigmy. Paracelsus characterizes them as malevolent beings, but also as creatures who treat others as they themselves are treated. Most gamers of course, recognize them as humanoid piles of boulders.

"...the element of the Gnomes is the earth, and they pass through rocks and walls and stones like a thought; for such things are to them as no greater obstacles than the air is to us ... the Pigmies are of the length of about two spans, but then can extend or elongate their forms until they appear like giants."

- The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim

The three earth elementals are (left to right) from Grenadier (MM21), TSR (AD&D 5602), and Shadow Corp (3057).

I haven't accumulated many earth elementals because I still haven't made up my mind on how they should appear. I think the Grenadier miniature would make an outstanding mud elemental. The TSR elemental has a sculpted look to its face which seems more appropriate for a golem than an elemental, but I do like the look of the Shadow Corp elemental.

An option that can be used to represent Paracelsian Gnomes are the Reaper Stone Zealots (Warlord 14572).

My miniatures are slightly modified (chin spikes removed), but I'm using them as a type of kobold, rather than as earth elementals.

Water

The water elemental is also known as the Nymph or Undine. In the typical game setting, they appear as ambulatory waves. Paracelsus had a different take, and describes them as spiritual gold diggers who lingered near bodies of water in order to snag themselves a human mate.

"...those belonging to the element of water resemble human beings of either sex..."

- The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim

Below are two large water elementals. The first one is a WoW CMG Crashing Wave Spirit (Spoils of War expansion), while the other is a DDM Large Water Elemental (Blood War #38).

I removed a lot of the paint on the Large Water Elemental with acetone, and I will do the same with the Crashing Wave Spirit, since the paint is just too opaque for my tastes. The wave action on the left arm of the Crashing Wave Spirit looks nice, but for the raised right arm, the large sheet under the arm doesn't quite look right.

Next are two medium water elementals. The one on the left is from The Legend of Drizzt Board Game, while the one on the right is from Heroscape (Champions of the Forgotten Realms expansion). Both of these elementals are the same as the DDM Medium Water Elemental, except they are made of translucent plastic instead of opaque plastic.

The last four water elementals are metal miniatures. They are (left to right) from WotC (WOC40098), Ral Partha (AD&D Monsters 11-427), Grenadier (MM23), and Shadow Corp (3057).

Frankly, I like the plastic elementals because they are translucent, which approaches the appearance of water better than metal. I'm sure that fantastic water effects can be achieved with painting, but I don't have those skills.

One other miniature that I thought would make a great Undine is the Ral Partha Zaftig Maiden (01-008).

I can see using the Dark Art to create one in transparent resin that would result in a great looking elemental. I have actually seen the Heritage Air Elemental (below) cast up in transparent turquoise resin, and it looked fantastic as well.

Air

Air elementals are known as Sylphs or Sylvestres. The appearance of sylphs as slender female spirits comes from Alexander Pope, who characterizes them as an embodiment of post-mortem female vanity in his poem The Rape of the Lock.

                            "The light Coquettes in Sylphs aloft repair,
                            And sport and flutter in the Fields of Air."

                            - The Rape of the Lock

The first group of air elemental miniatures are modeled as personifications of the wind. From left to right, they are from Heritage (Dungeon Dwellers 1283), Citadel (C34), TSR (AD&D 5602), and Ral Partha (01-064).

The second group are more typical D&D style air elementals that appear as whirlwinds. From left to right, they are a Windfiend Fury (Savage Encounters #39), Shardstorm Vortex (Savage Encounters #32), and a Thunderblast Cyclone (Against the Giants #9).

Next are a mixed group of metal and plastic air elementals. From left to right, there are Ral Partha (AD&D Monsters 11-427) and Grenadier (MM20) air elementals; Grenadier (Monsters 5002) and Shadow Corp (3057) wind elementals, and a DDM Air Mephit (Unhallowed #12).

To represent Paracelsian Sylphs, one option is to use Fenryll Fairies (FA14).

The fairies are not the best work coming from Fenryll, and the wings printed on acetate sheets had overly thick veins, but they are usable with 1/72 figures, so I can't complain too much.

Other miniatures that can be used as Sylphs include the Magister Militum Sprites (ELF07), and Foundry Fairies. These miniatures are smaller than the Fenryll Fairies, but will work quite well as delicate, airy creatures.

I think a neat effect could be achieved if one of the DDM air elementals were to be hollowed out, and a winged sprite was embedded in the center.

Other denizens of the Elemental Plane of Air include a pair of Ral Partha Djinn (01-069), and a Grenadier Djinni (MM15).

Fire

Fire elementals are known as Salamanders or Vulcani. It is the only elemental that is based on an actual creature, though the nature of the mythical Salamander is very different from that of the actual amphibian. Of course it goes without saying, that Trampier's illustration of the Salamander is how I see these creatures as appearing.

"...the Salamanders are long, lean, and dry ... Salamanders have been seen in the shapes of fiery balls, or tongues of fire running over the fields or appearing in houses."

- The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim

The three fire elementals are (left to right) the DDM Huge Fire Elemental (War of the Dragon Queen #20), a WoW CMG Enraged Fire Spirit (Core Set), and a DDM Small Fire Elemental (War of the Dragon Queen #54). I particularly like that the beast form of the DDM elementals. To me, these are how salamanders appear when they materialize on the Prime Material Plane.

The next three fire elementals are metal figures. They are (left to right) from Reaper (Dark Heaven Legends 02251), Grenadier (MM22), and Shadow Corp (3057).

Next are some other denizens of the Elemental Plane of Fire. A DDM Phoera (Blood War #21) on the left, and a pair of salamanders on the right. The first salamander is the Ral Partha Firekin (AD&D Monsters 11-489), while the smaller salamander is from the Broadsword Serpent Creatures set (M-06).

And from the City of Brass we have a Ral Partha Efreet (AD&D Monsters 11-454), and a Grenadier Efreeti (MM19).

Again, I prefer plastic to metal for elementals because some neat effects can be created with the plastic miniatures. Here is the DDM Huge Fire Elemental sitting on a lighted base.

Necrophidius

2011-12-26T23:29:00.000-08:00

The Necrophidius is one of those bogus pseudo-undead creatures that were so common in the Fiend Folio. The illustration shows it as a huge fanged skull mounted on a ribless vertebral column, but the text seemed to imply that the construct was a regular skull atop the skeleton of a large constrictor snake.

I always had the the impression that the Necrophidius moved about by means of levitation, rather than slithering along the ground because of these illustrations. Certainly no normal snake would be able to manage these postures, and levitation could also explain its ability to move about without making a sound.

Shown below are a selection of Necrophidius miniatures. The first miniature is the Citadel Death Worm (Fiend Factory FF7-1), followed by the Nekrophidian (Black Tree Design M161), and the Death Worm from the Lich Mage and Death Worm set (RAFM 3735).

The Citadel miniature is identical to the Fiend Folio illustration, while the RAFM miniature is probably closer to the written description of the Necrophidius (in that the vertebrae are not grossly over-sized). The BTD miniature differs because it has a serpentine skull instead of a humanoid one.

I use these miniatures as undead, since they are animated skeletal constructs, which in my game are created through necromancy. I do allow the possibility for magic users to animate skeletons without using necromancy, but why go through the trouble of digging up a bunch of old bones when you can animate material that is more easily obtainable?

萱場かつおどり

2011-12-13T20:15:00.000-08:00

かつおどり by Pixiv artist cana＠非地デジ化

The Kayaba Katsuodori was a Japanese concept plane of WWII. It is usually described as a ramjet interceptor armed with two 30mm cannon. Fantastic Plastic translates katsuodori as "energy", but I personally think the name refers to Sula leucogaster. The Katsuodori was supposed to take off powered by four solid fuel booster rockets, accelerating until it achieved the necessary speed for the ramjet to function. Due to various technical issues the plane never got off the drawing board, and the project was shelved in 1943. More information about the Katsuodori can be found at Hikoki: 1946 (under "Other Aircraft").

There are two models of this airplane that I am aware of, both in resin. One is from ANiGRAND Craftswork in 1/144 scale, and the other is from Unicraft Models in 1/72 scale.

The Unicraft box art is very attractive, but I was totally disappointed by this kit. There are supposed to be 15 resin parts and a vacuform canopy, but I only received 13 parts (I'm missing a pair of wheels).

The parts are cast in a hard orangish resin with very rough and irregular surfaces. All the parts have air bubbles in them, and every piece is covered with flash, particularly the ill-defined cockpit opening which is practically sealed by the stuff.

I don't think I've ever encountered a resin kit as awful as this one. Unicraft bills their kits as "for experienced modelers", but I think they have "experienced modeler" confused with "miracle worker". It will probably take so much effort to make this kit into a decent looking model that I was wondering if it wouldn't be easier to learn how to use a CAD program to create a 3D model and just have it printed out at Shapeways... except now I find out that tomorrow (Dec. 14), Meng Models will be releasing a 1/72 injection plastic kit containing two Katsuodori for half the price of the Unicraft kit!

絶望した！Unicraft に絶望した！

Diecast Police Cars

2011-11-29T11:19:00.000-08:00

Diecast cars are frequently used for gaming, but the market is dominated by box scale (with no indication of the actual scale), 1/64, or 1/43 scale models. Hongwell, Yat-Ming, Real-X, and Furuta make 1/72 scale cars, but they are not particularly easy to find. Oxford makes 1/76 scale cars, but they don't always look right for the fanatically scale conscious.

Matchbox of course was once the king of box scale diecast cars. Most of the cars are marked with the actual scale on the bottom, so it is possible to find some appropriately scaled cars for use in 1/72.

One type of car that Matchbox seems to like making in ~1/72 scale is the police car. Last week, I had to stop by the local megamart to pick up some cars because I saw that the 2011 line had a Highway Patrol 1978 Dodge Monaco.

Anyone remember this show?
Matchbox Dodge Monaco Police Cruiser (MB53) 1/71 scale

The car scales out nicely, though they are using a modern low profile lightbar instead of the proper older model lightbar, and the roof is black rather than white. I bought one model, but I want to get a few more of these.

Matchbox Crown Victoria Police Interceptor (MB54) 1/70 scale

These are older Matchbox police cars. I'm not sure if the markings are for actual police cars, but what I really want to get are the Highway Patrol and El Segundo PD versions of this model. The only problem I find with these models is that they sit too high (even for 1/70 scale). The 2011 Matchbox Crown Vic is a taxi (as Ford decided to discontinue the CVPI) so was not used in this post.

Matchbox Ford Police Interceptor (MB49) 1:70 scale

This car is the successor to the CVPI, based on the Ford Taurus. I had the misfortune to drive a Taurus many years ago, and it had awful driving characteristics. They must have made some major improvements since then to be able to use it as the basis for their new police interceptor. Fargo PD has adopted this vehicle. I'm not sure if the Sheriff markings on the other car are used in reality. Again, I think these models sit too high for their scale.

Maisto Police Car

This car is from the Maisto Fresh Metal line. It does not have a scale, but is roughly 1/69 scale by my estimation. It is loosely based on the 1998 Cadillac Seville, and bears a generic front grill because of licensing issues. Unlike the Matchbox cars, the Maisto cars have suspensions like lowriders, and sit about 5mm lower than the Matchbox cars.

Aircam Figures

2011-11-19T15:44:00.000-08:00

MBM Models carries a series of figures based on illustrations from the Osprey Airwar/Aircam series. I'm not really sure who the actual manufacturer is, and the product line is just listed as Aircam, though they arrived in SHQ baggies. The sculpting is a bit soft, but the figures are decent, and good representations of the illustrations from the book (though some are more faithful to the original art than others).

The first set of figures is the Luftwaffe Night Fighter Air and Ground Crew (AIR7209), based on Luftwaffe Night Fighter Units 1939-45 (Airwar/Aircam 9). It consists of (left to right) a Luftnachrichten-Helferinnen Führerin, Hitlerjugend Flakhelfer, and aircrew Leutnant.

The second set of figures is the USAAF Fighter Air and Ground Crew, MTO (AIR7212), based on USAAF Fighter Units MTO 1942-45 (Airwar/Aircam 12). It consists of (left to right) a WAC Private, aircrew 1st Lieutenant, and 15th AF Captain.

The final set of figures is the Japanese Carrier Groups set (AIR7221), based on Japanese Carrier Groups, 1941-45 (Airwar/Aircam 21). It consists of (left to right) a Junior Lieutenant in winter flying suit, Petty Officer 1st Class in summer flying suit, and Petty Officer 3rd Class in summer fatigues.

The figures are a bit pricey, and some of them seem to be a bit on the overly tall side (e.g., the Helferinnen and the Japanese), but I'm guessing they're probably intended more for use alongside scale aircraft, rather than with other figures.

Finally, I did a group shot of the Helferinnen with all of the German female auxiliaries that I own. Not surprisingly, there are more WWII German female auxiliaries than 1/72 females from any other nation of this time period. Elhiem figures even makes a zombie version of one.

From left to right are an Odemars figure from Operation Antarctica - Haunebu (CREA04), three Odemars figures from The Last Defenders of Berlin set (PF17), a figure from the Orion Volkssturm set (72017), a figure from the LW(?) Leaders of the Second World War set, a metal Luftwaffe Female Auxiliary (Elhiem LUFT02), and the Aircam Helferinnen.

Flying Kobolds

2011-11-16T21:55:00.000-08:00

The Drake (Dråk/Tråch), or Fire-drake (Fürdråk) of North German folklore is considered to be the same type of creature as a Kobold. They appear to the human eye as a fiery (red, or sometimes blue) streak passing through the air.

In my campaign, the Drake is a winged Kobold somewhat like the Urd from 2nd edition AD&D, or the Dragonwrought Kobolds from 3rd edition D&D in appearance. They have the ability to cast a glamour over themselves so as to appear as ghost-lights to anyone observing them, which is why they are described as fiery streaks of light.

These two figures were converted from Ral Partha 15mm Battlesystem Kobolds. The bases were removed, the legs and tails were modified, and wings were added from some Reaper Miniatures bats (P03355B).

Some additional modification was performed on the figure on the left. I bent his head slightly, and clipped off the spear he was carrying. A bag made from Kneadatite was added to his hand, because Drakes were commonly described as flying about carrying sacks of treasure or agricultural products.

"The Drake carries treasures through the air. If a person
sees him, he must cry: "Halb part!" He will then
bring him something. But he must take care to stand
under a roof, or the Drake will cover him with filth, which
he will not again get rid of."

- Northern Mythology, Vol. III

2 cm Flak 38

2011-11-12T23:10:00.000-08:00

I've had the Zvezda 20mm Flak-38 kit (Zvezda 6117) sitting on my desk for a while now, and finally have gotten around to take a few minutes to put it together. It's a nice kit that is quick and simple to put together, but there are a few places where a bit of care and forethought are required.

One of the nice surprises I found was that the plastic could be glued together with liquid plastic cement. I don't think the weld is as strong as for a regular styrene kit, but it seems to hold fairly well.

The one big problem I found with the kit, was that the slot at the end of the arm where the sight (A6) was supposed to be attached was not there.

From the box art, it looks like the model and instructions are in complete agreement.

However in my kit, the arm did not look like the illustration in the instruction sheet, or the model in the box art. There was a small divot at the end of the arm, but no slot for the peg on the sight to fit into. I just glued the peg onto the end of the arm. I've seen a couple of other builds where people just left the sight off completely.

I don't know if the part was not designed as shown on the instruction sheet, short-shot, or if I messed up the attachment point when I clipped the piece from the sprue. In any event, be careful while removing part A9.

I would also recommend taking a sharp hobby knife to widen the holes for fitting the gunners seat (A8), and the hole in part A5 for fitting the brace on the main gun assembly. I ended up mangling the chair, and broke the brace because the holes were too tight. For this step, I would also suggest putting the seat in place before attaching the gun assembly.

The final place to pay attention to is for the optional control wheels. I didn't really pay attention to the figure, and just attached the wheels (A3) to the gun. Afterwards, I noticed that the figure was molded with wheels in his hands.

I look forward to seeing more of these Zvezda Art of Tactic kits.

GNU

2011-10-15T20:22:00.000-07:00

The gnu is an African antelope, bulky but compact.
The gnu (or wildebeest), is an antelope that is the source of a number of monsters from the AD&D Monster Manual.

A. The gnu appears as its normal, everyday self under the entry of Herd Animal.

The only gnu in 25mm comes from the Veldt Animals set (Ral Partha 31-032). The miniatures are still available from Ral Partha Europe, and at one time, you could order single castings of the animals, but that may not be an option any more.

A Herd of One
☆
B. The D&D catoblepas can trace its origin to Pliny, and it is now believed to have been derived from second-hand accounts of the gnu.

"...with a very heavy head which it carries with difficulty and it always hanging down to the ground. Otherwise it is deadly to humans, as all who see its eyes expire immediately."

- Natural History

The only miniature of the catoblepas is from the Ral Partha AD&D line, but it is entirely too big (IMO), because the catoblepas is described as being the size of a bull.

However, I stumbled upon some Ral Partha Skull Pigs for Werewolf: The Apocalypse (Ral Partha 69-025), which I thought would make a good start as the basis to create a figure modeled after Trampier's catoblepas from the Monster Manual.

The Skull Pigs are roughly the size of a gnu, and the miniatures come in two poses, each composed of four pieces (body, head, and two tusks).

So far, I have drilled some holes in the neck of one of the Skull Pigs, and glued several pieces of floral wire in the holes.

I then bent the wires to form the neck.

J-B STIK was used to firm up the connection between the body and the wire neck, and a paper clip tail was glued in place.

The next step will be to modify the head, but just as a preview, I used some Elmer's-Tack to attach the Skull Pig head to the rest of the body.

Sculpting the head will be the hardest part, but hopefully I'll be able to get some time to work on this during the upcoming holidays.

C. The D&D gorgon is the final creature that originates from the gnu. Essentially it merges elements of Aelianus' decription of the catoblepas with elements of Phalaris' brazen bull.

"...it feeds upon poisonous roots. When it glares like a bull it immediately shudders and raises its mane, and when this has risen erect and the lips about its mouth are bared, it emits from its throat pungent and foul-smelling breath, so that the whole air overhead is infected, and any animals that approach and inhale it are grievously afflicted, lose their voice, and are seized with fatal convulsions."

- On Animals

Two suitable old school gorgons for 25mm are the Ral Partha Gorgonian Brass Bull (02-410) and the Grenadier Iron Bull (Monster Manuscripts MM38). The brass bull has a mix of plates and scales, while the iron bull is completely covered in plates. Both miniatures are nice, but I'd like to get a model completely covered in scales like in the picture above. Reaper makes a miniature similar to this, but it is probably twice the size of either of my current gorgons, so it's way too big.

D. And lastly, so as not to seem biased towards the gnu, I present the yak.

When overloaded or exhausted, the yak will lie down,
hiss, spit and kick, and refuse to move.
I know of three companies that make yak miniatures. Two of these companies' yaks are 28mm, and the third is listed as 25/28mm. Taking a chance that their yak would not be too big, I ordered the 25/28mm yak from Irregular Miniatures (AN22).

Unfortunately, the Irregular yak is too big to use as a typical domestic yak (probably 1.6m or less at the shoulder). There are said to be wild yaks that are over 2m at the shoulder, so I suppose that the Irregular yak can be used as one of those.

Gashadokuro

2011-10-08T11:55:00.000-07:00

"Standing about 200 yards away is a large giant-type figure, bone white in color, about 30' tall...

The gigantic white creature is a bone colossus (AC 0, MV 12", HD 10, hp 45, #AT 1, D 4-14, regenerate 3 hp per round, immune to cold, sleep, charm, and hold spells, edged weapons do half damage), a being created from the joining of many skeletons. At closer inspection, many different types of bones may be seen jutting from the body. In one hand it holds a bone club. Total dismemberment will not destroy the colossus; the bones that form it will move back together and rejoin, creating it anew. Fire and acid damage are permanent. Once the colossus is reduced to 0 hit points, 10 rounds (1 turn) will be required before the creature is reformed. A cleric may turn the creature as if it were a "special" class of undead."

- Queen of the Demonweb Pits

Gashadokuro (がしゃどくろ)/Odokuro (大髑髏) appears as a giant skeleton that can be more than fifteen times the height of an average person. It is typically described as a malevolent spirit that is created from the fused bones of people who have died of starvation. Other sources say that Gashadokuro can form anywhere there are large collections of unattended corpses.

Gashadokuro roams the countryside after midnight searching for victims. It's favorite method of attack is to grab a victim and bite off his head (and incorporate the skull into its body). Apparently some of the less wasteful Gashadokuro will strip the flesh from the bones of the victim's body and absorb those as well. Despite its fearsome nature, Gashadokuro can be easily avoided by those who are alert, because its approach can be sensed by people as a ringing in the ears.

Being October, there are a number of sources for Halloween decorations that can be converted into Gashadokuro. I picked up my skeletons at Michaels for under $2 each (after coupon discount).

The skeleton has a bit of flash on it, and suffers from a lack of scapulae and clavicles. The mandible is a separate piece that is attached to the skull by a couple of pegs to allow movement.

When the whole skeleton is depicted, Gashadokuro is often shown in a stooping, crouching, or crawling position, presumably to be closer to its victims. Most of the time however, Gashadokuro is depicted as a half skeleton.

For my first conversion, I decided to model Gashadokuro after the Creaking Skull from Castlevania.

I clipped the pelvic girdle from the skeleton, and used a heat gun to bend the lumbar and cervical regions to the positions that I needed for the Creaking Skull. I overdid the heat a little, so lost some detail at the neck, which I will have to restore later with epoxy.

I cut a hole in the underside of the skull so that it would fit on the spine, and repurposed the illiac bones as scapulae.

I used some Elmer's Tack to hold the skeleton together for the picture, but haven't figured out how to attach all the bones together yet. I'm thinking of using a combination of wire and epoxy, but am not altogether ruling out the use of some magnets in certain strategic locations.

Nuppeppō

2011-10-05T23:49:00.000-07:00

Nuppeppō (ぬっぺっぽう)/Nuppefuhōfu (ぬっぺふほふ) is a huge flabby blob of [undead] flesh with the suggestion of a face in the folds of the fat. It reeks of body odor that stinks like rotting flesh.

The Nuppeppō is typically encountered at night toward years-end, and around graveyards or abandoned temples, but other than to give those who meet it a fright, the Nuppeppō seems fairly innocuous. In fact, I'd think it would actively try to avoid people, since there is a legend that those who eat the flesh of the Nuppeppō can have eternal youth.

To make the creature a little more fearsome, I'd give it the powers of the Nuppefuhōfu from episode 32 of Ninja Sentai Kakuranger. It was known as the "face-stealer" in the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers show. The Nuppefuhōfu appears on the 4th full moon of the year, and attacks people to rob them of their souls.

It does this by using its tongue to lick the face right off of its victims, leaving them an empty, faceless husk.

True character in a faceless world, or just blind consumerism?
As far as miniatures go, there are a number of plastic and vinyl figures that have been made in Japan. The one I have is from the SAN-S Manga Heroes GeGeGe-no-Kitaro Mini Big Head Figure Collection. In this instance, the creature is known as Nuppehōfu (ぬっぺほふ).

I bought this figure because I imagined that Nuppeppō would be huge compared to a human, but upon doing some on-line research, I found that the de facto height seems to be closer to 1.5m.

Screencap from the The Great Yokai War (妖怪大戦争).
Nuppeppō is the short, blobby one looking in the wrong direction.
The SAN-S figure scales out to roughly 8' 9" (2.7m) in height in 1/72 scale. Nevertheless, I will still use the figure as a giant Nuppeppō. After all, since it is an imaginary creature, different takes on the size of Nuppeppō can exist.

ぬっぺっぽうの罠？by Pixiv artist げげぼ
I will however, have to repaint the miniature, because the pink shading is just aweful.

Willers Miniatures

2011-10-03T19:22:00.000-07:00

I received a package today from Toys and More by Winterkamp in Germany. The package included two sets by Willers Miniatures, which I ordered to do a figure comparison with other 1/72 scale miniatures.

The first set is the Mongolen Köpfungsszene (Mongol beheading scene) set (WiFi-001) consisting of four foot, and two mounted figures. The figures display nice proportions, and are cast in a very soft metal. The thinner pieces like the spear shaft, and sword blade can be bent at the slightest touch, yet seem to be more resistant to snapping because of this. All the same, I think these figures are probably more suited for diorama purposes than wargaming. The last figure is of a prisoner being beheaded, and it seems to look rather familiar... I only took pictures of the foot figures for this post, but the mounted figures are of similar proportions.

In the next image are a pair of Willers Mongols, flanked by a Giant Mongol (in yellow) and a Zvezda mongol (in red-brown). As far as size is concerned, these figures are perfectly compatible with each other.

The set also comes with a camel, which is shown next to a camel from the Italeri Mongol Cavalry set. While I believe the Italeri camel is undersized, the Willers camel is probably very much over-sized. Various sources state that the Bactrian camel can reach the size of the one modeled by the Willers camel, but all of the actual photographs that I have seen of camels in the Gobi Desert show them the same as, or only slightly taller than a standing person.

The Song dynasty painting Along the River During the Qingming Festival shows the relative size of a Bactrian camel to a person. I would definitely say that these camels are nowhere as big as the Willers camel.

Detail from Along the River During the Qingming Festival
by Zhang Zeduan

The next set is the Samurai Kampfmönche (warrior monk) set (WiFi-002) consisting of five warrior monks and various bits and pieces (including separate arms for one of the figures). Most of the monks are dressed in heavy clothing, making them appear quite hefty. They are cast in the same soft metal as the Mongols, so again are probably better suited for diorama purposes. The set does not come with any instructions or images of the assembled figures, so it's up to the buyer to figure out how to put everything together.

Below, from left to right: Willers warrior monk, RedBox warrior monk, Zvezda samurai, and a Caesar samurai.

The RedBox monk looks undersized, but all the other figures are quite comparable.

My Little Pony

2011-09-30T22:23:00.000-07:00

Closing out my recent string of posts on whimsical miniatures, I present models that can be used as magical ponies.

The first miniature comes from the Reaper Evil Toys blister (02887). It is of typical Little Pony proportions, with thick legs and tattooed backside. The second miniature is a 15mm Irregular horse (FAN14). This is the basic miniature that I will be using for my magic pony conversions. Last are a unicorn, and winged horse from the Reaper Foals blister (02207). These two miniatures were sculpted by Rene Perez, which leads me to believe that they were originally 15mm figures intended for the Shadow Corp line.

The ponies range in size from 8 to 11 hands high, and are suitable for adult Little Ponies. Irregular has 10mm horses as well, so I'll probably have to order some in the future to create baby Little Ponies.

I also have some plastic "alicorns" that came from a 1/72 medieval playset. The ones in my set were made in purple, and a fluorescent orange plastic. The orange one is almost impossible to photograph, so I'm not showing it in this picture. They stand at 12 hands high.

Here is my first pony conversion. I gave it a Kneadatite weave, and fixed up the right side of its head a bit. Even after lengthening the mane, the miniature looks rather subdued as far as magical ponies go. I may have to work on introducing a bit of that poofy glam rock hairstyle look for my next ponies.

When I first painted up the pony, it had a white mane, and was almost physically painful to look at. I changed the color of the mane to lavender, so it would be a little easier on the eyes.

In closing, for those of you who remain skeptical about using ponies in dungeoncrawls or for wargaming, allow me to present evidence that even Wolverine is down with My Little Pony.

Gartenzwerg

2011-09-29T02:13:00.000-07:00

Popularized in Germany during the 19th century, the garden gnome has become a common fixture in many gardens around the world. The gnomish lifestyle was revealed in Wil Huygen's 1977 New York Times bestseller Gnomes, while gnomish travelling habits were briefly touched upon in the 2001 movie Amélie. The garden gnome should not be confused with the typical D&D variety of gnome, who is more of a smaller (sometimes beardless) dwarf.

There are a handful of garden gnomes in various scales, but I get the feeling that most of them are too big for use in 1/72 fantasy. This leaves us with 15mm miniatures, and two companies make garden gnomes in this size - Peter Pig, and Splintered Light Miniatures.

Below is a comparison of 15mm gnomes. The first two gnomes are from the SLM Gnome Snail Battle Wagon set (GNOM06), while the next six are from the Peter Pig War in the Age of Magic line (Range 19). From left to right they are are a Gnome with Fishing Rod (WAM56), a Gnome Throwing a Rock (WAM57), and four figures from the Gnome Command set (WAM58). The final figure is a Gnome Baby from Lance & Laser (00156) now available from Armorcast.

The SLM gnomes are slightly taller than the Peter Pig gnomes, but they still match up very nicely. The gnome baby is about half the size of the other gnomes, and sits between two mushrooms (one with a frog perched on top). All of the gnomes will have to be glued onto washers, as the bases are rather small.

Shake Your Tail Feather

2011-09-26T22:29:00.000-07:00

Cursed for a transgression that is lost to time, the Durulz race has been described as humans cursed with duck-like features, or ducks cursed with intelligence and the loss of flight. Ducks are one of the signature races of Glorantha and of the RuneQuest game, and despite the persistent attitude that they are ridiculous, I rather like them.

Even though they are a rather obscure race, many manufacturers have made anthropomorphic ducks for gaming. Below are some of the miniatures that are part of my collection. From left to right, they are the Citadel Duck Adventurer from the Non Human Adventurers boxed set; a Ral Partha Duck Adventurer from the Non-Human Adventurers blister (18-014); A Chariot Duck with Sword (QAK2), and Young Egg Guard with Sling (QAK4), both from Magister Militum.

All of these ducks are suitable as Durulz in 1/72, even though the Chariot ducks are marketed as 15mm figures. Frankly, the egg guard are the only ones that I think would be suited for 15mm gaming, as the other ducks would be fairly close in size to many 15mm humans.

Lockheed D-21 Air Launched Drone

2011-09-12T00:02:00.000-07:00

This is a model of the unmanned D-21 drone that comes with the ex-Monogram SR-71A Blackbird (Revell 85-5810). It is built pretty much OOB, except I modified the drone cart by installing two pieces of wire in place of the plastic stubs for attaching the drone, so I wouldn't have to glue the drone in place.

I'll need to take a look at my extra decals to see if I can find serial numbers to mark the drone "520" or "521" to represent drones that undertook the final operational missions of the D-21.

The operational drones were actually launched from B-52's, and had a solid-fuel booster attached to the underside, but I don't think anyone makes a model of the booster in any scale.

I'm also not sure if the red trim was on the operational craft either, so I left my drone all black.

Fiat Ansaldo M13/40

2011-08-25T22:27:00.000-07:00

I remember seeing this kit in the local hobby shop as a child, and thinking how cool it was to have kangaroo markings on a tank, so when I got the Italeri re-release of the old ESCI M13/40, I wanted to build it up as one of the Italian tanks captured by the Aussies. Here is the near completed result:

The kit was built almost OOB, except I replaced the tow hooks with some bent wire, and drilled out the headlamps so I can eventually add some clear lenses. The instructions for installing the pioneer tools was not particularly clear, so I ended up putting one of the brackets in the wrong position. The diagram for installing the tools is better in the instructions for the ESCI/Italeri Semovente 75/18, so I'll probably move the offending bracket to the proper position later on.

I decided on the sand color scheme, because that's how I remembered the kit, but there is some controversy as to what color these tanks actually were. A number of the captured tanks look to be a dark color (Italian green?) in period photographs, and in one case, it almost looks as if the sand colored paint was removed from the tank.

The last bit to finish up the model is to find an Aussie tank commander. I think I have some British tankers somewhere, so one of those will probably do.

Italeri also makes a quick build kit that has two M13/40's for about the same price as the ex-ESCI kit. Some of the details of the quick build kit seem simplified, and the commander's hatch in the turret is molded shut, but it looks to be a decent kit. I'll have to pick up a box sometime in the future.

Moving to diecast models, we have the M13/40 from Altaya. This is one of the nicer Altaya models, with hollowed out barrel, and good overall detail.

One odd thing was that the tank was screwed into the base with tamperproof screws - why?

Luckily, I recently received a TP3 head screwdriver that I purchased from Amazon for a mere 99¢.

The two models are almost identical in size, but the positioning of the hull is a little different, with the Altaya model being a hair shorter, and the hull sitting more forward with respect to the fenders compared to the Italeri model. I also noticed that the Italeri turret is higher than the Altaya turret.

Spell Casters

2011-08-24T22:54:00.000-07:00

The following is a quick listing of the figures that I consider likely candidates for use as magic users and clerics in 1/72 scale.

The first image is of two different versions of Ral the Evil Wizard from the Personalities and Things that go Bump in the Night line (Ral Partha 01-001), an illusionist from the Fantasy Adventurers line (Ral Partha 03-064), and a wizard from the Wizards and Clerics boxed set (Ral Partha 98-001).

Next are a dwarf seer with crystal ball from the Dwarven Personalities blister pack (Ral Partha 01-070), an elvin spell caster from the Elvin Personalities blister pack (Ral Partha 01-076), a half elf spell caster from the Half Elves blister pack (Ral Partha 01-106), the Magic Master from the Wizards and Lizards line (Superior WL-006), and two wizards which I believe are Grenadier.

Additional non-human spell casters can be found here, and here.

The following clerics are all from the Personalities and Things that go Bump in the Night line. The first figure is the Cleric with Staff (Ral Partha 01-004), followed by three clerics from the Clerics blister pack (Ral Partha 01-073), and finally, the Patriarch (Ral Partha 01-006).

Next are the female spell casters. The first figure is the Enchantress from the AD&D Females boxed set (Grenadier 2007), followed by the Enchantress from the Personalities and Things that go Bump in the Night line (Ral Partha 01-055), the Sorceress from the same line (Ral Partha 01-029), a priestess and sorceress from the Wizards and Clerics boxed set (Ral Partha 98-001), and a sorceress and cleric from the Female Adventurers boxed set (Ral Partha 98-013).

Finally, I list some of the available miniatures in plastic. The first three figures are from the Caesar Adventurers set (Fantasy 104), while the last figure is a D&D CMG Halfling Enchanter (Desert of Desolation #18).

Many of the older 25mm metal figures have disproportionately large heads and limbs, with some being more chunky as well, but except for the Superior Magic Master, they still tend to scale out to about 6 feet or under in height. I think that many of these figures can be used as is, but others would look a lot better with a head swap, and some minor modifications.

Myconids

2011-08-07T11:55:00.000-07:00

The myconid was introduced in Dungeon Module A4 - In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords. The cover of the module shows our intrepid adventurers, recently freed from slavery locked in fierce hand-to-hand with the mysterious mushroom men. This cover proved to be quite misleading though, as the myconids tend to be a rather peaceful race, and even my normally bloodthirsty players failed to engage in any sort of combat with a single myconid.

♫ Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya ♪
Despite their lack of usefulness as a hostile encounter, I still have quite a number of miniatures representing these creatures.

First up, is the impressive Reaper Mushroom King (3041), and two Mushroom Men (2679).

The larger miniatures come in two pieces, but are quite easy to assemble. The Mushroom King is covered in details, and one of my favorite miniatures.

Next are two Hasslefree Agarix (HFW500 A & B), and four Ral Partha Mushroom Men (01-046).

The Agarix come in a pair, with a sprue of four separate arms which can be mixed and matched to generate a number of different poses. I found the arms a bit fiddly to glue in place, but they are nice, well cast miniatures. The delicate looking Ral Partha Mushroom Men come in a set of four, and are nicely detailed. They are still available from Iron Wind Metals and Ral Partha Europe.

The Grenadier Fungoid (Monster Manuscript MM27) and the D&D CMG Myconid Guard (Aberrations #41) are in the next picture.

The Fungoid seems a bit out of sorts, and perhaps missed his melding session. The miniature is still available from Mirliton. The D&D CMG myconid is OOP, but I don't think it's so difficult to find.

Last up, are the Khurasan Fungoids (PLA-15). These are tiny miniatures with very small caps. I think they're quite suitable for juvenile myconids.

15mm myconids

25mm-28mm myconids

28mm myconids

A cross between gnomes and trolls

2011-07-31T01:24:00.000-07:00

The gnoll is one of the signature monsters of D&D. They were first mentioned in a short story by Lord Dunsany as gnoles. They were mentioned again about 40 years later in a parody or homage to Dunsany by Margaret St. Clair.

Then in 1974, they were described in the OD&D white box set by Gary Gygax as "A cross between gnomes and trolls (...perhaps, Lord Dunsany did not really make it all that clear) with +2 morale. Otherwise they are similar to hobgoblins". Gygax disavows this attribution in a later interview, but regardless of the origin of the name, I think that Gygax can take credit for giving us the hyena-like gnolls we are familiar with to this day.

While there are many great choices for gnolls in 28mm, the choices for 1/72 are a lot more limited. The following are the few miniatures that I found suitable for use as gnolls in this scale. From left to right: Mage Knight Gnoll Hunter, Gnoll Fletcher, and Gnoll Poacher; Grenadier Knoll (Monster Manuscripts MM42); and a gnoll game piece from the World of Warcraft boardgame.

Of this bunch, I like the Grenadier Knoll the best because it has the canine rear legs that I prefer my gnolls to have. The Mage Knight gnolls look good as well, but their legs are too human-like. The Hunter and Fletcher are originally from the Ral Partha All Things Dark and Dangerous line, and are still available from Iron Wind Metals, along with the other gnolls from the series. The Poacher is unique to Mage Knight, but is just an archer with a weapon swap (from bow to crossbow). The good thing about Mage Knight miniatures is that they are cheap, and their legs can always be modified with a little work.

The WoW gnoll has its good points; it has the proper hind legs, and I like the way it has the high hunched back. However, it is a bit too cartoony looking, and the arms appear oddly positioned on its body. If I ever pick up some more of these pieces, I may try some modifications by moving the arms higher, and replacing the head.

РУССКИЕ ТАНКИ

2011-07-30T13:10:00.000-07:00

I received a package from the Ukraine today containing some diecast tanks from the Russian Tank Collection. The collection is marketed to collectors from the former Soviet Union, and consists of various vehicles that were previously released by Altaya, with other vehicles that appear to be unique to this collection.

Each tank comes with a 15 page magazine in Russian, with information on the type of vehicle included with the magazine, including the vehicle with the markings carried by the diecast model. The T-72 that came with this magazine is a parade vehicle with the characteristic whitewall tires.

The magazine provides a nice four-view diagram of the vehicle.

Various color profiles.

And a profile section on early tanks.

As for the diecast models themselves, I found them a bit basic, but still not too bad. In this post, I'm only going to cover the T-72, since I don't really have anything to compare the other Russian Tank diecast vehicles with on hand at the moment. I'm just going to refer to the Russian Tank diecast as De Agostini from now on, though I'm not sure about all the relationships between De Agostini, Altaya, and GE Fabbri, who all seem to have some links to these diecast models.

The De Agostini T-72 is not as detailed as the Unimax Forces of Valor T-72. The wheels of the De Agostini T-72 come as a single unit for each side, as opposed to the individual wheels of the Unimax tank. Construction seems to be of metal and plastic. The De Agostini tank is also about 2 mm shorter and 1 mm wider than the Unimax tank, but they do not look too different when viewed from the top.

From the side, the differences are a little more apparent. The De Agostini tank is actually 5 mm shorter than the Unimax tank. I think that this may actually be more accurate, since Russian tanks do have a very low profile. The paint job on the De Agostini T-72 is also very basic. For some reason, the Dushka was just left the same color as the rest of the vehicle, so it may need to be repainted. There is no weathering, but that's fine for a parade vehicle.

Overall, I approve of these vehicles. Some of the WWII era vehicles are a little too toy-like, but the modern vehicles are mostly decent. They also have a T-28 and T-35, as well as some armored cars that I hope to get in the future.

Hmmm... I think I meet those qualifications.

Umber Hulk

2011-05-16T18:59:00.000-07:00

As many old school gamers know, some of the iconic creatures from D&D originated from plastic monsters that were made in Hong Kong, and sold in the toy aisle of the local drug store.

What is less well known is that these Hong Kong toys were loosely modeled after kaiju from Ultraman (and other tokusatsu shows). The umber colored creature on the left is what is generally recognized as the inspiration for the umber hulk. It is most likely derived from the kaiju known as Antlar.

The Hong Kong toy version does not bear much of a similarity to Antlar outside of the mandibles, but the modern iteration of the umber hulk is more true to the original source material that the 1st ed. AD&D version of the umber hulk.

Here is a comparison of some of the 1st edition type umber hulks that I own.

To me, the Citadel (ADD77) version is ideal in terms of appearance and size for use with 1/72 scale fantasy. It really captures the appearance of the original Sutherland umber hulk. Next to the Citadel umber hulk, the Heritage Brawn Hulk (Dungeon Dwellers 1257) seems rather scrawny. It does not have any outer mandibles, and has a pebble textured skin. Perhaps it can be used as a vodyanoi. The last miniature is the Ral Partha umber hulk (AD&D Monsters 11-404). It has an armored carapace and mandibles, but the outer set of eyes is not very pronounced. It is more hefty than hulkish, and is too tall for use with 1/72 miniatures.

Every man his own horse

2011-03-12T23:59:00.000-08:00

The centaur is one of the classical beasts of Greek mythology. In ancient art, they are often depicted as being about the same height as men, but modern art shows them as being much larger than men. Certainly the description of centaurs using tree trunks and boulders as weapons in their battle with the Lapiths points to a larger stature.

The centaur also appears in Sumerian art, though I am unaware of any stories about centaurs in their mythology.

Some of the earliest depictions of centaurs in Greek art showed them as essentially fully human from the front, with the hindquarters of a horse attached to their back.

As a civilized centaur, Chiron is shown wearing a chiton, but the typical barbarous centaur went unclothed.

They are also sometimes portrayed with pointy ears, though not very frequently.

I wasn't sure about the best way to present my centaur miniatures, so I grouped them by manufacturer, and followed up with various size comparison pictures. The horse used in the comparisons is roughly 15 hands high in 1/72 scale.

The first group of centaurs are from the Ral Partha Personalities and Things that go Bump in the Night line. They consist of the Centaur Archer (Ral Partha 01-032) Centaur with Spear v3 and v2 (Ral Partha 01-032) respectively. These are classical centaurs, and scale out to about 14 hands high.

In the next picture are the Armored Centaur (Ral Partha 01-047), and male centaur from the Centaurs (male and female) set (Ral Partha 02-903). The Armored Centaur is a typical modern fantasy centaur, and stands at about 17 hands high. The other centaur is a classical pastoral centaur, standing at 14 hands high.

The final group of Ral Partha centaurs consist of Centaur Adventurers (Ral Partha 02-968), and a Centaur with Sword and Shield (DF-033). All of these centaurs are 14-15 hands high.

The next image is of two Grenadier centaurs - an Armored Centaur (Fantasy Lords 134), and a Female Centaur (Fantasy Lords 064). Both are roughly 17 hands high.

This next pair below, are a Heritage centaur (Fantasy 1328) which stands at 14 hands high, and a Lance and Laser Armored Centaur which stands at 17 hands high.

Below, are three centaurides consisting of Sagittarius (Reaper 03376), Lamia from the Heritage miniatures Manticore and Lamia set (1298), and Lyria Female Centaur (Dark Sword Miniatures 1105). The Reaper centaur is very small at 13 hands, while the Lamia is 16 hands. Both have disproportionately large human torsos. The Dark Sword centaur on the other hand, is almost 20 hands high, and has a disproportionately small human torso.

The next set of images are of Mega Miniatures centaurs formerly produced by Metal Magic. These centaurs stand 16 hands high, and look to be compatible with 25mm or 28mm figures.

A couple of centaurs from Mage Knight appear in the next image. The enormous Centaur Shaman stands 19+ hands high, while the strangely proportioned Centaur Archer is 11 hands high. Its forelegs appear to be twice as long as its hindlegs. It also seems to be wearing leg warmers (?!?!!).

Next are the 15mm centaurs from Eureka, which stand at just over 12.5 hands high.

Two more centaurs from Eureka, and an Irregular centaur standing at 12 hands high.

Comparison between man, horse, and 28mm centaurs:

28mm centaurs just seem too big to use in 1/72 scale fantasy to me. Maybe one or two giant centaurs could exist, but I wouldn't use too many of them.

Comparison between man, horse, and 25mm centaurs:

My preference for use in 1/72 scale fantasy are 25mm centaurs. Averaging at 14-15 hands high, they are large and imposing, but not freakishly large. I like the old Ral Partha centaurs the best, because they have the wild and untamed appearance that I associate with centaurs.

Comparison between man, horse, and 15mm centaurs:

If one were to go by Greek vase paintings, 15mm centaurs would be the best match with 1/72 figures. At 12 hands high, they would be pony sized, but there are sources that say horses during ancient times were typically pony sized (or slightly larger).

28mm+ centaurs

28mm centaurs

25mm galloping centaurs

25mm centaur archers

Various small centaur archers

15mm centaur archers

Rearing centaurs

Tasmanian Devil

2011-03-08T00:15:00.000-08:00

"A strong, murderous beast, jaws as powerful as a steel trap - has ravenous appetite - eats tigers, lions, elephants, buffaloes, donkeys, giraffes, octopuses, rhinoceroses, mooses, ducks..."

- Devil May Hare (1954)

While I don't think there is a true Tasmanian Devil in miniature form, there are two versions of the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil.

On the left is the Umber Ripper from the Monster Manuscript Vol.X boxed set (Grenadier 1510, MM87). On the right is the Tasmanian Devil von Der Kriegspielers Fantastiques line (Heritage 1152, though the base is marked 1158).

While the Heritage Taz looks too big to be compatible with 1/72 figures (mainly because of the BFS), the Grenadier version doesn't look too bad. After all, who's to say how big the Tasmanian Devil is?

The D&D statistics for the Tasmanian Devil appear in issue 60 of Dragon Magazine.

The first five balrogs through the door...

2011-03-06T14:39:00.000-08:00

The Balrog is another Tolkien creation that has become part and parcel of FRPGs. The Balrog appeared in D&D as the thinly disguised Type VI Demon (Balor), but everyone knew what it really was. I'm not sure how I personally came to that conclusion, since the Balrog from the 1978 Ralph Bakshi version of The Lord Of The Rings (love it or hate it) influenced how I thought a Balrog should look. For miniatures however, my top picks are the late version Ral Partha Balrogs.

This first image is of the most commonly encountered Ral Partha Balrog (01-003) it is classified as the 4th version in the Lost Minis Wiki.

The two earlier versions of this Balrog appear au naturale in the next image. The Balrog on the left is the the third version of the miniature, while the one on the right is a variant which I have not encountered too often. Somehow I get the impression that it is a Ral Partha Imports version, but I'm just guessing since it seems to be from sources in the U.K. that I see this particular type. It has a more bat-like face than the other two versions of this Balrog, the whip is different, and the sword is positioned differently.

The next image contains two Armored Balrogs (01-081). I'm not sure which version is earlier, but the one on the left is the one that appears in the Ral Partha catalog image. I think it is the less common of the two variants as well.

More information on Balrogs of Middle Earth can be found at The Truth About Balrogs

As a side note, anyone ever see this happen to a blister? The foam inside is completely disintigrated.

T-34 & S-35

2011-01-30T20:22:00.000-08:00

2010 ended on a rather difficult note, so it is only now that I find myself making the first post of 2011. In any event, I'm still walking and talking, so I guess there's not much to complain about.

This year I've resolved to complete all the near-finished models that I have laying about in order to clear out some benchspace for starting my 1/72 Dora railway gun.

The first two kits that I'm almost done with are the Armorfast T-34 mentioned in a post from 2008, and a Heller SOMUA S-35. The models still need markings and to be weathered, but are otherwise mostly finished.

The only problem I have is to find some way to simulate lenses for the headlamps. I'll probably just shape some pieces of clear sprue and glue them into the appropriate areas already carved into the headlamps.

Armorfast and Forces of Valor T-34s

The Armorfast T-34 is slightly taller, and slightly longer than the FoV T-34, but the turret of the FoV T-34 is larger than the turret of the Armorfast T-34. I have no idea of which is more accurate.

I'm not sure if it is so obvious in this picture, but I used a heated splatter screen to make tread pattern imprints in the previously smooth tracks of the Armorfast kit. They're not the prettiest or most accurate tracks you'll see, but better than the smooth featureless treads of the typical quick build kit.

Altaya and Heller S-35s

I believe that these are the only S-35s in 1/72 scale. They're practically identical in size.

The Heller kit is actually rather nice, despite soft details and the horrible tracks. I actually would like to build a couple more of these sometime in the future.

It's Here!

2010-11-09T21:18:00.000-08:00

I've been waiting for this kit since the 1/144 version was released by Fujimi four years ago, and it was leaked that Soar Art was preparing to make the 1/72 version.

I'm going to have to finish up a lot of my other projects before I can get to this though, since I don't have any room on my workbench to assemble it. I guess it will give me time to find a cheap copy of Gerhard Taube's Deutsche Eisenbahn Geschützen in the meantime.

Hopefully I'll have some time to look over the sprues on the weekend.

Boooooooyyyyyyyy!!!

2010-10-31T14:20:00.000-07:00

For my Halloween post, I've decided to debut my near-finished first complete sculpt. The figure is the Tall Man from one of my favorite horror films, the 1979 cult classic Phantasm. I've always wanted a miniature of the Tall Man to use as one of the baddies in gaming, but I could never find a figure with the right look. I finally decided to take matters into my own hands and sculpt a figure myself.

More John Houseman than Angus Scrimm?

The arms are actually removable at the moment, because I wanted to cast up the body by itself so I could have the figure with different arm poses. I initially scaled the figure to 6'8" in height, because that was Angus Scrimm's actual height with 4" lifts, but I decided to go a little taller because he just didn't seem tall enough in 1/72 when compared to other figures. To go with the Tall Man, I rolled up some 1mm balls of Kneadatite to create sentinel spheres. The ball in his hand was glued to a short segment of clear sprue that was stretched over a flame.

Below is another silver sentinel spheres on a longer piece of sprue. Follwing it are two gold sentinel spheres which are just round head map pins painted in gold. I would have liked to find some 1mm round head pins for the silver spheres as well, but I couldn't find any (I know it is pedantic, but the silver spheres are smaller than the gold spheres). The paint was somewhat of an issue because I could not get the chrome-like finish on the spheres like in the films. I discovered that my "chrome" silver spray was not chrome silver, and that the metallic golds that I used was too dark. I gave the gold spheres a wash with a lighter colored gold, but it made the spheres loose their metallic luster.

This final picture is of Star Wars Micromachine Jawas, which can be used as Lurkers - the compacted reanimated zombie slaves of the Tall Man. The first four poses of Jawas comes from the Jawas figure set (66076). The fifth Jawa came from one of the Mini Head sets, but I don't remember which one, and the final Jawa came from one of the large Micromachine playsets, again I don't remember which one.

Now what do I do for a balding ice-cream man with a ponytail and shotgun?

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

2010-10-25T20:26:00.000-07:00

While the Vorpal Sword made it into the corpus of material associated with AD&D, the poor Jabberwock did not. Nevertheless, it is still a popular subject for fantasy miniatures. There are several versions of this beastie modeled after the Jabberwock illustrated by John Tenniel for Through the Looking Glass, but the classics are always the best in my mind.

Below are a Ral Partha Jabberwock (01-095) and a Citadel Jabberwock (Young Dragons & Other Monsters C29).

Scale creep has lead the Ral Partha Jabberwock to be dismissed as being too small, but it works perfectly for 1/72 scale. I believe that this version was also released by Citadel with a [possibly] different style of wings. The C29 Citadel Jabberwock is something I only recently became aware of, and is a new addition to my collection. I'm glad I found it because I wanted to paint up a Jabberwock in green, but didn't really want to have two Jabberwocks in the same pose.

Citadel Jabberwock with Ral Partha wings.
This next picture contains a Jubjub Bird from the Ral Partha Bandersnatch and Jubjub Bird set (01-122), a decapitated cat from Mega Miniatures, and Problem Child Alice from Hasslefree (HFA027J). The Jubjub Bird is just meh in my opinion, though I really like the head(s) and the way the feathers are sculpted. I would have loved it if the body was that of a large hunting bird like Gastornis. The cat on the other hand, was originally going to be the recipient of a new head that I sculpted (modeled after the Tenniel Cheshire Cat), but in an ironic reversal, the head flew off and vanished into thin air when I was pinning it to attach to the cat body. Maybe one of these days I'll be able to get it back from the Carpet Monster. Finally there's Alice, who is too big to be a Lewis Carroll Alice, but may work as an American McGee Alice (especially with the butcher knife).

"I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."

The Tribe of Moro

2010-10-19T23:59:00.000-07:00

This is the final installation on miniatures that can be used as Forest Gods, and covers the giant wolves belonging to the Tribe of Moro.

The first miniature below, is Fenris Wolf from the Marvel HeroClix line (Hammer of Thor #46). I really liked the way this wolf was sculpted, and the look is really close to the character design for Moro in the movie, but it is much too large for a 1/72 representation. The second miniature is a Vampire Dire Wolf (Unhallowed #59) from the Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures line. The figure has a bit more bulk than I would have liked, and the slavering jaws are a bit too wide, but it wouldn't make for a bad representation of Moro either.

The first miniature in the next image below, is a Winter Wolf from the DDM line (Underdark #60). Somehow it did not look quite the same as the image that is used in the advertisements for it. The head has an odd appearance, and the limbs are very thick. Not a very good sculpt in my opinion. Also with the Winter Wolf are a Giant Wolf from the Legion of Darkness Wolf Pack set (RAFM 3200), and a Dire Wolf from Reaper (2415).

In this next image, is a Dire Wolf from the former Dazed Miniatures line. I believe that it will be available in a slightly modified form in the future from Acheson Creations under their Primaeval Designs line. It is followed by a Warg from the Grenadier Lord of the Rings line, and last is a Dire Wolf from the Horrorclix line (Base Set #019).

The next wolves are five of the seven wolves from the Ral Partha Wolf Pack set (01-035). This is a mix of wolves of different style, some of which appeared in other sets.

The image below compares a Mage Knight Glade Guardian, which is a plastic version of the Ral Partha wolf from the Wolf Pack set (above); a DDM Timber Wolf (Deathknell #27); a Great Wolf of the Night from Ral Partha (Wizards, Warriors, And Warlocks E691/W691); two wolves from the Reaper Wolf Pack (02830).

The final image begins with a Great Wolf from the Ral Partha Fantasy Collector Series; a Citadel Devil Dog (FF10-1); a Great Wolf from the Armies of Arcana line (formerly of Thane's Games and now available from Lone Gunman Games); a wolf from the Grenadier Wolfpack set (Fantasy Legends 3111); and a wolf from the Reaper Familiar Pack I (02018).

Even with this many choices, it was difficult to find a good representation for the wolves in the film. One of the main problems was the inconsistancy in size for the wolves in different scenes.

For my choice to represent Moro, it was either the Vampire Dire Wolf, or the Winter Wolf. Frankly, I felt the size of the Winter Wolf was probably closer to how big Moro should have been, but the miniature was just too ugly for me to use.

To convert the Vampire Dire Wolf into Moro, I chopped off the various spikes protruding from the wolf (I guess nowadays when a creature is labeled "dire," it is assumed to be both larger, and covered in spikes), and carved away some of the fur, so that the figure would look a bit leaner. A pin was inserted into the base of the spine as an armature, and a second tail was sculpted from Kneadatite.

The figure was then painted in white, and dry brushed with a yellowish off-white color.

For the two Sons of Moro, the choice was a bit harder. I picked three pairs of different sized wolves as candidates.

The first pair would be the Reaper or RAFM wolves. In some scenes, the Sons of Moro are depicted as being really huge, and these miniatures actually look the best in relation to the Vampire Dire Wolf as far as size is concerned.

The next pair would be the Grenadier Warg and Dazed Dire Wolf. This pair is really nice because of their dynamic running poses. They look fine in relation to the Vampire Dire Wolf, but they don't look good compared to human sized figures or the Gemsbok. Maybe it is because their heads look too big compared to the animated wolves.

The final pair are one wolf each from the Reaper and Ral Partha Wolf Pack sets. These two wolves look good in size compared to humans and the Gemsbok, but unfortunately they look too small compared to the Vampire Dire Wolf. They do however look in scale when posed with the Winter Wolf.

At the moment I'm leaning towards going with the final pair of wolves, but that means I'll need to find a replacement for Moro. Who makes a nice wolf that is about 30mm to the shoulder?

The Tribe of Okkoto

2010-10-13T21:32:00.000-07:00

As the film Mononoke Hime approaches its climax, an army of giant boars gather to repulse the humans who are encroaching on the forest. They range in size from the colossal Okkotonushi...

To behemoths like Nago,

Down to merely gigantic rank-and-file boars.

To represent these beasts, I rounded up a number of different boar miniatures. The line-up begins with a 15mm boar from the Reaper Shadow Corp line. The head is nicely sculpted, but I felt that the body looked kind of stunted. Next is a GW boar of about the same size as the Reaper boar, but much better proportioned, followed by a Citadel Fiend Factory Giant Boar (FF67-1). Last is a boar from Amazon Miniatures. Of the lot, this miniature is my favorite as far as size and appearance are concerned. I ordered four of them last year after seeing a fantastic modification on the Ferrous Lands blog. Unfortunately I only received two, and subsequent inquiries to Amazon were ignored.

The great mystery to me, is what happened with the GW/Citadel boars. I just don't understand how they went from the beautiful sculpts above, to the ugly, sway-backed Warhammer boars. I don't have any examples of GW boars, but suffice to say they are similar to the BTD boar (or rather the other way around) that is shown below on the left. In the center, is a giant boar sculpted by Werner Klocke für Das Schwarze Auge line of miniatures. Again, a nicely sculpted head, but with a strangely undersized body. The final boar on the right is an old Heritage giant boar. The right profile doesn't look too bad, but from the left side, it looks like a giant rat.

The last batch are of plastic toy boars. First up is a boar from the Noah's Ark playset by Auburn (other colors for this boar include black, navy blue, light blue, white, and red). Next is a wild boar by Britains. Metal versions of the Britains boar exists as well, but can be fairly pricey. The last two are a piglet and wild boar by VEB Plaho.

I still have my work cut out to collect enough boars to recreate the futile attack of the army of giant boars against the human forces. Amazon does not seem to stock their boars any more, but even if they did, I would have second thoughts about buying from them again. IWM does carry some old Ral Partha giant boars that may be suitable, but I have not yet been able to determine how big they are. Another hurdle is also to find a giant boar that can pass as Okkotonushi in 1/72 scale. Preferably with head raised and squealing in fury.

"Even if every one of us dies, it will be a battle the humans will never forget!"

The Deer Tribe

2010-10-12T23:59:00.000-07:00

I've always thought that the film Mononoke Hime by Hayao Miyazaki had great potential for wargaming, and have been trying to assemble miniatures representing the various characters in the film for quite some time. This entry will be the first of three entries covering the Forest Gods.

The main Forest God is the Shishigami(シシ神) or Deer God. There are several large scale statues of the Deer God, but luckily I was able to find one that looks the right size for use with 1/72 figures.

I've included the red elk, Yakul here as well, because it is a member of the deer family. There are a couple of miniatures that can be used as proxies with a little modification. Red elks have appeared in an earlier work by Miyazaki as well.

The Journey of Shuna (シュナの旅) is considered a precursor to Miyazaki's epic Nausicaa, and includes many designs that appear in his later works. I'm surprised that it has not been published in English yet, but then I guess many people would consider it too Old School.

On to the miniatures. The first figure is the Deer God, which I received with a bunch of Studio Ghibli merchandise, mentioned in an entry I posted back in May. It used to be part of a cell phone strap, but since it seemed exactly the right size for 1/72, I cut it off to use for gaming. The hole that ran through the center was filled in, and painted over.

The next two miniatures will serve as the basis for my red elk conversions. The first figure is a Gemsbok from the Ral Partha Veldt Animals set (31-032). The body is about the right size for what I want, but the neck seems a bit short, and the horns are different. The next miniature is a Psychotic Goat Llama (Chariot S20X1) from Magister Militum. This miniatures comes with tack, so is not as useful as the Gemsbok. It's legs are also too short, though this can be remedied. The best part of the Goat Llama however are the horns, which look spot on for red elk horns.

Pilots & Pin-ups

2010-09-29T23:46:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been trying to find pilots for some airplane models that I plan on building in wheels up configuration. The older Airfix and Monogram kits almost always used to come with pilots, but the problem with model planes nowadays is that they never come with pilots. I tried looking around for some pilot figures, but the pickings were pretty slim.

The first pilot is a WWII American Pilot (200MSC01) from Eureka. It is 20mm and seems to scale out close to 1/76. Next in line is a Hobby Master WWII US Pilot (HP0001). It comes in a set of five identical pre-painted figures in soft vinyl. The upper torso seems to match well with the Eureka pilot, but the legs are really short. The next three figures come from the Hobby Master WWII Pilots Set (HP0003), which contains two RAF pilots, two Luftwaffe pilots, and one VVS pilot in soft vinyl. The RAF pilot comes in a particularly wooden pose, but is not to bad as far as scale is concerned. The German and Soviet pilots however, are noticeably smaller than the other pilots, and are probably no more than 1/87 scale. The German pilot has a large head relative to his body, so would probably not look too out of place once he is placed in a cockpit, but the Soviet pilot is particularly poor, with a hollowed out back and a tiny 1/87 head to go with his puny 1/87 body.

Typical of model pilot figures, all of the figures are sculpted in the typical staring-straight-ahead-hands-in-the-lap pose. But really... someone needs to make a decent seated pilot figure. Maybe with his head turned to scan the sky, or giving hand signals to a wingman.

I'm not going to complain too much about the short legs, since this allows figures to fit more easily into a wider variety of cockpits, but using 1/87 figures for 1/72 planes just looks wrong. The only other pilots that I know about are from the Revell Pilots and Ground Crew: German Airforce WWII set, and those come with tiny 1/87 scale pilots as well.

And now, I shift gears and present Pin-Up Gals (PIN1) from Sgt Major Miniatures.

The pin-ups come languorously posed in typical pin-up fashion, but are much larger than the typical 20mm miniature. I would say that at least a couple of them are larger than 1/72, though their size is not so obvious because they are not standing up. The figures are decently sculpted, though I believe that the size of the head is out of proportion to the body. The first gal has the most promise. She looks about the right size, and could be used seated on the wing of a plane, or maybe on the deck of a boat.

Armored Klan Klang

2010-09-28T11:12:00.000-07:00

This is probably old news to Macross fans, but MegaHouse is releasing a PVC Klan Klang figure in what is purportedly 1/72 scale. I say purportedly because when I originally saw the announcement for this release, it was listed as a non-scale figure. However, several sources are now calling the figure 1/72 scale (notably HLJ). I'm guessing that this is based in part on the size of the Super Pack equipment included with the figure, and in part on the dimensions of the figure, which would have Klan scale out to 13 meters in height. For some, this is accurate for 1/72, but I'm not one of the people who subscribe to Klan being the size of a VF-25 in battroid mode.

Anyway, this post not really a review, since I don't actually have one of these figures on hand to make any real judgements. The pose is based on Episode 21 of Macross Frontier. The pictures that I've seen on other sites show that the figure looks very nice. MegaHouse did a nice job on the face, which I thought captured the look of the character better than the Banpresto figure. There are seven Super Pack elements that are fully removable, and one GU-17A Gun Pod. The figure is in a mid-flight pose, with a support under each foot, and one support that plugs into the back.

I'll keep an eye peeled for any comparisons between this figure and 1/72 VF-25s to see if the Super Packs match up in size, but I don't plan on buying one myself for a number of reasons - first and foremost being the size issue, and second being the price of the figure. As much as I like Klan Klang, she loses out to the Hobby Boss 80cm K(E) railway gun that's also supposed to be coming out next month.

For more information on the Zentradi height controversy, refer to the Macross Mecha Manual.

WWII German Helmet Markings

2010-09-26T20:43:00.000-07:00

Many of you have probably seen these German helmet decals on eBay, and wondered as I did, if they could be used for 1/72 scale figures.

The sheet contains 130 decals including helmet markings for Heer, SS, and Luftwaffe. There are also some decals for what look like Heer breast patches as well.

There are three different sizes for the German helmet sheet, putatively listed as 15mm, 20mm, and 25mm. However from the image used in the eBay listing, the 15mm markings looked oversized when used on 15mm figures to my eye.

Still, I decided to buy a set of the 15mm decals to see how they would look on 1/72 miniatures, since they were definitely too big for 15mm figures.

When I received the decals, I took a look at them under the magnifying glass. The blacks and whites are decently printed for the size, but the red coverage for the Nazi Party decals and National Tricolor decals is not complete, and can be seen as alternating red and white spots.

I didn't do a very good job on the decal application for this post, because someone gave my thumb a good bashing during kendo practice, so my hands were not really good for detail work today. So take note that the decals can look much better than in these pictures. I botched the trimming when I was cutting out the decals and tore the SS Runic Shield. There's probably some extra transparent film that was stuck on the decals as well.

What I did notice though, was that the white for the Nazi Party decals looked out of register on one side, and more importantly, the markings are definitely too large for 1/72 scale figures. The actual size of the decals relative to the helmet can be seen at German-Helmets.com.

To try and fix these problems, I painted out the white areas with black paint. In fact, I used the paint to reduce the area of the decals as well. Looks better, no?

The next time I apply these decals, I will cut them out using my dissecting microscope, and use decal setting solution to make sure they are nice and flat.

Hydra

2010-09-23T21:01:00.000-07:00

The Lernaean Hydra of Greek mythology was a poisonous serpent-like monster with nine heads, that took its name from the lake near which it lived. The creature became famous as the second boss in the Twelve Labors of Herakles.

In later times, the image of the hydra became conflated with the Beast of Revelation so that nine heads were reduced to seven, and the body turned from serpent-like to dragon-like.

"And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy".

- Revelation 13

Other seven-headed hydras include Ray Harryhausen's hydra from Jason and the Argonauts...

And the Babylonian Tiamat.

Anyway, enough background, and onto the miniatures. Of the nine-headed hydra miniatures that I am aware of, only the Dennis Mize Hydra (Ral Partha 01-192) is still in production (available from IWM). The other nine-headed hydras include the Minot hydra from the Olympians, Heroes & Horrors range, and the Starcast hydra from their Fantasia Myth line (which I have never seen). The Mize Hydra is a four piece model, with the heads cast in groups of three. There is an unfortunate design flaw in this particular miniature because after you attach the heads, the miniature becomes front heavy, and always tips forward. It is managing to stay upright in the picture with the help of some UHU Tac.

The Tom Meier Hydra (Ral Partha 10-417) is the large Revelation-type hydra with seven heads and a dragon-like body. The model comes in five pieces, with three parts for the heads, and two for the body. I reposed the heads for this particular hydra, since many of them were pointing in all kind of weird directions. I also cut out the middle of the base for the front legs to make it look less obtrusive.

The last two hydras are sculpts by Julie Guthrie. On the left is a plastic Mage Knight Hydra, which is identical to the Hydra from the All Things Dark and Dangerous line (Ral Partha 02-901). This particular hydra has seven heads, and the metal version is still available as a multi-piece model from IWM. On the right is a five-headed Dwarf Hydra (Grenadier Fantasy Classics 318/Fantasy Lords 124). The heads of this particular hydra bear a close resemblance to that of the Harryhausen hydra.

There are a couple of other hydras that I will probably get in the future, including the Alternative Armies Giant Hydra, and a three-headed hydra from M.Y. Miniatures. What to do with all these beasties though?

Armored Lunar Rover

2010-09-18T22:08:00.000-07:00

It's probably nothing to crow about, but I've finally actually come close to finishing a model this weekend. The kit is a limited release resin model by TENBOWKISSA of a Zerstover. The Zerstover (I think that the name is actually supposed to be Zerstörer...) comes from the Maschinen Kreiger universe, and is essentially an armored lunar rover.

This kit is a release from the 2007 Tokyo Wonder Festival according to the box top. It comes with 9 resin parts, two clear plastic parts, a length of wire, a small decal sheet, instructions, and a camo card.

The model is a decent representation of the Zerstover, though the shape of the hull doors is not quite correct. In the actual Ma.K. build, the forward part of the doors are raised (and in fact, the instructions for this kit shows this). There are a couple of areas where the features are a little overscale as well. I did some minor fixes, but left the kit as is for the most part.

The casting for the kit is quite nice. There were some minor bubbles around the pour tab of one of the wheels, but other than that, there was only a little bit of flash, some light seams, and the pour tabs to clean up.

Oh, did I mention that this is the first resin kit that I've attempted? Anyway, this is probably standard practice, but I did a lot of pinning for the kit, particularly the rear wheels, since the body was relatively heavy, and the parts where the axles join the undercarriage did not seem particularly robust.

Now all that's left is to finish up painting, putting the plastic light lenses in, sealing, and applying some decals.

西遊記

2010-08-07T15:18:00.000-07:00

A Journey to the West (aka Pilgrimage to the West) is one of the Four Great Novels of classical Chinese literature. The novel describes the adventures of the Monkey King, Sun Wukong, and the monk Xuanzang's pilgrimage to India in search of original Buddhist sutras.

The story and characters are well known in Asia, so it is no surprise that Caesar has produced a limited run set of figures representing the main characters in the story.

There are two sets of figures, which differ only in the Sun Wukong figure provided. The first set (P001) consists of Sun Wukong wearing a circlet (after he has joined the pilgrimage), Xuanzang, Zhu Bajie, and Sha Wujing. Zhu Bajie, and Sha Wujing are two part figures with a separate right arm that plugs into the body.

Images of painted figures from Bryan at Always Model
The second set (P002) has Sun Wukong in his guise as the Great Sage Equal of Heaven wearing a phoenix feather cap, but the other three figures are the same as in the first set.

Images of painted figures from Bryan at Always Model
The figures are nice representations of the characters in the story, though Sun Wukong seems to be modeled a little more on the movie/TV version of the character, since his features are more human than monkey-like.

I end with a comparison between the Male Loresong Faen (Iron Wind Metals 67-003) from the IWM Arcana Unearthed line of miniatures with the Caesar Sun Wukong figures. When I first saw the Faen figure with the staff, circlet, and sideburns, the first thing that popped into my mind was that it was the Monkey King. I was originally going to do a conversion of this figure to make Sun Wukong, but I'll reconsider that project now that I have the new Caesar figures.

Kingdom of the Dwarfs

2010-08-05T08:28:00.001-07:00

The characteristics of mythological dwarves are often mixed with those of other mythological races such as elves and trolls. In Norse mythology, the beings called svartálfar (dark elves) are essentially dwarves. They live underground, fashion cunning artifacts, and are generally avaricious. They also bear a resemblance to trolls in that they turn to stone when exposed to sunlight.

Even their size can vary, with ancient images depicting dwarves being the same size as humans. In general though, modern fantasy has set the height of dwarves between 3-4 feet in height. This allows some lines of 15mm dwarves to be used with 1/72 scale figures. Described below, are examples of the various types of dwarves that I currently own.

The first group consists of five plastic dwarves from Caesar, and one from the Age of Mythology game by Eagle Games. The Caesar dwarves are just a tad too tall for my tastes, but they could be used as the taller race of mountain dwarves.

The next set of six images cover the The Shadow Corp/Blood Dawn dwarves sculpted by Rene Perez. They are solid and bulky without being too tall. Of all the dwarves in this entry, I think these are my favorite sculpts.

The next pair of images are of 18mm dwarves from Eureka. They match up very well with the Shadow Corp dwarves, though they seem a bit stiff in comparison.

The next four images are of 15mm dwarves from Black Raven Foundry. These dwarves are are smaller than the Shadow Corp and Eureka dwarves, and much lighter in build, though the height difference is not quite as apparent due to the thickness of their bases.

The next pair of images are of the dwarves produced by East Riding Miniatures. These are true 15mm dwarves with a nice stocky build.

The next images are of dwarven crossbowmen from the Warlords line produced by Grenadier. The bases on these miniatures are very small and uneven so that the figures tend to tip over at the drop of a feather.

Comparison of dwarves blowing horns: Shadow Corp, Eureka x 2, and ERM.

Comparison of dwarven sorcerers: Shadow Corp x 2, and Eureka x 2.

Comparison of dwarven arquebusiers: Caesar, and Shadow Corp x 2.

Comparison of dwarven crossbowmen: Caesar, Shadow Corp, Eureka, Grenadier Warlords, Alternative Armies HOTT, and SLM.

Comparison of dwarven axemen: Caesar, Shadow Corp, Eureka, Eagle Games, and SLM. These are the best dwarves for use in 1/72 fantasy. The Caesar dwarves are somewhat too tall for me, and I'm not a big fan of the SLM dwarves sculpted by Bob Olley due to their oversized heads, but others may have a different opinion.

Comparison of smaller dwarven axemen: BRF, Alternative Armies HOTT, Mongoose/Rebel, Alternative Armies TTF, ERM, SLM x 2, and Tin Soldier (I think). These dwarves are either too small, or too slender for me. One possibility is to use them as gnomes instead.

Do you like movies about gladiators?

2010-08-04T07:30:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back from a great vacation in Europe, and thought I'd share some photos from the Gladiatores exhibit that is currently on display at the Colosseum. I'll have to apologise for the pictures beforehand, since there is a lot of glare from the morning light reflecting off of the exhibit display cases.

The armor is part of a collection belonging to Silvano Mattesini, an architect and historian who has commissioned various craftsmen to create reproduction armor and clothing based on his original research. I was only able to find a reference to one of his books, Le Legioni Romane, which has a preview on Google Books.

Let Freedom Ring

2010-07-04T06:36:00.000-07:00

For my Fourth of July entry, I thought it would be appropriate to show off a recent find that originally came from one of the versions of Parker Brothers Monopoly game. The game piece is a nice pewter replica of the Liberty Bell.

The original Liberty Bell was commissioned from Whitechapel Bell Foundry in the UK for £100. Unfortunately, the bell cracked the first time it was struck, and was recast by Pass and Stow.

The game piece scales out close to 1/72. I'm not sure what I can use it for, but it's still rather cool to have. To the right of the bell is a figure from the Accurate American Militia Set (7201) - I always thought the figure bore a resemblance to Benjamin Franklin, so I've included him in the picture.

George does not hold any lingering resentment
over the loss of the colonies. Heck, he doesn't
even have any ill will toward Mel Gibson.
Happy 4th of July everyone. I'm out on vacation next week, so my next post will be in August.

Fancy Wrap

2010-05-14T08:58:00.000-07:00

Normally when I receive a package of miniatures, they come in bubble wrap or ziploc bags, but when I opened a shipment from Japan yesterday, this is what I found inside:

For a second, I wondered if I had received something from a confectionery by mistake...

So what do the bags contain? Well, that is for a blog entry at another date.

O fish, are you constant to the old covenant?

2010-05-04T07:38:00.000-07:00

Even before the 1954 movie Creature from the Black Lagoon, Fishmen have been macking on human women. H.P. Lovecraft's Deep Ones are probably one of the earliest influences on the development of Fishmen in horror, and also the most successful in making inter-species relationships work.

In the miniature world, there are many types of Fishmen that can be used as Deep Ones. A sampling of Fishmen in 25mm is shown in the images below. The first figure is a Deep One from the Grenadier Creatures boxed set (6502) for Call of Cthulhu, which has always been a favorite of mine. Next are three Fishmen from the Black Tree Design Fantasy Armies line (M150), and at the end is a Sahuagin from the Grenadier Denizens of the Swamp boxed set (2010).

The Grenadier Deep One is broad and bulky, but I don't think it would be too out of place with 1/72 figures. The BTD Fishmen are somewhat different in appearance to the Grenadier figure, and larger, so could be used as more venerable Deep Ones. Of note is that it took over 6 months for the BTD figures to arrive (September 2009 to March 2010), so buyer beware.

The next image is of two 20mm Fishmen Warriors from Elhiem Figures (P17). These figures are very compatible with 1/72 figures, and are actually very similar in build and appearance to the BTD Fishmen. Hopefully Elhiem will expand this particular range of figures.

Elhiem also produces a Lesser Fishman, that is less fish-like in appearance, and which can be viewed at their website.

Last but not least, are 10mm Fishmen from Pendraken. These figures were samples that were kindly sent to me by David Pengilley at Pendraken Miniatures. The Pendraken Fishmen are not as menacing as the larger Fishmen, and are pretty much normal fish with arms and legs, but in some ways that makes them somewhat more disturbing. Shown below are the Fishman with trident (FF3), Fishman gun with crew (FF12), Fishman with net (FF2), and Fishman with harpoon (FF4).

These Fishmen are very large for 10mm, and may work better as 15mm Fishmen. I plan on using them as a servitor race for the Deep Ones.

A comparison of 10mm, 20mm, and 25mm Fishmen.

Light Alliance Elves

2010-02-17T19:24:00.000-08:00

Despite my misgivings after seeing some images of the Orion/Light Alliance Elves (ALL72004), I went ahead and ordered a set. The box art shows armored and helmeted elves reminiscent of the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films, but the figures in the box are quite different.

My first impression was that these elves were tall, with really long legs, but all bowed out as if they were the overgrown spawn of Svetlana Pankratova and Publius Quinctilius Varus.

The set comes with four identical sprues of figures. They wear chainmail and leather armor, but unlike the box art they do not wear helmets. They stand about 28-30mm from the bottom of the foot to the top of the head, so scale out to about 7 feet tall. And while I said I liked my elves to be tall, these figures are just a little too much. If they had made them just 2mm shorter they probably would have looked more proportional, but as it is, I doubt I'll spend any money on Set 2 when it comes out.

Below are the five melee poses.

Next are five archer poses.

Lastly, a comparison with Caesar elves.

Undead Nellie

2010-02-15T11:17:00.000-08:00

Compared above, are the HäT War Elephant (8023), and the Splintered Light Miniatures Skeletal War Mammoth (UNDE21). The HäT elephant is an African forest elephant which ranges from 7-8 feet at the shoulder, so the size of the figure is right on. The SLM mammoth however looks stumpy and dwarfish even for 15mm. The downward curving tusks are also not very mammoth-like.

Looking at some pictures of elephant skeletons, it seemed that the SLM mammoth could easily pass for a 20mm mammoth if something could be done about its legs. A mammoth can be anywhere from 9-15 feet at the shoulder.

Elephant: Shorter legs, so the rib cage appears lower to the ground.

Mammoth: The legs are long, so the rib cage appears higher.

Using my standard technique to embiggen figures, I cut off the legs where they joined the body. I then drilled holes in the body and glued some pins in place. I compressed the tibia to lengthen the bones, and then adjusted the pins to get the height I wanted for the skeletal mammoth. Instead of my standard procedure of drilling and gluing, followed by Kneadatite, I decided to try something different to re-attach the legs to the body this time.

The drilling process on thin pieces like limbs and bones is difficult and time consuming, while the glue and Kneadatite join is only just adequate. What I decided to do this time, was to join the parts with solder. It took a few attempts to get the soldering just right, but it turned out quite well I think.

I believe that part of the secret is that the two ends you are joining should be hot, though you have to be careful about melting your miniature. When the metal is cold, the solder just beads up, and will often just roll away. Solder seems to leave a solid join that does not have the slight flex of a Kneadatite join, so I like it a lot better. I'll finish by building up the bones with Kneadatite.

In addition, the SLM mammoth comes with a choice of three different heads, so I'm going to drill out the neck and install some rare earth magnets to allow swapping out the skull whenever I want a new look for the mammoth.

Gasmask Couture

2010-02-09T01:41:00.000-08:00

The chemical suit and gas mask are an indispensable part of the post-apocalyptic wardrobe, designed to provide protection against contamination by radioactive, biological or chemical substances which would otherwise cause sickness, death, or turning into a zombie.

There are not a large number of gas mask wearing figures in 1/72, but I've assembled a small group of compatible figures for this blog entry.

First up are the Elhiem Soviet NBC troops. The first figure carrying the RPG is wearing the OZK chemical suit, but the others are dressed in what appears to be the L1 chemical protection suit. I painted some of the troops in mint green as shown on the Elhiem website, but after doing a little research, I could only find images of the OZK suit in that color. All the images of L1 suits showed that they are gray. Though there was mention of green L1 suits, what type of green was unclear since I could find no definitive pictures. The figures are very nice, but being 20mm miniatures they are a bit on the short side. However, it's not something that will really be noticed on the tabletop.

Next is a general comparison of gas masked figures. The first figure is Rose from Hasslefree Miniatures (HFA039J). She is intended as a 28mm grade school kid, but passes easily for a 1/72 middle school kid. She wears a school blazer and skirt with her gas mask, though it's unclear why she has the gas mask in the first place. The next pair are two figures from the NATO Pilots and Ground Crew set (ESCI 243), followed by two figures from the NATO Ground Crew set (Airfix 01758). One of the Elhiem figures is next, and last is a 1/76 figure from the much maligned (and rightfully so) German Infantry with Gasmasks set (Fujimi 76028). The plastic figure sets have all been reviewed at PSR.

Some interesting pictures of people in gas masks during the cold war and in general, can be found at Dark Roasted Blend.

Tokubetsu Kougekiki

2010-01-21T14:07:00.000-08:00

Indoctrination, propaganda, and fanaticism paved the way for gyokusai (玉砕) - a term derived from an old Chinese aphorism that went along the lines of it being better to die as a shattered jewel, than to live as an intact tile. Kamikaze Images is a good resource for more information on this topic, particularly from the Japanese viewpoint.

As the war situation became more desperate for Japan, this type of thinking lead to the development of a number of special attack (tokko) weapons to carry out suicide missions. The majority of them were not used, and of the ones that were, most were militarily ineffective. The Special Attack Weapons (特別攻撃機) set produced by Boford Japan, was released back in the middle of 2007, and replicates some of these tokko weapons in 1/72 scale.

Nakajima Ki-115 Tsurugi (Toko1)

Comments: Plastic parts. The wings look undersized, and are about a scale foot too short.

Nakajima Kikka (Toko2)

Comments: I'm still kicking myself for not getting the MPM Kikka while it was still in productions, so I don't have anything to compare the size of this version with. The body is made of plastic, with an overscale copper aerial. It may be a bit too long. The wings also look undersized, and it has ugly giant hinges protruding from the wing surfaces. The model comes with a detachable bomb, and working landing gear in the wings, but not for the nose. There are no bays for the wheels to retract into, so they protrude from the underside of the aircraft.

Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka (Toko3)

Comments: Plastic body. Comes with model of engine. Thick, ugly overscaled sights. Scales out very nicely.

Kaiten Type 1 (Toko4)

Comments: Comes in two pieces. The forward section is diecast metal, while the rear portion is plastic. The model was put together so that the rotation of the rear section is a bit off. It is overscale by about a foot, and noticably longer than the Fine Molds Kaiten.

Kaiten Type 4 (Toko5)

Comments: Comes in two pieces. The forward section is diecast metal, while the rear portion is plastic. Possibly a couple of scale feet too short. I could not find a reference for the length.

Kaiten Type 10 and Type 92 Torpedo (Toko6)

Comments: The forward section is diecast metal, while the rear portion is plastic. The front of the torpedo is improperly attached so it appears bent. The torpedo does scale out nicely at about 23.5 scale feet, but I could not find a reference for the length of the Type 10.

Shinyo Type 1/Maru Ni (Toko7)

Comments: Plastic body. Comes with model of propeller. Scales out to about 15 feet long, but I could not verify if this is the correct length.

Shinyo Type 5 (Toko8)

Comments: Plastic body. Comes with model of Nambu 13mm pistol. Length scales out well, but may be a tick too wide.

There is also a secret figure which is a 54mm miniature of a fukuryu (伏龍) diver with pole mine, but the set I purchased did not come with it.

Ultimately, it's better to live as an intact jewel.
At least one of these pilots was just 17.

Red Blok

2009-12-22T01:32:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of games that I don't play, but do buy the miniatures from. AT-43 is one of these games. I became aware of the AT-43 miniatures because of Paolo Parente's involvement in some of the initial design work for Rackham. The similarities in designs are particularly obvious for the Red Blok faction, and the Soviets of the Dust Universe. The armored soldiers of the Red Blok use the Kolossus powered armor. I thought that these would work very well in 1/72 as larger powered armor suits. There are four major types of the Kolossus, three of which are shown below.

Dragomirov Kolossus (RKATR21) with Gauss gun and RPG launcher

I don't particularly like the RPG launcher with the rocket peeking out from the barrel of the launcher. I'll probably drill out the end of the barrel so that the launch tube resembles that of a nebelwerfer. Also, why have such a limited use weapon on this type of machine at all? The RPG Kolossus (with a pair of RPG launchers) is especially questionable, since it would be almost useless after it expended its four rounds.

For some reason, the Dragomirov Kolossus units were very poorly assembled. I had models with arm joints that couldn't move, front plates that flopped around, and even one with a missing arm.

Spetsnatz Kolossus (RKATR17) with dual flamethrowers

Strielitz Kolossus (RKATR18) with machinegun and flamethrower

I felt the red-brown color used on these units was atypical of Russian war machines, and more like German red oxide primer. There's a snarky part of me which suspects that the color was used so that there would be no confusion that they indeed were part of the Red Blok. Also, why are they marked "KOLOSSUS" and not "КОЛОСС?" Why label your armor this way at all? Were T-34s marked "T-34" on the side of their turrets?

Anyway, here is my rendition of the Колосс with some partially finished modern Soviet NBC figures from Elhiem. I plan on using the non-com version of the Kolossus as the basis for all Gauss gun armed units.

I took off the flamethrower from a Strielitz Kolossus, and replaced it with a Gauss gun. I painted the Kolossus green, and then went over it with a black wash. I used a white wash on the original decals to give them a slightly bleached look. Russian turret numbers from Archer were then applied to the sides of the hull.

The size of the Kolossus also matches quite nicely with the Pro-Hobby Koubu from my previous entry. I can picture a WWWII scenario for the August Storm campaign involving Soviet powered armor against Japanese powered armor.

Koubu in - um - Desert Pink and Kolossus in Russian Green

I just wish that they would sell these as unassembled kits and save me the trouble of having to take them apart...

Some of the pieces will make a good start as the basis for a KV-47 scratch build project, or this really cool conversion by Haibane.

I think this will be my last post for the year. I don't know how other wargame bloggers manage to get so many entries written. I was aiming to make a post every two weeks, but struggled at times to write even one a month. However, I guess if you average my entries I did in fact exceed my goals.

Happy Holidays to All!

- EY

Sakura Taisen

2009-12-21T09:33:00.000-08:00

The Sakura Wars RPG debuted back in 1996, and has spawned anime, manga, novels, models, figures, toys, a dedicated gift store, a café, musicals, and a movie.

The game is half tactical RPG and half dating sim, with a storyline set in a steampunk version of Taishō era Japan involving the conflict between the bishoujo of the Imperial Assault Force in their Koubu (Spirit Armor), and the power armored demons of the Black Sanctum Council.

Pro-Hobby (Icom) released a set of diecast 1/60 scale Koubu of the Imperial Assault Force in 2004. It was a rather strange move, since the Sakura Wars franchise didn't have a place in Pro-Hobby's extensive line of 1/144 military and N-scale train products. Four Koubu were produced (starting with product code 003, so at least two others were probably in the works) but the complete set was never finished. I'm guessing that at ¥3,500 each, they were too pricy for most collectors. I picked up Sakura's Koubu when they first came out, and only recently purchased two additional Koubu at a much lower price.

Despite their scale and the dimensions given in Sakura Wars Steam Military Factory, I think these 1/60 Koubu look pretty good with 1/72 figures. In my opinion, the look next to 1/72 figures is fairly consistent with the appearance of the Koubu in the manga and anime.

From left to right are Sakura's Koubu (PROPT-003), Iris's Koubu (PROPT-004), and Kanna's Koubu (PROPT-006). There is an additional black Koubu for Maria (PROPT-005). The Koubu are brightly colored, and resemble members of a super sentai team more than military vehicles. However, given that they fight demons from the netherworld there's not much to say about the appropriateness of the colors, though Sakura's pink Koubu and Iris's Koubu with a bow tied in the rear are particularly cute.

If I ever get any more of these models, I'll paint them olive green as shown at the 統合軍造兵 Arsenal.

As a side note, after almost a decade and a half, the first translated version of a Sakura Wars game - Sakura Wars V ~ So Long, My Love - will make its appearance in North America. I think the game was initially announced by NIS for late 2009, but it has now moved to early 2010. Versions will be made for PS2 and Wii platforms.

Turtles

2009-12-19T23:51:00.000-08:00

Eureka's warrior frogs and turtles were inspired by the ukiyo-e of Kawanabe Kyōsai. Kyōsai in turn was influenced by his master, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, who depicted his human subjects as animals to get around censorship laws, as in the case of the actors shown below.

I thought Eureka's terrapin warriors would match well with the ERM frogs mentioned in my previous post. The first five terrapins are Terrapin, with spear (100FRG17). I modified one of these terrapins by cutting away its spear and gluing some pins in its hands to represent drumsticks. The arms and head were bent so that it could be paired with the terrapin carrying the drum from the Turtle/Terrapin Drummer Team (100FRG18). The final terrapin holding the forked stick is from the Turtle/Terrapin sniper team (100FRG16). The terrapins are supplied with separate shells at random, so you may get the larger turtle shells for your terrapins. I placed one of the turtle shells on the terrapin with a forked stick. It didn't look too bad from the front, but from the rear it just looked wrong. Happily, Nic at Eureka was kind enough to send me a replacement terrapin shell.

The next miniatures were also inspired by Japanese culture, but rather than ukiyo-e, they were influenced by 80's ninja films and superhero comics.

They are of course, the Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles. Shown below are Donatello and Michaelangleo. I think that Leonardo and Raphael may have suffered a horrible fate involving a hammer and lighter, but my memory is a bit hazy about it.

These miniatures were made in 1986 by Dark Horse Studios, and sold through adds in the back of the TMNT comics.

The Eureka and Dark Horse turtles compare well to each other in size.

Finally, for normal turles, there is the turtle from Reaper's Familiar Pack V (2848), and a pair of Galápagos giant tortoises from an old Noah's Ark playset made by Marx Toys.

Bein' Green

2009-12-12T20:17:00.000-08:00

The following miniatures are a small group of frogs and toads I have assembled for gaming purposes.

The first two pictures are of frog folk from East Riding Miniatures. The first three figures below, are from the Frogfolk Command (FT65), followed by the two poses from Frogfolk with Swords (FT69), one pose from Frogfolk with Spears (FT68), and two poses from Frogfolk Ambushers (FT70).

The next picture shows one pose from Frogfolk with Blowpipes (FT67), and the two poses of Frogfolk Archers (FT66).

I really like this range of frogs from ERM. They are currently the only 15mm fantasy frog people in production. However, Eureka is halfway to producing some of their 28mm Warrior Frog line in 15mm through the 300 Club, and I understand that SLM will also be releasing frog people next year.

For normal frogs which can double as familiars, Chariot has a Plague of Frogs (CFB02) in 15mm consisting of ~20 frogs on circular bases. Irregular produces Kermit the Barbarian (CR27) on a square base, as part of their 6mm fantasy line. The third miniature below is a Ral Partha toad from their Familiars set (02-958), followed by Reaper's toad familiar from their Familiar Pack III (02593). These toads are rather large, and the Reaper toad in particular would be good cane toad in 1/72.

Next are the giant frogs: The first is the Giant Frog from Citadel (FF56), followed by three different poses from Black Tree Design's Frog Swarm (FA0822).

Even larger giant frogs and toads follow. The first two miniatures below are toad mounts from Eureka's Warrior Frog Cavalry (100FRG26). There are six different variants made up by combining three different types of body with two different sets of legs. The bodies are made of a gray resin, while the legs are made of metal. One of the frogs also comes with an extended tongue made of metal. The final Giant Frog (M134) is from BTD. It is a two part figure, with separately molded front legs. The feet of an unfortunate victim protrude from it's mouth, but I think I will be removing them.

Game Pieces

2009-11-17T21:57:00.000-08:00

There are a number of boardgames that utilize plastic game pieces that are compatible with 1/72 scale figures. Listed below, are some of the loose pieces that I've managed to pick up here and there.

These are crude and simplistic WWII German and Russian infantry pieces from the Memoir '44 game. It's hard to tell how tall the German is, since he is all hunched over, but I think he is probably close to 1/76 scale. The Russian from the Eastern Front expansion set is close to 1/72, though I thought he was a German when I first saw the figure. There are American and Japanese figures as well. The Japanese come from the Pacific Theater expansion set.

Memoir '44 (Days of Wonder)
The zombies and humans from the Zombies!!! game are closer to 1/64 scale than 1/72, but people often say they are compatible with 1/72. I'd say the zombies might be tolerable, but definitely not the human.

Zombies!!! (Twilight Creations)
Aussies or adventurers from an unknown game. They're a little scrawny, but usable (although for what, I'm not sure).

?????
Samurai and ninja from the Shōgun boardgame. The bases are thick, but even so, they are definitely compatible with 1/72 scale figures.

Shōgun (Milton Bradley Gamemaster series)
More game pieces from other Gamemaster series board games. From left to right: two figures from Conquest of the Empire; two figures from Axis & Allies; two figures from Fortress America; one figure from Broadsides & Boarding Parties. These figures are 1/76 scale or smaller (except maybe the WWII German).

Various Figures (Milton Bradley Gamemaster series)
Union infantry figure from Battle Cry, and a Japanese defender from Hit the Beach. The Battle Cry figure is very flat, in the manner of Odemars figures. When the game changed hands to Avalon Hill, the old flat figures were replaced by much nicer versions. The Hit the Beach figure is included here because it was mentioned in Victor Rudik's The One Inch Army. It is crude, featureless, and nowhere near 1/72. I'm not sure about the size of the Army and Marines figures from Hit the Beach, but they are sculpted in a similar style to the Japanese.

Battle Cry and Hit the Beach (Milton Bradley American Heritage series)
Medieval figures from the Feudal game. These figures had pegs under the bases, which I removed with my sprue cutter. The king towers over the other figures, but the other figures are well within normal parameters of 1/72 scale.

Feudal (3M)

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T19:32:00.000-07:00

For Halloween, I decided to cover some of the typical creatures we associate with this celebration - witches, skeletons, werewolves, mummies, and vampires.

Witches

The first group of miniatures are 15mm witches from Chariot (MM01). There is one standing pose and two sitting poses with traditional pointy hats and long robes. The set comes with a shallow cauldron with separate legs. These miniatures are true 15mm figures, so will most likely be used as donors for future witchy projects.

Skeletons

Representing skeletons, we have the Skeleton Recruiting Party from GFI (25980006). This set consists of a number of miniatures from the old Minifigs Valley of the Four Winds line. Shown below is the Dead Cart (VFW42) and the Coffin, Plain with Skeleton (VFWM4).

The rest of the recruiting party consists of a Skeleton with Lantern (VFW120), a Skeleton Carrying Wine barrel (VFW118), and a Skeleton Carrying Basket of Skulls (VFW119).

These are true 25mm figures, and full of character to boot. Except for their enormous heads, they are quite compatible with 1/72 figures. Next to the three GFI skeletons is an old Citadel Skeleton Warrior (FF52-1). He is a bit bulky, but also compatible with 1/72 with the exception of his huge head. Some unfortunate 15mm skeletons will have to donate their heads to make these guys suitable for my Army of the Dead. At the end is a plastic Caesar skeleton for comparison.

It is my hope that one day, GFI will re-release all of the classic Minifigs skeletons, particularly the Great Bell and Tower that they use as a teaser for their pre-order thumbnail.

Werewolves

There are a number of different werewolf types, which could be characterized along a continuum of increasingly wolf-like features. There is the old horror movie wolfman à la Lon Chaney Jr.; the man-wolves of The Howling; the werewolf in An American Werewolf in London; and finally, the man-transformed-to-actual-wolf of mythology.

The first werewolf figure shown above is from Citadel (FF19). It has characteristics of both wolfman and man-wolf. It actually reminds me a bit of the big burly bear-wolves from the old Werewolf TV show. The next werewolf is from Ral Partha (ES61). It too has hybrid features, but it has the lean look that I associate with werewolves. After, is a 20mm werewolf from Elhiem (P28), followed by three 15mm Wolfen: the Wolfen Berserker (W006), Wolfen Shaman (W010), and Wolfen Spearman (W002). Though Wolfen are not proper werewolves, the Elhiem werewolf is clearly undersized, being no taller than the 15mm Wolfen.

For me, werewolves should be tall, like Miss Lupescu of the Graveyard Book, or the Lycans of Underworld. Other than the Ral Partha werewolf, I'm not sure there are any other miniatures that meet my criteria.

Mummies

Most of the mummies shown above are of the old school Hammer Films style mummy. The first mummy is from the Grenadier Monsters boxed set (5002), followed by one by Ral Partha (ES20). These mummies are large and bulky. Totally unsuitable for 1/72 despite the preponderance of tall mummies in this scale. Next is version 1 of the Citadel Mummy (FF60). I believe that version 2 is identical to the Ral Partha version. I find this Citadel version superior to the Ral Partha version, though like most 25mm figures, the head is too big for 1/72. Next is the Elhiem Mummy (P28) which is slightly short, but fine. The last bunch are from Chariot (SHE06), which are tiny at 15mm.

Vampires

Vampires round out this entry, with The Count and Countess from Elhiem (P27), and a line up of Elhiem Vamps (P33). I'm not sure why The Count is so short, since he is obviously based off of the Bela Lugosi version of Dracula rather than Tom Cruise's Lestat. After all, Lugosi was supposed to have been 6' 1".

A comparison of 1/72 vampires and mummies in plastic and metal.

Owlbear

2009-10-19T14:16:00.000-07:00

The Owlbear is a classic old school monster that has suffered the indignity of often being included in lists of stupid D&D monsters. And as much as I'm sure we all appreciated David C. Sutherland's succubus in the Monster Manual, his illustration of the Owlbear definitely didn't help its case.

My favorite Owlbear minatures are the Dungeon Dwellers Owlbears (Heritage 1224) which came in four different poses. The two hulking Owlbears below are the GFI release of two of those sculpts (MIF25921804). I like these miniatures in particular because they actually have owl-like heads, and do not have feathered arms. Hopefully the other two poses will be released some day.

The smaller Owlbear at the end is from the Armies of Arcana line now being produced by Lone Gunman Games. It is a nicely sculpted miniature, but just does not seem very intimidating. It has feathered arms, and the beak is more eagle-like than owl-like. In fact, if you were to give it a wolf's head and tail, it would look like one of the more rightfully ridiculed D&D monsters - the Senmurv. In any event, I think it is the only Owlbear that is produced in 15mm.

Let Slip the Hounds of Hell

2009-10-18T00:07:00.000-07:00

Hell Hounds from AD&D probably are related to the Black Dogs of English folktales. They are classic monsters that were present in the original Basic D&D Blue Book as well.

The GFI Skeleton Dogs (MIF25921805) are how I picture Hell Hounds to appear, which is not surprising, since they are the old Dungeon Dwellers Hell Hounds (Heritage 1264). They probably aren't considered particularly good sculpts by today's standards, but there is a certain charm about them that I don't find present in modern miniatures. But then again, if you stare at them long enough, they seem to somewhat resemble emaciated cattle...

Relatives of the Hell Hound can also be found in classical mythology and fiction. Two examples are shown below.

First we have Cerberus from the Fantasy Lords Monsters of Mythology boxed set (Grenadier 6004). Then there is a Hound of Tindalos from the Call of Cthulhu Creatures boxed set (Grenadier 6502). This particular miniature has been re-released by Mirliton as Bloodsniffers of Chaos (CH015) under their Fantasy line.

Prior to painting Cerberus, I looked to ancient Greek vases for guidance on his coloration, and found several choices.

Classic Black

White as the New Black

Tricolor

I opted for black, with a concession to tricolor around his throats.

Finally, we have the lineup for all three breeds. They are all really big for dogs, but quite alright for monsters.

Monsterpocalypse Miniatures

2009-10-16T09:12:00.000-07:00

I don't play Monsterpocalypse, but some of the miniatures are very nifty. Being a fan of HPL, I picked up the big Lords of Cthul monsters when the game first came out last year. Also, being a Lost World fan, I wanted the giant apes from the Empire of the Apes faction. The hyper form of the monsters come in clear plastic, while the alpha forms are painted. The miniatures came on big square bases with their stats printed on them, which I promptly snapped off.

The translucent pink plastic of Ultra Yasheth and Ultra Cthugrosh seemed ideal for representing Cthuloid monstrosities in semi-material form. Cthugrosh with its tentacular lower extremities looks like it is forming out of ectoplasm.

The alpha form Yasheth of course is used for a Star Spawn. I don't particularly care for the shade of green that they used to paint the figure, but I am not particularly motivated to repaint it. The giant ape is King Kondo. There is also another giant ape, Gakura, which I'll probably pick up at a later date. The alpha and hyper forms of King Kondo (and apparently Gakura as well) are being sold as a set. I don't have a need for a transparent ape, so I'll convert this particular miniature by modifying the hand so that it can hold a screaming captive and paint it up.

All of the Yasheth and Cthugrosh figures come from the first series, Monsterpocalypse Rise. King Kondo comes from the latest series, Monsterpocalypse Now.

Arcane Legions Released

2009-10-07T23:55:00.000-07:00

Arcane Legions was released today, so armed with a 15% discount coupon from Pair a Dice Games in nearby Vista, I picked up a two-player starter set and a Han booster set. The starter set comes with two sprues of infantry and one commander for each of the major factions in the game. The figures are molded in a very dense gray plastic. Shields come pre-painted, with stenciled designs on the front. I was informed that CA glue works very well for attaching the shields and separate limbs to the figures.

Han Chinese

Egyptians

Romans

Commanders

Boosters come with one rare hero, and two rare/uncommon specialty units. The figures are painted, and come individually sealed. The painting was not quite as awful as I was expecting, though some of the color choices seemed rather questionable.

The hero figure is Zhongli Quan, a real-life Han Dynasty general who was deified as one of the Eight Immortals.

The specialty units I received were the Wu Tou Gui and Goryo. These figures come in linked bags of several identical miniatures. I think I am short one figure, since one of the bags for the Wu Tou Gui seems to be empty. I actually like these figures a lot. I don't know why, but translucent plastic miniatures just seem really cool. The Wu Tou Gui are molded in clear plastic, while the Goryo are molded in translucent green plastic.

I removed the basing pegs from some of the figures to do size comparisons. I'm still deciding whether to do so for each pose or not.

Zhongli Quan, Terracotta Spearman A, and Han Sharpshooter compared to Caesar Qin Dynasty Army.

The standard Arcane Legions figures seem more slender than the Caesar figures, but I think they go well together. I like the fact that there are a lot of infantry with ge-halberds, something that is sadly deficient in the Caesar set.

Cursed Swordsman and Cursed Spearman compared to Eagle Games Mummy.

Very cool, but why are mummies always so tall?

Arcane Legions Egyptian Archer compared to Caesar and Atlantic Egyptian archers.

Arcane Legions Formation Legionary compared to Airfix, LW, and Atlantic legionaries. Also, a Heavy Legionary at the end, in apparently what is some sort of powered armor.

Overall, I'll have to say I'm not disappointed. I like the Han and Egyptians the best. A couple of the poses seem a bit far-fetched (e.g. the Charging Han Infantry), and the sculpting is somewhat simplistic, but the figures are usable, and making them in 1/72 is definitely a plus. Images of all the figures can be found at the Arcane Legions website.

Спутник

2009-10-04T19:28:00.000-07:00

Sputnik 1 was launched on October 4, 1957, and marked the start of the U.S.-U.S.S.R Space Race. The satellite was 58.5 cm in diameter (just under 2 feet) and weighed 83.6 kg. It travelled at a speed of 29,000 kph, with an orbital period of about 96 minutes. After three months in orbit, Sputnik 1 fell from orbit and burned up after re-entering Earth's atmosphere.

ArcLight's World Space Museum series includes the Sputnik (produced by Kaiyodo) as it's first model (WSM-10001). The set includes the satellite, a plastic stand with clear plastic support for the Sputnik, and a big glass marble with the Earth's landmasses printed on the surface. Also included in the box is a foldout information sheet describing the Sputnik, about a dozen trading cards, and another card that describes Tsiolkovsky rocket equation in Japanese.

The satellite body scales out pretty much to 1/72, but the antennae are too thick. Also, unlike the pictures that you will usually find of Sputnik, the model does not have a shiny mirror-like finish. Overall, it is a simple representation of the Sputnik, though a tad pricey for what is essentially a ball with four sticks poking out of it.

Beholder Cloning

2009-09-26T00:04:00.000-07:00

The Beholder is one of the classic D&D monsters, and necessary for any collection of fantasy miniatures. I own two old school Beholder miniatures. The first figure is my favorite. It is from Grenadier's Dwellers Below boxed set (2012). It looks exactly like the Tom Wham illustration of the beholder from the AD&D Monster Manual. The smaller Beholder is a 15mm Beholder made by Ral Partha for the AD&D Battlesystem line. This particular figure was from the Chipco Evil Army set. I'm almost positive that it is the only Beholder in 15mm.

I wanted to take the Grenadier Beholder and mount it on a flying stand, but the miniature is so heavy, that it would have tipped almost any stand over, so I resorted to the Dark Art, and created a duplicate in resin.

I painted the clone as close to the original as possible, but afterwards I wondered why my past-self selected the colors that he did? I looked in the Monster Manual, and found nothing saying that the Beholder's eye was green and orange. Then I remembered this:

Which contains the following passage:

Well, the appearance of my Beholder is probably not what Gary Gygax had in mind, but at least I know where the color scheme came from now.

More Conversions

2009-09-25T00:30:00.000-07:00

To save some effort in doing height conversions, I've started playing around with using pliers to lengthen limbs when only a minimal increase is required. To use this technique, I first find an area that does not have a lot of detail, and then squeeze the metal with narrow jawed pliers until the desired length is achieved. Kneadatite is then used to restore the shape of the limb.

I have found that I can perform height conversions much faster using pliers, than by cutting and pinning. The only problem I've encountered with this method is that sometimes I have ended up severing a figure's limb by weakening the metal too much. I'm not sure if this is related to the fact that I am using pliers with serrated jaws, but if I can find some smooth jaw pliers I'll have to test this hypothesis.

Of the figures below, I only used the compression method on the BRF Amazon and minotaurs. The rest were modified using the cut and pin method. The thick limbs of the minotaurs allowed more length to be squeezed from the metal before getting too weak, so I was able to add quite a bit of height to them. The charging minotaur looks pretty good, but the legs of the other minotaur look kind of strange.

I also thought that perhaps I made the maiden guards a little too leggy, but now I'm not so concerned.

I'll probably cast the midsection of this lizardman so I can just do a cut-and-paste job when converting the rest of my lizardman figures.

The Dead Shall Consume

2009-09-24T02:45:00.000-07:00

Here are the Elhiem zombies I mentioned in yesterday's entry. The first lot are Female Zombies (TDSC03?). Most of these are Alix Elder sculpts, which are fairly chunky. The proportions are okay, and most have that shambling zombie look about them, but the cheerleader zombie has her right arm in a raised position that is awkward even for a zombie, while the schoolgirl zombie has an abnormally elongated torso. The last two figures are sculpted in a different style, being nice and slender with good proportions. I'm not sure, but I think that these may be by Ian Mountain.

The next batch of zeds are Elhiem's Ragged Zombies (TDSC12). One of the zombies had his head snapped clean off (courtesy of zombie-killers at USPS), but there was a duplicate of the pose. The Ragged Zombies are - well, pretty ragged. They are rotting, mangled, missing various body parts, spilling entrails, etc. In other words, your typical zombie. The poses are nice, and the figures are well proportioned. Hopefully we'll get more zombies like this from Elhiem, except in a less decomposed state.

Pulp Miniatures

2009-09-23T07:05:00.000-07:00

I recently placed an order to Syr Hobbs Wargames, and the package came in the mail yesterday. The box looked like it got some rough handling, but fortunately only one of the zombies I ordered was damaged. Included in the package were some of the 1/72 pulp horror miniatures produced by Elhiem Figures.

Press firmly indeed!
I'll start the review with a couple of figures that I received in a previous order. First up is the icon of modern pulp adventure - Indiana Jones. What line of pulp miniatures worth its name would ignore producing a not-Indiana Jones?

The first figure is Elhiem's American Adventurer (P18). He holds a .45 revolver and machette, so I'd say he was based off of a Temple of Doom Indiana Jones. The machette is held rather awkwardly, and his neck looks too long, but it is otherwise not a bad sculpt. My only other criticisms are that the hat is more of an Akubra slouch hat than a fedora, and he does not have a whip. Next to the Elhiem figure, is a plastic version of Dr. Jones from the Indiana Jones Micro Machines Set by Galoob (74822) in 1/76. This is a Raiders of the Lost Ark version, complete with a tarantula on his back. The final figure is a 15mm not-Indiana Jones from the Brigade Games Adventurers Pack (BG-G15MCP01). I like the way his hat is shaped, though the brim makes it look more like a boonie hat. He has a revolver and whip, but is wearing a duster instead of the iconic leather jacket.

I decided that I liked the Brigade hat so much, that I did a head swap with the Elhiem figure. While I was at it, I also clipped off the machette so I could replace it with a whip.

I bent his arm to a less awkward pose, and made a bullwhip from Kneadatite. I also filed down the collar of the jacket because it was just too high. I also adjusted the brim of his hat to give it a more proper look.

The next figures are the Rabbi and Clay Golem (P19). The rabbi wears a long kaftan, and a hat of some sort.

The golem miniature is based on the Golem of Prague which is typically depicted in a terracotta color, so that's how I painted it.

The next group is a comparison of the Elhiem Octopoid Priest (P24) with a mind flayer and a not-mind flayer.

The tall fellow in black is a 25mm Mind Master from Grenadier's Subterranean Terrors boxed set (2012). I really like this miniature. The elongated head is more squid-like than a typical mind flayer, and tentacles protrude from under the robes suggesting that the creature is more than just a man with an octopus (or squid) for it's head. One of these days I'll have to create a 20mm version of it. Following the Mind Master, is the Octopoid Priest. It's head is covered with a lensed hood, and the figure comes with a separate tentacle for the right arm. It too, has a tentacle protruding from under it's robes. Very creepy. I think I'll graft a regular arm on the figure though, and convert it to a mind flayer. Last in line is a 15mm Mind Flayer from the Ral Partha AD&D Battlesystem line. This particular figure came from a Chipco Evil Army set. It is a classic example of an old school mind flayer, and one of two 15mm mind flayers produced by Ral Partha.

The next miniature is Elhiem's Cultist Leader (P24). He's a bit on the chunky side and the dagger he holds will need to be replaced. It is too small, and just looks like it's in the wrong position in reference to his hand.

And last, but not least, is Mz Whip (P34). Nice.