New Year's Eve Progress (Undead and moai)

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!

Game Pieces

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)