Cities and Madness

So, two things occurred to me recently: 1) I don't post on this blog anywhere near enough; and 2) I tend to get into the flow of my hobby work when I'm working on it and forget to take progress pictures—or I may just be lazy.

Anyway, some significant advancements on the hobby front have been made sine the last post.

First up, completing all 8 tiles for my DropZone Commander board. Very satisfying. Now I just have to paint them. And the buildings. And the roads. And then get pictures of all of them together. Anyway, pictures.

 All eight tiles laid out in what turns out to be one of very few possible 2x4 configs.

 Viewed from the side.

Viewed from dropship altitude.
As I mentioned earlier, really need to get the scenery painted as well. (At least it's built.)









The next item is something being finished—or more accurately, 3/4 finished: Crawling Chaos, fully painted, from the Cthulhu Wars game. Only have Black Goat left to do.

 The entire faction, in all its glory.

 Cultists, each holding different spellbooks.

 Six Cultists, six spellbooks.

Nightguants. Not particularly strong in combat, but can steal off with cultists or unwary monsters.

 Flying Polyps. Somewhat better in combat, but it's their spellbook that makes them great—they get to stop an enemy monster from fighting at all by sacrificing their own attacks.

 Hunting Horrors. Good in combat. Even better with their spellbook which allows them to fly into any battle you have to fight.

 The great blue gribbly himself, Nyarlathotep. Weak in the early game, but late game he can be the most destructive Great Old One on the board.


















And Nyarlathotep from behind. Enjoy all those gribbly tentacles and other appendages.


















And last but not least, we have the start of the Black Goat faction, which I was airbrushing just this afternoon.

 Cultists and lesser monsters (Fungi and Ghouls).

Shub-Niggurath and her Dark Young.

From the depths

So, a few weeks back I finally received my Cthulhu Wars kickstarter bundle. It was pricey at the time, but now having it in my hot little hands it is totally worth it. There are some 72 miniatures in there (though that's a slight cheat because 8 of them are little power tokens, but I digress), and the largest of those are the great old ones, with Cthulhu himself standing nearly 8" tall to his wingtips. The others aren't far behind.

They all start out completely unpainted, but for a game this awesome, that just wouldn't do, so I grabbed out the airbrush, mixed up some "deep sea" colours, and got started. After something like 20? hours I have now finished one entire faction… Great Cthulhu, of course.

 That's everything as it stands on my painting desk. 4 Deep Ones, 6 Cultists, 2 Shoggoths, 2 Star Spawn, 2 power markers, and of course 1 Cthulhu.

 These bad boys are my cultists. In the game they are your most important units, the only ones capable of building and opening gates to the realm of the great old ones. And yes, each of those spellbooks is different.

These guys actually took the longest to paint, mostly because they have so much fine detail on them, and perhaps because I'm a little nuts. I still have to touch up some belts and daggers before varnishing them.

Deep Ones. Basic monsters, and good for defending cultists. Or if you want you can simply turn your cultists into one of these, preventing an enemy from capturing them.

 Shoggoths. These will eat anything, and gain a combat boost if they do.

 Star Spawn. With the right spellbook these guy become nigh indestructible, and are possibly the best pure combat monsters in the game. The other factions have a lot of tricksy abilities that can negate that potential though.

Cthulhu. Not looking so great due to some camera flash, but most of that is airbrush colour plus several washes. In the game he's the simplest great old one both to summon and to use. He's also very, very cheap to re-awaken due to being, y'know, immortal.

Bronzed Flesh…

After applying said colour across my whole FoG force (barring Thracians—who will have darker flesh—and cav, who are only undercoated) I think I'm going to wind up dreaming in bronzed flesh tonight. Maybe not a bad thing.

Innuendo aside, it means four more battlegroups are that much closer to being finished, and the day's not even over yet. Next big colour will be VGC Khaki, for bases, followed by a drybrush of VMC Pale Sand.

And even with all the battlegroups I'm making progress on, I've still get to touch the terrain. I think the airbrush will be coming out this evening to rectify that. It'll just be a khaki base, then a mist coat (or maybe a drybrush) of plae sand for highlights. If I can keep the painting streak going, might even be able to get some colour on the trees, pale sand + ghost grey for the conifers, and desert yellow + khaki (or maybe desert tan) for the olive trees.

I haven't built or painted anything Infinity related for a long time now. That's going to be my reward at the halfway point, to build the Iguana TAG I got for Christmas to start my Qapu Khalqi force. But for now, it's all FoG in preparation for Battlecry.

And speaking of said tourney, as long as I don't come dead last (or second-last) I'll consider it a win. Well, it'll probably be a win anyway just for the number of games we'll play and the people we'll meet. And the other, much better painted armies we'll see. Which reminds me—I need a new camera before then.

Late breaking edit: Well, that would have a worked a whole lot better had my airbrush not packed a sad halfway through painting the terrain. I have narrowed it down to either the nozzle ring, or the nozzle itself, despite having given everything a thorough cleaning, one of those two pieces is impeding airflow somehow when fully tightened.

I'll fix it after gaming tomorrow hopefully.