Monthly Archives: August 2011

LotR Spiders – test model – Pre-Dip

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So for the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle game, we have a vague plan to have a small force of almost every army. Not of the sizes you’d play a 1000-point battle or what have you, but enough for a variety of small games and also enough to play through many/most/all of the various scenarios found in the sourcebooks.

With that in mind, we’re also hoping to mostly use models that aren’t crap. Unfortunately, the GW LOTR spiders are indeed crap. Overpriced as well, but really the issue is that they’re awful models.

Luckily, the GW Goblin Spider Riders aren’t crap. Overpriced, yes, but I was lucky enough to get a set of 10 off a nice bloke selling off chunks of his O&G army, and also have another 10 on the way from an eBay parts seller. All I needed to do was toss the riders in a parts box and scrounge up a bunch of round 40mm bases.

Oh yeah, and come up with a colour scheme. Since my wife hates spiders, and I’m not exactly their biggest fan when I see one inside the house, I wanted to go for a scheme that was somewhat realistic, a bit revolting, visually striking at a distance, and also not likely to be mistaken for a real spider in the house. (I had to get rid of a great big Huntsman Spider in the lounge room the other day – not fun!)

I decided on going for a yellow, exotic, almost tropical spider look. I also thought dipping would work well as an effect to give it that glossy, slimy, “ewww” factor, as well as expediting their painting. I’m also not a huge fan of the “skull” onthe back of many of the goblins’ spiders, but since there are things in nature such as the Death’s Head Moths (right, Clarice?) and knowledge that any dip would just bring up the skull details anyway, I decided to incorporate the skull into an overall stippled pattern on the model.

I couldn’t decide between red eyes (the typical, standard “evil monster” look) or green, for a more natural or vaguely realistic look – I knew I wanted to avoid blue. When I saw my metallic green paint, I decided I found the colour to try out.

So after all that, here’s my concept model, before dipping:

I’ve been reading a bit about Army Painter brand dips recently, but will be giving this guy a dunk using an old can of Wattyl stain as that’s what I have in the shed (if I can find it). If the experiment works out okay, I’ll buy an actual can of the AP dip. Probably their “light” tone.

I know there’s some visible mould lines left on the figure. It wasn’t that easy at times to work out which lines were part of the GW angular “exoskeleton/carapace”-style sculpt and which just need to be trimmed. Since this is a colour concept figure I’ll get the others done more carefully. Now I’m off to go get wood stain on my hands!

Polish Resin 2 – Maxmini Steam Knight heads, Gothic Backpacks and Shields

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Much the same as the last post, this is mainly so people can see what this stuff looks like in some decently-sized pictures and get some feedback. Like the Orc heads from my previous posting, these Steam Knight pieces are great.

Steam Knight heads

I haven’t taken close-ups of every one of them. You can see the designs on their website anyway. This is much more to show how they compare size-wise to GW’s marine heads and also to show how they fit on marine torsos. They’re a little taller and thinner than the standard, as they don’t have the large “ear/headset” sections of your standard marine helmets and are a little taller, but I think they fit in very well anyway. I plan to use some of them for Templars, possibly some for Grey Knights and some of them for Iron Warriors.

I’ll probably order another set or two, just to make sure I’ve got enough for my IWs.

Maxmini Gothic Backpacks

The Gothic Backpacks set gets you six (two of each) and while they’re not especially cheap, they’ll make great characterful backpacks for Templar marine armies. I’ve provided a comparison pic with Helbrecht’s backpack, a normal plastic marine backpack and also a chaos marine backpack. I probably won’t order another set of these, since I want them to stand out on character models (Chaplain, Techmarine(?), Emperor’s Champion, etc), though I might end up getting some more down the line for the unofficial squad leaders amongst the Neophytes and Sword Brethren.

I also picked up two different sets of Maxmini shields. I got a 10-pack of the Mechanical Shields, which is shown here by the larger one with the cross – as you can see, quite a decent size. They’re also offered as a 5-pack with 5 hammers but I passed on that since I think they offer better hammers elsewhere and I’d rather have twice the number of awesome shields than half as many with some merely “alright” hammers. (I wonder why you can’t get some Mk1 hammers mixed in with Mk2 ones in an order?).

The smaller round shields (Black Lotus Tribal Shields) also look good, and came in a 10-pack. Not sure where the name comes from, but with Eagle, Lion and Wreath designs on them, they have a nice strong “classical” look that will fit in with many space marine armies.

I’m really happy with all of the Maxminis stuff I picked up, and I’ll most likely make another order from them within the next couple of weeks.

That’s it for now! Next – Scibor.