Mythic Battles: Pantheon – Manticore

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Mythic Battles: Pantheon - Manticore

Today’s model is another from a miniatures-heavy kickstarter. More specifically, from the people over at Monolith Games, who also brought us the Conan Boardgame, and more recently, Batman (which I ain’t opened yet). I started this one shortly after finishing that Dragon from the Conan Kickstarter, by the same people.

They did a pretty faithful job to the artwork, too.

Funniest thing regarding the artwork and my paintwork – I just googled for and downloaded the artwork now to add to this post so we could see how the model stood up to the concept art. I painted the model without any reference pics – black claws, dark scales, luminous green poison…

Mythic Battles: Pantheon - Manticore

I mean, it’s no real stretch to go golden and brown with a lion’s fur and mane. The oversized, Trish Carden/Morrison-style scales (a sculpting trait which I hate, btw) across the model were done in dark red-brown to mesh with the predominant colour of the scorpion tail, which is basically a way to give more interest to something that was going to basically be… not black, but dark. Luminous green for the poison because it contrasts well with the dark red, and because green is RPG shorthand for “poison”. I went with black for the claws to match the black for the wing-talon-spikes, because I felt black would look better on the wings against the tan. I went with a purple mixed with flesh for the wing membranes so they’d stand out and look monstrous, but not quite cartoony-monstrous.

Mythic Battles: Pantheon - Manticore

Overall, the model was a pretty nice one to paint, and didn’t take too long for me to get through, when compared to most other monsters. It’s quite a nice sculpt, unlike the dragon and it came mounted on the plastic base, also unlike the dragon – so it seems that Monolith learned some important lessons in between Kickstarter campaigns.

Mythic Battles: Pantheon - Manticore

A Deathwatch Space Marine gives us the scale shot.

Speaking of lessons, I’ve got a bit of an unfortunate habit of starting more of the same kinds of models as soon as I finish something like the Skaven that I’ve recently finished and have WIP – picked basically right after I finished the Pestilens models, which is how this model got plucked from a box filled with KS expansion boxes. I mean, I’m happy with this model and how it turned out, but I have decided to stop myself from plucking any further large monsters until I complete the three or four I have on the go already. Yeah. Four.

Anyway, while a few elements aren’t entirely to my taste (the scales, horn shape) it’s overall a pretty good model and I’m glad I got it done. I can easily squeeze a beast like this into a variety of miniatures games, aside from Pantheon. If the rest of the models turn out to be produced this nicely, I’ll be quite happy…

39 thoughts on “Mythic Battles: Pantheon – Manticore”

  4. That’s a pretty great Manticore. I actually like it a lot better than GW’s, which isn’t something I often find myself saying, since I like their aesthetic in general. But this one looks more solid, and more like the mythological source material. Particularly the big bulky mane and the scorpion tail.

    That’s a good colour scheme for it, too. I can see how both you and the concept artist ended up with a similar approach. The lion and scorpion parts are both fairly common colours for those species, and purple offsets them both very nicely. Came out looking great!

    Interestingly, I’ve been going through Trish Carden’s facebook posts about her various sculpts, and she talked about the oversized scales a bit in the post about her Orc Warboss on Wyvern. I’m still not a fan of them in general, but on some stuff, particularly monsters related to orcs/orks with their crude, brutish aesthetic, I’m starting to like them more.

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    • Yeah, the colours were pretty natural and easy choices for those elements. I’ve got the GW one somewhere, though still unbuilt. It’ll be interesting once I find it and get round to painting it.
      Did Trish say anything about the scales? I’ve never had a huge issue with her sculpts otherwise – though I’m not fond of her standard monster-face either, but it was terribly disappointing at the time to see her stupid scales ruin range after range as they got resculpted by her as their go-to “monster” sculptor for so long. Raptors, Flesh Hounds.. ergh…

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      • She only talked about them in relation to that one Wyvern sculpt, where I feel like they did work pretty well. Probably a case of over-generalizing beyond a given tool’s niche.

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      • I feel like that on certain models they can look okay at best, but they never look as good as a proper, scale texture to give a more realistic impression of an actual living organic creature. Then seeing them on everything she sculpted over time just made them and their awfulness stand out all the more.

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      • You’re very welcome! And if you’re curious as to why someone with a Nintendo site has a keen interest in minis, my current site is actually: battlesinmiddleearth.wordpress.com. My Nintendo site is old and I can’t seem to get WordPress to update my info to the MESBG one. With that said, I’m looking forward to following your work and seeing more awesome minis! 🙂

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      • Well, it does make sense in that many of us have multiple hobbies – I’m big into videogaming and wrestling myself – and lately have gotten into fitness, though my main focus here on the blog is the minis. With blogs like yours and the odd other one, I assume that the writers like minis or minis gaming as well as whatever their own blogs’ topic is. Then there are the ones that are clearly people/businesses fishing for more followers. Those are pretty easy to spot, though!
        I’ve added your ME site to my follows, so I’ll check it out soon!

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      • Painting minis replaced my hobby of collecting figures/toys (although both are toys in their own right) though my love of video games is still strong 🙂 I keep my site only focused on ME but if I had the time, I’m sure I’d play and write about more wargames much like you do. I need a break from ME minis sometimes so the odd AOS or 40k mini may make it on to my site as well 🙂 Thank you for the follow and I hope it is of interest! I will be following your site regardless as I like the scope and quality of posts. Not many sites focus mostly or solely on ME as well.

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      • I’ve collected Star Wars 3 3/4″ figures as well as 1:6 (12″) figures (Hot Toys, Soldier Story, Dragon, etc) but always returned to miniatures, as money and space is finite.

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      • That’s awesome! I collected some Star Wars as well. Figures of that size take up a lot of room unfortunately (especially in-box) and I find that minis take up less room and I get more “usage” out of them from painting to playing so that was a big reason why I switched hobbies! Glad to hear others out there have had similar experiences 🙂

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      • Yeah they do. I’ve got a lot of cleaning up and out to figure out one day for all that stuff. While I’d like to have it ALL on display one day, it’s unlikely that I’ll have a museum-sized house to do it in. I’d planned to do a bunch over last summer but it just didn’t work out…

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      • That is exactly the problem I ran into and I have gotten rid of about half of my old collection and probably will need to get rid of more to make room for minis one day. It is kind of a bummer but minis give me more joy so it seems like the right decision.

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    • Yep, but short of cutting them down or resculpting them (way too much work for me to bother with), not too much I could do there. BTW, did you get the “care package” from Orez?

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