Long enough post title for you? Sheesh, yeah!
Today’s model has a few layers of “what is this one?” in it. More than you’d expect for a simple snail model, anyway. The official name of this model from the Reaper Bones 4 campaign is “Thrasher Snail“, though as with a huge proportion of Reaper’s stuff, it’s their “Not-” version of a D&D monster, just renamed to avoid copyright issues. In this case, it’s a Not-Flail Snail. So that’s all pretty straightforward to start. However, as I’m much more of a Warhammer guy than a D&D guy, when I saw this thing, the poorly-cast flails did trip me up for several months as I scratched my head on this low-import figure trying to clean them up properly, and then figure out how to assemble them, as I just didn’t like the look of the flails.
So last weekend, motivated to get the thing painted now and finally by both Swordmaster’s Monster March and Ann’s “Neglected But Not Forgotten” painting challenges, I decided to just say “fuck it” and forget about the flails, fill in some of the holes on the sides of the snail’s head, and give it a lovely twisted unicorn-style horn to make it fit in with how I’d always planned to use the model anyway – as a Beast of Nurgle. I did need to do some carving to assemble it, as it didn’t fit together nicely. I found that adding the Bones Black to boiling water softened it enough so that my hobby knife cut through it very easily, as opposed to it being closer to resin in regards to resistance to a blade (though not shatter-fragility) when at normal room temperature.
Once I’d made that call, painting was a little tedious in painting the striations onto the shell before adding multiple glazes (and some Contrast), but overall a breeze that went quickly and easily, and was simple enough that I was able to add a layer here and there before work and after work even when bloody tired and not really in the mood to put brush to plastic.
In the end, this was a nice quick project that adds one more model to my very slowly growing Nurgle Daemonic horde.
As an addemdum, fellow blogger Imperial Rebel Ork (or, IRO) has asked people to post up some of their favourite t-shirts. I’m currenly in a state of T-Flux, but I did manage to find a few that kinda fit well enough to wear, and so here are a couple of them, with my ugly mug suitably covered so as to not scare small children and pets.
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Nice painting on the snail, especially the shell, which looks very realistic. I had forgotten about IRO’s t-shirt challenge!
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Thanks Dave. When I get a bit more time I’ll post up some more tshirt pics.
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Wonderful work on the snail, the detail in the shell and body are sublime.
Cool Tee’s as well
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Thank you Dave. I was going to go a bit more plain on the shell and then just thought I’d try making it more interesting on the spur of the moment. Glad I did given how it turned out. 👍
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Superb job mate – that shell is just amazing!! Good to see you rocking some suitably heroic t-shirtage 🙂
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Chers Alex. It worked well as a proof-of-concept for me to use again on later projects. 🙂
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I’ve wondered what that Reaper snail would be good for, and now I’ve found out. Excellent job on that and it suits a Nurgle daemon army to a T.
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Thanks Matt! I find that most of Reaper’s weird crap like this can usually be squeezed thematically into either a Chaotic, Daemonic or Undead army. 😀
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A first for me – “nice” and “snail” in the same sentence! 🙂 Looks really good!
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Not a fan of Escargot, then? 😉 Thanks John.
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Love the expression on the snails face – like life’s a drag!
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Just imagine it talking like Neil from The Young Ones…
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Lol! I’m not going to be able to get that out of my head now!
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Nice work- the spikes on the shell add a certain menace.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Nice job there… I think you’ve done much better with a unicorn snail than it would have been as a flail snail. Looking good in the t-shirts there too, although don’t think Leonard would approve of the masks around the house.
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Nice work on the snail, and cool “T”s, good idea with the masks too, I just cut my head off in the photo’s!
Cheers Roger.
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I had to double-check you were not “kitbashing” a real shell! Wow…
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Wow Az man that shell looks absolutely spot on. Incredible. Haha and thanks for the shoutout and the T’s are very cool indeed as are the masks actually. Maybe next month it could be favourite masks haha.
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The snail looks great and I really like the way you painted textures/patterns on the snail. Those T-shirts aren’t too bad either 🙂
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Good call on leaving out the flails, and the painting is gorgeous. As a side not, Thrasher Snail and Flail Snail both sound like punk rock bands, while Flail Snail could also be a B-grade super villain.
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Thanks Mikko, and I think you’re right on the money as far as potential band names go. As for the b-grade super-villain, you’re giving me Brotherhood of Evil Mutants flashbacks! 😀
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That is one heck of a great snail. I haven’t been buying new miniatures for quite awhile but I do think I want to own that snail.
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Back again. I went over to the Reaper site and looked at their snail. I vastly prefer what you did with the miniature over those stupid looking “flails.”
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