Shadows of Brimstone: The Harvesters from Beyond

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“Harvesters from Beyond” are large treasure seeking aliens crossing the void into our world (or any Otherworld the heroes might be exploring) wearing massive, armoured “deep sea diving” encounter suits. As you might imagine, they are bloody terrifying in game as they are like tanks and very difficult to put down.

I did them in different shades of metal as I don’t really like my minis being competely identical even though they are identical in game. I painted these to be dark and menacing, so I kept the “eye buds” or lights or ports or whatever they are meant to be black , like a spider’s eyes. Said eye buds are getting a coat of gloss varnish after I get round to spraying them with the usual matt varnish I use.

I expect the makers have played Bioshock as well.

 

 

Harvesters from Beyond

large enemies from the expansion of the same name for

Shadows of Brimstone

Flying Frog Productions

HIPS plastic

40mm bases

 

Painted so far this month: 35/31 target surpassed

Painted so far this year: 193 / 365. Just 172 to go

Shadows of Brimstone: Reservoir Bandits

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Mr. Pink: [about Mr. Blonde] He seems okay now, but he was crazy in the store.

Mr. White: This is what he was doing…

[mimics randomly shooting innocent bystanders]

Mr. White: Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

Mr. Blonde: Yeah, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. I told ’em not to touch the alarm… but they touched it. If they hadn’t done what I told ’em not to do, they’d still be alive.

Mr. White: [clapping] My fucking hero.

Mr. Blonde: [taking a bow] Thanks.

Mr. White: That’s your excuse for going on a kill-crazy rampage?

Mr. Blonde: I don’t like alarms, Mr. White.

-Reservoir Dogs (1992)

 

Mr Blue, Mr Brown, Mr White, Mr Pink, Mr Blonde and Mr Orange. Those are the only names they know each other by. They are gathered to perform a heist, let us just hope none of them are undercover deputies that already have told the law about their plans to rob the diamond store…

 

 

What to do with six identical western bandit models? Go Reservoir Dogs. The black suits turned into black dusters and hats, their colourful names became shirts, facial kerchief/mask/whatever it is called and the ring detail on their hats.

Now they are so much more interesting as individual gang members rather than just some random cowboys gone bad.

Well, to me at least.

 

The Bandits

from the Frontier Town Expansion for

Shadows of Brimstone

HIPS plastic

30mm bases

 

 

Painted so far this month: 32/31 target surpassed

Painted so far this year: 190 / 365. Just 175 to go

Shadows of Brimstone: The Scourge Rats

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Taking up some of the slack on Shadows of Brimstone, next up is the Scourge Rats and their three-burrowed nest.

These are small enemies, and as such, there are a lot of them.

A dozen of the little blighters, to be precise. The Scourge Rats are mutated by the darkstone making them them big mutant monster rats much larger than normal rats, and with two tails a piece and a back ridge of poisonous spines.

I chose to make mine zombie mutant monster plague rats, on account of details on the minis that I interpreted as wounds and open ribs.  Alternatively the very blue eyes might be seen as your typical mutant warp-frenzied crazy shining through.

 

Each of the 12 rats has its very own different color combination!

I did them in four different base flesh colour variants and one each of those with black, grey, brown and tan fur respectively. Some detailing, red and purple gore and then a wash with a mix of army painter quickshade strong tone and green tone (the mix ratio being a small puddle of the first and a few drops of the second…)

When dry I did the mouths and eye cavities in black before giving them all a very light drybrush with reaper MSP vampiric skin, before dotting in some teeth with the same vampric skin. A bit of Vallejo Game Colour Magic Blue topped with and old Gamecraft Turquoise (which is a very  light shade) in teh eyes, some old Hobby Games Products (same paint as the really old citadel) Emerald on the back spines and some reaper MSP Brains Pink for the tips of the noses.

The different base colours serve to individualize them, while using the same wash and detailing colours together with similar basing serves to tie them together as a cohesive unit.

These were prepped and based with 30mmx20mm oval bases from war-bases.co.uk long before I got my 3D printer, or else I would have printed lipped ovals for them as well.

In the game, the nest is not just window dressing, but an immobile XL enemy that can produce more scourge rats and as such poses a major threat to the heroes as they might suddenly get overwhelmed. The rats are fast and have very high initiative. An unwary hero can rapidly be nickled and dimed to death.

The nest is roughly 6x6cm and takes up four squares on the board.

The scourge rats expansion increases the available small type enemies to three.

 

Scourge Rats and Rat Nest

from the expansion of the same name for

Shadows of Brimstone

Flying Frog Productions

HIPS plastic

20x30mm oval MDF bases

 

Painted so far this month: 26/30 Just 4 to go

Painted so far this year: 184 / 365. Just 181 to go

Shadows of Brimstone: The Burrower aka we have wormsign!

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Peekaboo!

 

Not content with making a massively large monstrous worm to harass the heroes, the makers of Shadows of Brimstone gave their worm the obligatory cthulhoid mass of tentacles sprouting out of it’s gigantic maw! Try stopping that with a six-shooter…

   

Nyah, Nyah, Nyah!

 

It’s big enough to stand on top of and ride over the dunes…

For some reason, it ended up mostly purple. I think the red should have been a bit more muted, towards brown. Maybe I’ll go back and give it a darkening wash or three to correct that redness. But for now, it’s done.

Also, this made me think of the movie “The Burrowers” a western horror monster-thingy. I liked it alot, and recommend it heartily. It is not for the faint of heart, what with being quite graphic and brutal in parts.

 

 

The Burrower

from the Burrower XXL Enemy Pack expansion

Shadows of Brimstone

Flying Frog Productions

HIPS plastic

There is no base as such, it is slightly more than 10cms across the bottom part.

 

 

Painted so far this month: 13/30 Just 17 to go

Painted so far this year: 171 / 365. Just 194 to go

Avatars of Sandstone

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I have many minis from the Bones and other kickstarters that I have prepped and undercoated, but do not have any immediate inspiration to paint, so they sit around looking sad.

Then some inspiration strikes, and I paint them up in a flurry.

 

So with these:

 

I suppose they should have been painted in brilliant white cloths, gold and blue stripes and all that.

But I wanted some living statues, elementals or golems, quickly.

 

77338: Avatar of Sokar (middle)

77339: Avatar of Thoth (left)

77340: Avatar of Sekhmet (right)

Reaper Bones KS2

Bonesium PVC

40mm and 50mm bases

 

Painted so far this month: 12/30 Just 18 to go

Painted so far this year: 170 / 365. Just 195 to go

 

Isle of the Beholders: 3D printed Axolote

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You know what to listen to for this:

 

And they* said 3D printing poses no threat to traditional miniatures…

well maybe not yet, but still:

  

This is a 3Dprint I printed out myself on my cheapo Flashforge Finder. Printed in PLA with .01 layer height. I scaled it a bit randomly to make a large one.

The original model is by Axolote Gaming, an unexpected bonus item from their second Kickstarter, and also one of the better models of a Beholder I have seen yet.

You can see the stepping from the printing process if you look closely. This is particularily obvious in the teeth and the eyeball as.the gloss varnish I used on the eye really made the stepping apparent. It was not half as bad before.

At any rate, the stepping is really only apparent when looked at closely, or when magnified such as in the pictures. The fangs are a bit misshapen here and there, mostly from my printer not being all that great. I have not used a file when prepping, just clippers and a sharp hobby knife. Maybe a file would have straightened those teeth out properly. Something to try next time.

The tentacles are hollow as their cross sections are to small to include any infill. This means they are quite brittle and prone to snappin off. Luckily only one of them broke during the removal of the supports though.

My printer also left a lot of extremely fine hair-like strings attached to the finished print, so together with removing the print-supports there was quite a lot of prepwork.

At least I did not have to wash it to get rid of the mould’s release agents, as I have realized the truth: there is no mould.

 

  

A note about painting 3D models: Neither drybrushing nor washes are good techniques for them, as the stepping will get accented and more pronounced. (and here I am with drybrushing and washes as my favorite techniques… argh!)

 

and to make the size apparent:

I used a 50mm lipped base with a paperclip to make the stand.

 

Beholder

model by Axolote Gaming

3D printed at .01 layer height

PLA

50mm base

 

*They still being Tom Kirby CEO of Games Workshop in  the 2014 GW Chairman’s Preamble to the Games Workshop CEO annual report.

 

Painted so far this month: 9/30 Just 21 to go

Painted so far this year: 167 / 365. Just 198 to go

 

Shadows of Brimstone: The Doorways into Darkness

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Life happens, and I get into a funk loosing my painting mojo for weeks on end. It is the way of things.

So to get into the groove again, I decided to do some neglected bits, starting with the Doorways into Darkness portals from the expansion by that very same name for Shadows of Brimstone. After all, no dungeon crawler worth it’s salt will be caught dead without proper 3D-pieces for the doors or portals!

170520 shadows of brimstone doorways into darkness 1a

The down to Earth mineshaft portals, and

170520 shadows of brimstone doorways into darkness 2a

the extradimentional void portals. The alien writing in the ..ahem…locking chevrons of these demonic-looking Stargates probably read “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here” or some such.

Yes there are oil lamps on both sides of the mineshaft portals, but as I think they wouldn’t be lighted when the heroes bumble into the mines, I did not do any lighting effects. Yes that is the reason. Not that I am quite lazy these days. Nope not that at all.

Apart from the eight plastic portals, the Doorways into Darkness-expansion also includes a few good equipment cards, which are the only actual additions to the game itself in this expansion. The Portals themselves do not have any rules or special effects apart from (in my opinion dramatically) enhancing the look of the game layout on the table, and therefore enhancing the game experience itself. I certainly prefer to use them.

 

Doorways into Darkness

expansion for Shadows of Brimstone

Flying Frog Productions

HIPS plastic

 

Painted so far this month: 8 /30. Just 22 to go.

Painted so far this year: 166 / 365. Just 199 to go