"Heroquest Skeletons: Rise up, you dead ...

... slain by the Heroes of the old world. Rise from your graves and avenge us. Those who steal from the dungeons of Morcar must die."

                                                           King Aeetes - Jason & the Argonauts (adapted)

What a fantastic film Jason and the Argonauts is from giant metal terror Talos, past the Clashing Rocks and on to the finale with the skeletons: The Children of the Hydra's teeth. It is why I like science-fiction/fantasy so much as watching this film and Clash of the Titans as a child really captured my imagination (or maybe it was Spinal in Killer Instinct).

Time to Harvest some Heroes.

A quick rundown of how I painted these skeletons:

First up I undercoated them in skull white. Then I used a watered down chaos black covering the entire model. Left to dry and did the same for the other four. After drying, I drybrushed the bones with skull white trying to avoid the recesses.

The scythe shaft was painted with a vermin brown first and then a slightly watered down scorched brown. Whilst the blade of the scythes were first painted with Brass Scorpion, then drybrushed/stipled with boltgun metal and then very lightly covered with some watered down chaos black.

All that remained was to pick out parts of the skeleton with bleached bone and tidy up on skeletons head that wasn't as well defined as the rest.

Basing was chaos black, followed by white glue and then flocked with Javis Moorland Mixture (bought at Pullingers or can be found online).

For early photos of these skeletons you can check them out here:
https://oldhammer40kquest.blogspot.com/2017/02/heroquest-skeletons-dem-bones.html

I wonder if they talk like Murray from Monkey Island?

That's all this time. Stay tuned when I should have some 2nd Edition space orks painted up to show you. 

Movie Review: Mimic (1997)

Mimic (1997)

If you have been following these occasional movie reviews you may be noticing a little bit of a trend in that they are all either monster or horror related. This is no mere coincidence as I do love a good scare filled movie with some sort of creature or supernatural force that will pluck its victims one by one until only a scared few remain.

So with that in mind I watched Mimic recently. One of the early Guillermo del Toro films this is one of those films that has great ideas but doesn't quite know which one to go with. It starts off with a plague in New York caused by cockroaches, but this is passed over as it is merely set up for the main story of the Judas Breed which should have died out after wiping out the plague carrying insects but instead inevitably found a way to survive.

There are various subplots which go no where or do very little such as sweatshop workers being quarantined, the main scientist getting bitten, a kid mimicking the sounds of the creatures with spoons and a professor type who is introduced but has no bearing on the plot at all. As an aside this film also has a early film appearance from Josh Brolin, which is really cool.

For all this I was still entertained, the sub way police man Norton is great (Played by the guy who was Dillon in Alien 3, the convicts preacher). While there are two kids who hustle the lead lady bug scientist because they keep finding bugs to sell her who I liked and the actual atmosphere and ideas are good if not pulled off. I felt they could have done a lot more with the actual idea of these things mimicking humans.

Late at night in a subway, what could possibly go wrong?

As for the creatures, cockroaches that have evolved to mimic there prey, namely us. They are pretty cool especially the idea of using there shells to form a human shape and face like a man in a trench coat. (the subway reveal scene is really something). Indeed it gave me ideas for a Necromunda campaign where these things have infested a Delaque territory and you don't know if the sentries you need to avoid are human gangers or a human sized cockroaches.

Overall if you fancy a slightly ridiculous but entertaining film about the perils of genetically modifying nature watch Jurassic Park, but if you have seen that and want something a bit more daft and violent (quite a few characters are dispatched in this film) then Mimic is wortha watch.

3.5 out of 5 pumpkins.

Heroquest Skeletons: Dem Bones

Got some time to get some painting done this weekend so been working on the Skeletons from Heroquest.

As a big fan of the game as a child and now with some showing interest in playing the game I thought it might be worthwhile painting up the miniatures. A lot of the orcs and goblins are done so I thought I should move on to the other most prolific monster you may find on your adventures.

The undead arrive.

As you can see these scythe wielding undead were in a various states when I got back to the them, one (the middle one) also somehow was severed from the hip bone for some reason.

A quick superglue connection and some watered down black paint and these guys soon began to take shape. Drybrush after with skull white and then paint up the wood part of the scythe followed by the blade (trying brass scorpion as a bit of an experiment here).

Looking tabletop ready now

Due to free time running out I had to finish here so the blades metal paint and the bleached bone highlights will have to wait for the time being.

You may be wondering about the one skeleton with the scythe facing the other way. Well as I was painting I was flicking about on the internet looking at Heroquest stuff and found the monster card for skeletons which looks like this.

Undead Poldark 

From an actual action point of view this makes sense as to swing a scythe you would hold it like that, From a gameplay use it's a bit clunky and wide. But hey I thought why not switch up one for some variety. A quick cut and flip and presto skeleton with scythe facing the other way.

 Beware heroes the undead are ready to harvest!

Well that's it for today, some skeletons ready for the board after a little tidy when I next get another chance with the paintbrush.

Those with loaded guns and those who dig, You dig.

Yep time to get some miniatures painted up but with the limited light outside and not a whole lot of time I will have to settle for making a start.

Now what my Necromunda does not have is a bounty hunter hireling. A mean son of a gun who can bring these gangers and outlaws to justice. I could buy one of the official minis but frankly they are very expensive on ebay. So in true style I decided to convert up my own and get to painting.

In the underhive or Jabba's palace this guy is going to get his bounty.

This is one of the brat minis that was released for Confrontation. I got this model cheaply from ebay but wasn't really sure what to do with it until I realised my lack of bounty hunters in the underhive. As those seeking payment for capturing criminals on the run it seemed fair that they be dressed differently to the usual gangs.

As bounty hunters in the rules are armed to the teeth it made choosing the weapons quite  a lot of fun. The chainsword arm is from a imperial guard while the lasgun arm is a mix of dark eldar and plastic orlock. I intend to add some wires/tubes to indicate this is a hotshot power pack lasgun. He also has a shotgun from the old additional weapons for Necromunda slung to his back.

For painting I'm not sure yet where I am going with this model, the face is actually a mask so there is opportunity to go wild on this guy.

Hope to have some updates on this guy and some other underhive units in the coming weeks, til next time.

An anthropomorphic mole and how I learned to look everywhere for terrain guides ...

Sometimes in the bleak wintry conditions of a miserable wet February a moment of left-field greatness can pop into ones life.

As I stare into the drizzle peppering the windows from where I type I glace down at this surprising find. But I am getting ahead of myself, let me take you back a couple of months before Christmas. A time when presents needed buying and brandy fueled cake actually remained. In this time I had purchased a gift of a Sylvanian Families set. Four cute & adorable animals in people clothes who are about 4 inches in height. They arrived well in time for the big day and was a well received gift. But with this present came a catalog for more from the range. Naturally I gave this little thought and left it in the box.

Fast forward a month and knowing my girlfriend likes the range so much I passed her the catalog to have a look at. After lots of oohs, ahhs and look the fox family is on an outing to the supermarket she found something that raised an eyebrow. A build your own Sylvanian families set and terrain. (This example included a mine shaft with a mole.)

Just imagine if it had been a Rat family, Skaven in a mine!!

I felt like I had stumbled on secret terrain building tech lost to the ages. On checking through this it wasn't just a one page piece either, seven whole pages to modeling a set for the sylvanian families to live in. 

Now obviously a 4 inch tall mole is a bit bigger than your average clanrat or space marine but still these are fantastic guides to building scenery.

So I thought I would share them all here and maybe it will be of some use to someone out there.

I hope this was useful for someone, until next time where I might have generated some of this scenery or at least painted some models up to show you.