Fulfillment...

Of a Kickstarter, that is.

Today I picked up my Heresy Miniatures Kickstarter package (Apparently  previous delivery attempts had been made. I assume by one of those  "stealth"-postmen that don't use doorbells and delivery cards, as I had been home that entire day and hadn't seen or heard anything... If they'd used a regular postie, I'd have had my stuff a week earlier...)

Here's what came out of the box:

As usual, Heresy miniatures shows the excellence the  "Forum of Doom-collective" has become known and loved for. The package was sturdy and caringly wrapped, with a nice thank-you note and some candy. Little touches that really make you feel appreciated as a customer, and the fact that Heresy keeps this up, even with the insane workload of the Dragon and Kickstarter fulfillment really speaks of their dedication and deeply entrenched customer care.
But it was the contents that really blew me away this time. Heresy Miniatures metal casting has always been very good, especially considering that essentially it has always been a one man operation. (Two man now, wouldn't want to ignore "Minion Dave")
But with the resin casts from the Kickstarter Heresy really kicks it up a notch, they are just near perfect! Clean neat detail, all perfectly cast with no bubbles, no flash, barely any moldlines at all!
Really looking forward to building and painting these.

So what did I get?

I didn't go crazy overboard (My budget nowadays simply doesn't allow it anymore), but I got some cool bits to make my dungeon that more dangerous:
6 More Gribbly Slugs, the six I already had simply weren't enough, I really want to swarm my adventurers!
3 Maggotmen to serve as herders for the above.
1 Terror Grub, a huge, hideous maggot to serve as a mother/living god to the Maggotmen. Perhaps, at some point I'll also add the Maggotmen Leader to this crew of creeps.
And two trolls, a Dungeon Troll, who gets to stay just as he is, and a Snow Troll, who will get horns and hooves to become a Highland Minotaur. The latter is a conversion I had wanted to do since I first saw the snow troll, but never got around to while he was available in metal.

What's a Highland Minotaur?  Well, imagine this, but bipedal, carnivorous and extremely vicious:

See you next time!

Brother Astarte

This weekend I started painting my first true scale space marine*, but I didn't get him entirely finished. Today I had the chance to do the last few touches.

*: Now he isn't my first true scale space marine, I did one a few years back, trying to use only regular marine bits, it didn't quite work the way I wanted. He is however the first of the Howling Griffons true scale warband for games of Inquisimunda and such.

I present to you, Brother Rolan of the Howling Griffons:

The last known pict-capture of Brother Rolan, during the height of the Luyvan Insurrection, early 997.m41. The image was recorded by a security pictor inside a manufactorum near the Luyvan spaceport, hours before the final evacuation preceding Exterminatus. The Howling Griffons 5th Company performed desperate rearguard actions to allow as many key personnel and civilians to escape. As the 5th Company hasn't fought in the subsector since, it is unknown if Brother Rolan was among the last evacuees.

Brother Rolan is a battle brother of the Howling Griffon's fifth company, second squad. Brother Rolan is a recipient of the Aureum Gryphe (seen on his right greave) and has been awarded the right to personal heraldry, as depicted on his right pauldron. Both are unusual, as the lack of other markings or awarded honour-gear seem to indicate that he is still young in his career among the Astartes. On his left greave you can just make out the  badge of the Jülich Sanction campaign. The aquila beneath it indicates he was present at that campaign's culminating 5 day running battle in the great city of Lorimar's Fall. It is speculated his Aurum Gryphe and personal heraldry were earned with feats of valour during this conflict.

Plains of glass

A couple of months ago (wow, time flies) I got an extra set of glass shelves for my display cabinet, as it was slowly getting crowded.
This weekend I finally added those extra shelves to the cabinet.
For that I needed to drill extra holes to support the shelves. While I originally hoped I could do this in situ, after clearing the mini's out of the display cabinet, it quickly became obvious this would be impossible, there simply wasn't room to move a drill about and the risk of shattering the glass was too great.
So, with the aid of my loving and patient wife and son, I completely disassembled the entire thing, drilled all the holes, and proceeded to reassemble the whole contraption... I took the opportunity to properly clean it out as well, as now I could get to every last nook and cranny.
There was a moment of confusion when, instead of having parts left over as usual when assembling furniture, I had to feed extra components into the heaving mass of proto-furniture. But we overcame that and all was well.
I had a few scares when reinserting the glass shelves: Because the shelves were closer together, and there were more of them, I had more nasty little metal pegs to maneuver around, the occasional unexpected tink of impact causing me to freeze nervously. In the end, nothing broke, except a sweat, and I now have a shiny, roomier display cabinet:

I believe this is the largest conversion I've made to date. ;P

Next on the schedule is to repopulate it with my miniatures and arrange them in such a way that I can safeguard for future expansion, as I will not be undertaking the adding of shelves again!
I'm hoping I can do that over the next couple of days. Currently all my miniatures are clumped together in the old display units, which will be handed of to my sister for her hobby stuff, once I've emptied them out again. Here they are, all base-to-base in the largest inter-setting, inter-range and inter-scale melee ever:

Not really a way to do justice to lovingly assembled, converted and painted figures, is it? I'd better free them soon.

See you next time!