Move, you Maggots!

More Heresy Miniatures this time. His "lovely" range of maggots this time.
Here's the whole happy family:

 The paintjob was fairly easy, just a mix of washes and drybrushes over a fleshtone basecoat, leaving me to focus on choosing the right colours for maximum ickyness. : )
After that it was a matter of painting them all in satin varnish to offset the matness from the drybrushings, giving them the ever so slightest sheen and hitting the hard bits, like teeth and spines, with gloss varnish. A little dab of Tamiya Transparent Red over the bits of gore in one of the Maggotmen's hands and Bob's your mothers brother!
Because they are resin casts and the bottoms of the minis have plenty of contact surface for a secure glue bond, I painted the bases and minis separately and glued them together at the very last.
These will join the 5 giant maggots/grubs I already had, giving me a gross little herd to swamp heroes with!

Here are a few more closeups of the lot:

"Mother", the God-Grub:

(To give an idea of size, she's on a 50mm base.)

"The Keepers", servants of Mother and herders of the giant maggots and grubs:

(These are on 25mm bases)

"The Children", giant maggots and grubs:

(On 20mm round bases)

These nasty gribblies were all so much fun to paint!

See you next time!

Some stuff

Not much going on hobbywise due to a chronic, stubborn case of Real Life. But, still a little sign of life now and then is nice, isn't it?

Past weekend, a friend of ours threw an arts and crafts day/party. As we had to keep things compact this time the option of taking my miniature painting gear along (as I and a few friend had done previous times) fell by the wayside. Instead I opted to bring my dungeon basing tools along and prep some milliput discs the evening before.
To summarise the party: There was cake, lots of cake, delicious cake! It was good. Cake.... My friends were silly and hilarious, as they are wont to do in congregations above a certain size (i.e. more than one ;P ).
Oh, and I finished the milliput work on the bases for my Knights family, a minstrel, a druid and a paladin. I guess that bears mentioning as well...
This means the minstrel and paladin are effectively ready for paint. The family still needs dirt added and the druid needs erupting plantlife and dirt added before they are ready for primer.
Here they are:

(For completeness sake: the Paladin is a Privateer Press IKRPG Paladin of the Wall with a headswap and serial numbers Menoth Icons filed off, the family and minstrel are from Hasslefree Miniatures, and the druid is from the former Spyglass/Eolith range, now sold by Heresy Miniatures.)

Also some housekeeping: I intended this as a gaming/miniatures blog, but I found that I had an increasing number of medieval/re-enactment related blogs in my blogroll. I consider them relevant to this forum, as a lot of my interests in gaming are inspired by history/historical interest. But to keep things tidy and to prevent confusion, I've separated them into their own little blogroll.

Finally there is this:
An online petition to GW to change their ways and reconnect with their customer base.
A candle in the wind, I know, but I might as well spread the word. For a long time they were the reason I started, and continued, to wargame. They'll never be again who they were when I started gaming, but who knows, the new CEO might take notice? ;-P

See you next time!

Heresy!

As I came home from a day of sightseeing with the misses (went to see Hieronimus Bosch's paintings. Great stuff!),  I found a  small discreetly wrapped package behind the front door...

My little order from Heresy Miniatures had arrived! What a perfect way to end a nice day out!

So, what did I get from them?
Well, 2 packs of their brilliant Giant Slug, to terrorize and gross out any hero who wants to venture into the dungeons. And two new additions to the roster of heroes: Brother Bude, the Exorcist and Autumn, the Wood Elf sorceress.
And as a bonus, a nice roll of Fizzers was included as well! Together with a little personal note from Andy.

The miniatures I got were, as expected, great: well sculpted and impeccably cast, a few very minor specs of excess metal where the vents were cut onto the mold and I really had to look to see mold lines.
These figures will be an absolute joy to prep and paint!

But what impresses me most is the treatment and appreciation you get as a customer:
Andy Foster, Heresy's owner, replies personally if you order. In my case he even apologized for his late reply... He responded well within 24 hours! Not tardy by a long stretch in my books!
 As his website clearly stated there would be delays and it might take a while to send orders out due to a big project he is working on, I was actually rather surprised he responded that fast. Especially because he wrote the mail to let me know he had shipped my order. Several items in my order were listed as "out of stock" when I made my order, the day before, but that didn't stop Andy's 24 hour order fulfillment. Wow!
It's things like this that bring a big old smile to my face and gets you a spot on my "bloody brilliant companies to deal with"shortlist.

This high standard of service, of genuine attention and care to you, as a customer, is something that exemplifies Heresy miniatures and the other members of the "Forum of Doom Quartet"* and because of that, I can't sing their praises enough. If there is any regret I have when dealing with any of them it's that I simply don't have the amount of money this collective of fine people deserve to have thrown at them...

*: aka Hasslefree Miniatures, Heresy Miniatures, Fenris Games and Black Scorpion.