Cryx Deathjack LED Teaser

Expect some pictures soon of my mostly finished Mansions of Madness, but in the meantime, here's a little something I have been working on for as the next project...




I will be working with clear caulk to mold out some ghostly trails around the LED, but I dont want to diffuse the main beam too much. I'm hoping that during a game I can engulf the deathjack's current victim in a green haze, room lighting permitting. The glow gets around the major areas I was hoping for, though I probably could add one to the back, or drill out the main exhausts and fill them with clear caulk to try to carry the light. As it stands I will probably just mimic that with the paintjob.

Here is one of the other works in progress, which took considerably more effort due to recasting the body in clear resin. The green is off, it should be closer to the deathjack, a little more cyan tinged.



And here is one of the original works, also recast in clear resin, though it loses quite a bit of detail. The paintjob was a test, and not likely to be the one I keep.


The LED's wont stop at the jacks though, expect some very small lighting attempts before this army is through.

Painting Mansions of Madness!

The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

H.P. Lovecraft

"Call of Cthulhu"

Well, I have been unable to post updates per week as I would have liked, but that does not mean I have not been progressing where it counts!
(edit: Fixed this pic so you can click for a larger view)

I'm most of the way through the monsters, with only a couple left to go. I am thinking of switching gears to get some of the investigators out of the way next, as I definitely want them all finished in time.

You can see what I have left here:








I will do a breakdown of my steps in a future post, but here is a quick look at how I prepped the models. I first took an exacto and file to the mold lines, which proved to be a bit more difficult to remove compared to GW plastics. After that, I washed and scrubbed them all to get rid of any remaining demold agents. I decided that the easiest way to keep them upright was to put them on their bases, but I did not want to spray the bases a bunch, so I cut out some wax paper to put between the model and base.





This worked fairly well for the priming, but I would probably skip it next time around. The models don't stay in the base very well, so it can lead to annoyances later on when painting.






This would have helped more if I had followed through with spraying all of the monsters with colored base coats like I originally planned. I ended up forgetting about it, and just handpainted the basecoat on most.

More to follow soon.

Mansions of Madness March!

I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness...

H.P. Lovecraft

"From Beyond"

It's time for another month painting challenge!

Mansions of Madness is a recently released board game by Fantasy Flight for 2-5 players that is set in the Lovecraft mythos of the early 1900's. If you are unfamiliar with it and interested in learning about it, I recommend checking out the HP Podcraft podcast for a crash course.

The new game pulls characters, setting, and art from the the Arkham Horror game, however the game mechanics are very different. It is more heavily skewed towards a narrative flow, and splits most of the players as investigators against one keeper player. The investigators work together to solve the mystery of the mansion and ultimately how to stop the keeper. Meanwhile, the keeper gets to toy with the investigators through dangerous monsters, inciting madness, and playing mind games.



Included are 32 miniatures, just waiting to be painted! Boardgamers might not be as used to the idea of painting set pieces, making them likely to leave them in their grey plastic form. In my opinion, you should paint(or get someone to paint) these wonderful miniatures as soon as possible to get the most out of an already amazing atmosphere. The longer you wait the more likely you are to never get around to painting the set!

Now that my box has arrived there is no time to lose! I hope to debut this game in a month for a certain Lovecraft-themed birthday bash, and I will be showing progress shots as I go. I encourage anyone who is interested to pick their own paint challenge and paint along with me for this month! Feel free to post pictures of your own.

So as you might surmise, this is going to be a very Lovecraftian month for my postings. I hope they'll be enjoyable.