Greetings Terrans, how goes it? Last post I promised you something massive… well, everyone knows Jungle is massive!

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These are quick and easy pieces – just cheapy aquarium plants glued to 50mm steel washers with a bit of polyfiller & texture on the base… simples! Here are some more pics with my scurvy crew:

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Wait a sec, what’s that stomping through the jungle?

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Ok, so THIS is the massive thing I hinted at last week – look at the fecking size of it! This is obviously a 3D print of the Ray Harryhausen Talos from Jason and the Argonauts, (big shout out to my pal Mark for the 3D print job – he’s a real-life Hephaestus!). I am delighted with this not-so-mini – Talos, and JatA is probably where my love of fantasy (and models) first started… I still remember being a wee boy glued to a tiny tv set to watch it over and over again… It was one of the few films we had taped onto VHS, and I watched this film to death. That moment when Talos first animates still rocks my world today, and this model is absolutely a pressie to 5-year-old me:

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Assembly was great fun – there are 4 inch screws holding it to the base, and connecting the torso to the legs… the hands and sword were also separate & required some serious pinning. I did consider using pins and magnets to allow me to disassemble the piece, but decided against that for aesthetic reasons – basically, I didn’t want to see the joins, so I used Greenstuff to fill any gaps & make good on a few areas of the print.

Painting this beast was great fun – black spray, bronze basecoat, shitloads of green & brown wash, Verdigris, more wash, polish with a paper towel, etc. It was really rough & ready work, and the tell-tale lines from the printing process really add to the overall effect. To be honest, the base took more effort, with a few nice touches to give the whole thing a sense of scale.

Anyhoo, that’s all for this post – more Ghost Archipelago to follow, plus I’m feeling the lure of a certain controversial Cursed City…

Greetings Terrans, how goes it? I have a fun little update for you today – I’ve taken a break from my GA crew & started working on terrain items, objectives, and painting up monsters – all very much with a Ray Harryhausen vibe! First up, I’m absolutely over the moon to share this wee objective marker with you all:

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You may be thinking ‘that’s all very nice mate, but what’s the big deal?’ Well… this marker was originally sculpted by me, and was sent to Ramshackle Games to be cast up & included on the Ramshackle webstore, so this is my first commercially available ‘hobby fing wot I made!’ You can pick one up here if you like – I got a handful cast as my payment so I don’t make any money off the sale, but my mate Curtis would be grateful for the business I’m sure. Here’s a few more angles to consider:

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Next up, I felt the need to have an appropriate guardian for my Goldie Looking Fleece – there really is only one way to go here, and luckily, I had a Hydra waiting for a paint job thanks to the Mythic Battles: Pantheon set that I’m working through with my youngest son. He designed the colour scheme & put down the base layers, but I got stuck in with the more fiddly details:

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I’m really pleased with how this came out – it’s almost entirely painted with Contrast paints & washes with a bit of drybrushing to bring out the detail… This seems to be a combination that works particularly well on models like this. I really like the bone colouring on the heads – my son chose these as a nod to the Skull Crawlers from the King Kong movies, and I think it works really nicely! Here are a few more angles & a little diorama for scale:

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And so that’s it for another post – tune in next time for something truly massive…

Greetings Terrans, how goes it? A while back I posted this & described a Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago invitational I was getting involved with. As most of you will probably know, Ghost Archipelago is a pirate/lost-world themed skirmish game written by the excellent Joseph McCollough, and set in the same world as Frostgrave world. It uses the same ruleset with some tweaks here & there to make it more combat oriented & less magic-based. It’ a great looking game, but hasn’t seen the same commercial success as Frostgrave – most likely because the terrain bar is quite high for GA (jungles, pirates, dinosaurs, rivers, pools, etc) whereas FG was very forgiving from a terrain perspective. I’ve also put off getting heavily into GA for that exact reason, so I am really pleased that the invitation arrived & gave me the kick up the arse I needed to get into this. Since my initial model, I have refined the concepts that I’m applying to this project & thought I’d share my thinking with you all:

1: Island of Dr. Moreu inspired warband – use long-neglected beastman-esque figures but de-chaos them and make them more anthropomorphic – they are the once-human victims of cruel scientific experimentation rather than ‘because magic’ capital-C Chaos types. I’m using up a load of minis from the lead pile & oversculpting them to suit, so no splashing the cash. I’m also going to cover as many specialists as I can & have spares, so that I can adjust the warband as it gains in wealth & power.

2: Lost-world bestiary – a mix of mythological creatures, dinosaurs, pulp monsters, etc. Inspiration includes anything by Harryhausen, classic dinosaur films, Tarzan, Indiana Jones, King Kong, etc.  (all firm favourites from my childhood!). I’m permitting myself some purchases here, but again, mostly this is going to be using up what I already have.

3: Jungle terrain… this has been on my wishlist for a long time now, but I’m going to make it happen… I’ve got all the bits I need for the jungle itself so no purchases necessary, but I might splash out on some jungle ruins & maybe some water features too.

4: Other items needed to play GA (boats for example, or specific terrain items), and maybe a big-assed pirate ship to use for a home base.

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So far, I have worked through about half of the minis I have earmarked for the warband itself:

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I’ve taken a leaf from The Imperfect Modeller’s book & made the bases a real feature of the minis – I really wanted them to feel different from anything else I’m doing, so put is a bit more effort in this regard.

Aaand that’s it for this week – I hope you’ve enjoyed the pics & me sharing my thoughts on the project. Plenty more fun stuff to follow 😊