Mashaaf, Great Old One

Although I am still very much a beginner with the airbrush, the tool has worked wonders in breaking up my miniature logjam. I had one big model left over from Reaper Miniatures Bones II: The Return Of Mr Bones! that had been haunting my painting queue since 2015: Mashaaf, the Great Old One. This is a massive, multipart figure sculpted by Kevin Williams. I had prepped it years ago for painting but failed my morale check every time I sat down to start work.

The airbrush, though, helped steel my resolve. I was also bolstered by a nice Build and Paint video by Michael Mordor. His YouTube channel has greatly helped me approach some of the larger and more complex models on my workbench. Michael has very mellow, encouraging demeanor, sort of like the Bob Ross of monster modeling. Michael makes you feel like no figure is too tough to tackle as long as you have a plan of attack. Although I am trying to learn how to use my new airbrush, I appreciate that Mordor seems to primarily use brushes on his models, so his videos would be a great resource for any beginner modeler.

I primed this model with Army Painter gray spray primer and then assembled most of the model. Overall, the old Bones material pieces fit together well enough, though I needed quite a bit of Green Stuff on the weird mouth wings. I then airbrushed Mashaaf with a basecoat of Army Painter Greenskin, followed by a wash of Army Painter Quickshade Strong Tone. This was my first time using Army Painter washes, and I have to say I really liked the overall effect. The product seemed to have better coverage and smoother effect than my Reaper or Vallejo washes, which seem to be a little more gritty. I also followed Mordor's general advice on highlighting with greens and yellow: I was skeptical about using a bright yellow highlight on such a dark base, but it worked really well.

Once the paints were dry, I varnished the model with Testor Dullcote, and used Vallejo gloss varnish on the mouth. I then mounted the figure on a Litko 152mm round model presentation base, suitable for a Colossal sized monster. Mashaaf is a very heavy model to hold in the hand, and combined with the Litko base, which is also heavy, feels like a real brick of plastic. In retrospect I might have done with a less substantial base like the Reaper 160mm Base Boss.

Overall, I was happy with how the model turned out, though I would have liked to have gotten a more dramatic glowing eye effect. (The Dullcote always seems to knock the glow down and I haven't figured out how to compensate.) This a great sculpt with a twisting, dynamic form: it really looks like Mashaaf has just burst out of the earth and is about to wreak havoc on some poor adventurers.

Mashaaf looks like some sort of Lovecraftian horror: though it's too small to be a Dhole, it might work as one of the Chthonians, a monster from Brian Lumley's 1975 novel The Burrowers Beneath. I swear there was a 3e monster that looked very much like Mashaaf, right down to the little scythe arms, but I can't put my hands on the illustration I'm thinking of. Third edition had many nasty, giant verminous monsters, including the Avolakia, Neothelid, Psurlon, and Ulgurstasta, and while Mashaaf could stand in for any of them, none of these quite fit the bill. (I think the model could probably fit on a Gargantuan, 125mm base.) There might be a closer match somewhere in the Age of Worms adventure path—I even think I got this figure specifically to use in that campaign, though it obviously never panned out.