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.

Sumer is Icumen in

After spending the last eight months poking around Dark Nebula and the Aslan Hierate, I’m going to step back for a while to finish up a fairly large and exciting project that will utilize some of the material I’ve been developed here. Accordingly, I’ll be posting a little more sporadically over the summer. Most of the posts, like this one, will be miscellanies.

* * * * * *

I’ve been itching for another regular D&D game for the last six months, and I recently started playing in a weekly 5e game on Roll20. It’s a homebrew viking game and has been a blast so far.

We’ve got a gigantic group with three berserkers, so there’s no shortage of raging. This is my first chance to play a 5e barbarian and like all the classes I’ve tried the mechanics are simple but fun—there’s almost always something interesting to do no matter the opponent. Right now we are trying to deal with a cursed greataxe.

* * * * * *

A few months ago I backed the Traveller RPG Starship Miniatures kickstarter by 2nd Dynasty, which produced a series of 3D-printer files of classic Traveller ships. Ian Stead worked on many of the designs, which are really stunning. 

Of course, I was sold by the inclusion of a Type U armed packet. My initial plan was to finally buy myself a 3D printer and start churning out my own models. But alas, I have been too busy working on my big project to really jump into a completely new hobby.

Fortunately, Arthiarn Gaming is an Etsy store licensed to print 2nd Dynasty designs. I ordered a copy of the armed packed in both 1-inch and 1/270 scale, and my package arrived last week.

The purchase was well worth it: the Type U can look a bit ungainly from certain angles and is best appreciated in three dimensions. The quality of both sculpts is quite high: there’s plenty of small detailing to add considerable interest to the model. And at 1/270 scale, the packet has a satisfying heft while still being able to fit comfortably in one hand.

Similarly, the quality of the print is very good, comparable to what I’ve gotten from Fantasy Forge. There were only a few bits and bobs that needed trimming, but the material is soft enough to easily work with. One small section of a wing on the 1 inch model was a little ragged, but sanded down smoothly. 

I haven’t tried to paint a starship model before, and after years of painting bones, scales, blood, and ghoul flesh I’ll need to research how to do a good job with clean lines, futuristic materials, and reflective surfaces.

Being able to look at the ship in three dimensions has also made me want to revisit my deckplans for the armed packet. With Mongoose Publishing’s revised High Guard Update scheduled for release in July it might be high time to take one more crack at this ship…

Traveller RPG Starship Miniatures

As I’ve mentioned before, although I enjoy painting miniatures and using them at the game table, I’m a dreadfully slow painter and really have only a few brief windows each year to devote to these projects.

As such, I already have a pretty large backlog of models on my workbench. Combined with the fact that I own a decent selection of painted fantasy figures, I’ve resisted the temptation to acquire any more.

I’m afraid that resistance was shattered this week with the launch of this Kickstarter:

I don’t currently have any starship miniatures and these are based on the work of the great Ian Stead, whose Patreon I already support.

But what really sold me? They’re adding an armed packet to the ship list:

At that point my Wisdom save was as good as failed. I’ve been curious about 3-D printing for a while and the costs to entry have steadily fallen over the last few years. So I guess it’s time to take the plunge…

Reaper Bones 5

About nine years ago Reaper Miniatures launched a fateful Kickstarter campaign for a new line of plastic models: Reaper Bones. I pledged, even though I hadn't painted a single miniature since high school. I've pledged all of the subsequent Reaper campaigns and re-found a pretty enjoyable pastime. Today my reward package for Reaper Bones 5: Escape from Pizza Dungeon arrived, and it's pretty impressive:

Every iteration of this Kickstarter has shown steady improvement in both the quality of sculpts as well as the quality of casting. The first few campaigns used a relatively soft PVC-like plastic. The advantage of this material was it was relatively cheap, but it was only so good at holding details and had a tendency to droop or bend. Reaper has gradually tweaked the formulation and the current material, Bones Black, is stiffer and retains much sharper details—it seems almost as good as most metal castings. I believe Reaper Bones 5 is the first set to use this material exclusively.

Although I've pledged all five campaigns, I've steadily been decreasing my orders, in part because I've had less time to paint, but mostly because I now have a fairly large collection of painted miniatures. Since I mostly DM, I mainly need monster figures and at this point, other than some rather rare monsters, I've got a suitable miniature for most encounters.

Bones 5 is making me rethink that strategy: although I have many examples of monsters that are included in this set, such as kobolds, skeletons, or undead, the quality of the newest sculpts is so much better than those from earlier campaigns. Also, I'm a much better painter than I was nine years ago. So I'm thinking about revisiting some of these familiar figures. For example, these giant rats have far more detail than the ones included in the first Kickstarter.

Although I have several, very nice owlbear sculpts, the newest one is so good I'll probably need to paint this one up even though, realistically, how many owlbears are you ever going to need in one encounter?

Similarly, the troll from this set has got a fantastic pose that doesn't really come across in a photo. Some miniatures you really have to hold in your hand in order to appreciate the quality of the sculpt.

I really have fallen behind on my painting with the pandemic due to all the online gaming, but I'm hoping that ironically, with the relaxation of most restrictions, I'll have some more time to practice.

More Kickstarter Goodness

This last week I received my rewards from the Traveller Fifth Edition Kickstarter. The T⁵ edition of Traveller has a long and occasionally fraught history, but I find that this game is a wealth of new and intriguing information about the Official Traveller Universe. I also chose to get a hard copy of Marc Miller’s novel Agent of the Imperium, which applies many T⁵ concepts to a story that spans the breadth and history of the Third Imperium.

A familiar knock on Traveller is that the setting, rooted in Golden Age science fiction, feels very out-of-date today. But T⁵ introduces many posthumanist sci fi concepts to the Traveller universe such as consciousness uploading, cloning, geneering, and artificial intelligence. AotI shows how these “new” technologies can be seamlessly integrated into a familiar setting.

The biggest problem with T⁵, though, has been that the system book was a glorious mess. As one giant brick of a book, earlier iterations of the rules were disorganized, lacking examples, and riddled with errors and contradictions.

This latest Kickstarter is a valiant attempt to clean up and reorganize the sprawling rules into a familiar three-book set: Characters and Combat, Starships, and Worlds of Adventures. The result marks a major leap forward. Breaking the material into three separate books makes it much easier to read and find information. Examples now complement many rules. Almost every page has an interesting new idea, twist on an old one, or Easter egg. The books are physically well made, and come in a very nice slipcase.

All that said, while T⁵ has come a long way it still has a long way to go. Errors and typos continue to bedevil this edition, which could have really benefited from additional proofreading and editing. The layout is adequate but the artwork is uneven, ranging from pretty rough to excellent.

But most of all, T⁵ is a big toolset game, and could have learned many lessons from the ultimate toolset game, GURPS. GURPS books always do an excellent job of clearly presenting a wide suite of game options alongside guidance as to how to integrate these rules into different settings. The Traveller Universe spans many different eras and many different technology levels, but T⁵ provides very little guidance as to what rules might not apply to the Third Imperium setting but would apply to the higher-tech Galaxiad setting.

* * * * *

I backed another Reaper Bones Kickstarter, Reaper Miniatures Bones 5: Escape from Pizza Dungeon. I’ve happily backed all of the Bones Kickstarters to date, and they have proven a great value.

This Kickstarter has probably the strongest Core Set of any campaign yet, containing a gruesome giant zombie, a cloaker, a really great warband of kobolds, a dragon wolf, a useful set of spell effects, and a nifty Thing in the Well. And even though I've already got a bunch of skeletal warriors, the grave kings look fantastic.

I grabbed the Dragonfolk option—I am not really sure why so few dragonfolk miniatures are available commercially, given the popularity of this player character races going all the way back to 4th Edition. I also got the fire giant hellbringer and Arakoth, a Colossal spider. I also added the Dungeon Dwellers expansion set, which has a couple of good looking kenku and yet more kobolds.

The folks at Reaper have clearly absorbed the lessons of each past Kickstarter, and each new campaign has improved significantly on the ones before. The first campaign had a lot of confusing add-ons, and each successive campaign has been tighter and more focused. Bones 5 has several small encounter sets that I suspect will be popular, featuring some terrain pieces along with associated miniatures. I grabbed the “Charnel Pit of the Ghoul Queen,” which looks like it will be a fun set piece for the Great Dungeon. The quality of the Reaper Bones figures also improves: the new Bones Black material is clearly superior to softer original material.

The only downside is that I already have a pretty significant backlog of miniatures to paint. I am a painfully slow painter, and really only have opportunities to paint during a January to April window. The rest of the year there is just too much else to do.

Kickstarter Haul

I recently received the results of not one, but two different Kickstarters.

The Fantasy Trip is a very interesting product. Steve Jackson (US) created a fantasy role-playing game back in 1977, partially in response to D&D. The system was simple and elegant, using a 2D6 mechanic. It’s pretty impressive to see just how good a game design could be so early in the hobby’s history. The game was published by Metagaming as The Fantasy Trip.

Jackson eventually parted ways with Metagaming and went on to form his own company. Unfortunately, the rights to the Fantasy Trip did not go with him, and so he went on to design GURPS, which shares a lot of genetic material with TFT. Although I own and use many GURPS books—they are consistently some of the best researched and edited game books around—I was never been as big a fan of the GURPS system as TFT. GURPS was just much too fiddly for my tastes.

Fortunately, after being off the market for decades the rights to TFT finally reverted to Jackson, who promptly launched a Kickstarter to get a lightly updated version of the game back into print. Although I haven’t had a chance to dig too deeply into the contents, this set is huge and like any SJG product, seems to be well-made and an excellent value.

The Reaper Miniatures Bones 4 is the latest Kickstarter to bring a horde of new plastic miniature to market. I have been in on all three previous Kickstarters, which have been a great deal and were instrumental in getting me back into painting miniatures. I did not go quite so crazy for this Kickstarter, only getting the core set and a handful of expansions. I am really looking forward to painting the new frost and hill giant figures and—finally—some war apes!

One interesting surprise with this set: it seems that all of the figures were cast in the new “Bones Black” material, which isn’t actually black but more of a dark gray. This is a stiffer plastic that appears to hold details better. It is certainly easier to pick out mold lines on these figures. I look forward to seeing how they take paint!

Bears, Werebears, and the North

Both bears and werebears are classic monsters that go all the way back to original D&D (1975). Werebears, directly inspired by Beorn from the Hobbit, appear along with wereboars, weretigers, and werewolves in “Monsters & Treasures.” A very early D&D variant, “Lycanthropy—The Progress of the Disease,” by Gregory Rihn in the Dragon 14 (1978) described using werebears as player characters.

Cave bears appear on the “Optional Mountains” table on page 19 of the “Underworld & Wilderness Adventures” booklet. They are not given specific statistics, but are instead covered under the general “Large Insects or Animals” guidelines along with other Pleistocene animals on page 20 of the “Monsters & Treasures” booklet.

From OD&D both monsters were carried forward into AD&D. The 1e Monster Manual (1977) had statistics for black, brown, grizzly, and cave bears. The Holmes basic set (1977) has werebears but doesn’t seem to include any sort of mundane bear; cave bears do show up as entries in the Monster & Treasure Assortment Sets One-Three: Level One-Nine product (1980) and are included in the Moldvay basic set (1981), along with black, polar, and grizzly bears. Second and third edition included plenty of bears as well as werebears, though in 3e the cave bear becomes a “dire bear.”

The Reaper Miniatures Bones 3 kickstarter set had both a werebear and a bear miniature. Both models could work on either Medium or Large bases, but I went Large in accordance with 3e convention. I enjoyed painting both of these model, but got a little carried away with dry brushing on the bear: I always find it hard to know just when to stop with that technique. The werebear in particular is a nice sculpt that I hope to use in an upcoming game.

Bears and Werebears in the North

Black, brown, and cave bears all roam the North and the Far Reaches and are given wide berth by the other inhabitants. The stone giants of the Boundary Mountains are said to keep cave bears as pets, while dwarves are known to train brown bears. The Sternfell dwarves of the Great Dungeon use these animals as guards to protect their halls.

Intelligent sylvan bears are said to live in the deep woods of the North, but such creatures are rarely encountered. The mysterious werebears are also native to the North, and lived alongside the Elves and Druids long before the Southrons arrived. These werebears tend to dwell in small, isolated communities just beyond the edge of civilization. They are gruff and retiring, but generally peaceful folk. A much more fearsome line of werebears originate from the Far Reaches, often living among the Berserkers.

What's Hiding under the Earth in these Hills

The dark young of Shub-Niggurath are Lovecraftian monsters, servitors of the dread Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young. They are described as huge, black tree-like horrors made of tentacles and snapping maws. They walk upon great hooves.

It came crawling up the hillside to the alter and the sacrefice, and it was the black thing of my dreams—that black, ropy, slimy, jelly tree-thing out of the woods. It crawled up and it flowed up on its hoofs and mouths and snaky arms. And the men bowed and stood back and then it got to the alter where they was something squirming on top, squirming and screaming.

—Robert Bloch, “Notebook Found In a Deserted House.”

Both the Reaper Miniatures Bones 3 set and Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu Mythos for Pathfinder contained very cool miniatures of the dark young. The two sculpts are of similar size, though the Petersen version fits on a Large sized base, while the Reaper 3 version fits on a Huge one. I based both of them on Huge bases for consistency sake.

The Reaper dark young (right) has long, serpentine tentacles and a weird central maw in the top center of its trunk.

The Petersen dark young (left) is somewhat more alien, and its circular maws are filled with rows and rows of nasty teeth, a grotesque little detail that really adds to the creepy factor.

There were some annoying flash lines on both figures that I either missed or couldn’t quite eradicate. But all-in-all, I was pretty happy with how both of these models painted up.

Paizo included stats for the dark young in Pathfinder Adventure Path 46: Wake of the Watcher (2011), but I honestly found this take a bit pedestrian. Once the Petersen version is out I will probably do conversions to 0e, 3.5e, and 5e.

Two Gugs

As I had mentioned in an earlier post on gugs, I received two new gug miniatures from two separate Kickstarters. The gug on the left is from Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu Mythos for Pathfinder, while the gug on the right is from the Reaper Bones III set.

Whenever I get a new giganto set of miniatures, I try to do triage, sorting the prospects into three or four categories based on priority. High priority are minis that are immediately useful for a game, easier to paint, and/or particularly cool. At the other end are minis that I either don’t like or are unlikely to be used, like steampunk figures. Both gugs ended up in the high priority bin, but I was a little surprised that I decided to paint them first out of the new batch.

Both are really nice sculpts and were a lot of fun to paint. They are very different takes on the same concept: both are Large creatures with 2-inch bases, but much smaller than the Pathfinder Battles gug, which is probably twice as tall as either. I was initially disappointed by the size of the Reaper gug, but it has grown on me. It is certainly the most alien rendition of the monster, with a pretty gruesome maw. I was not quite sure how to paint this, but was fairly happy with how ghoul flesh looked on this figure. The Petersen gug probably better fits my idea of the gug from H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands.

In any case, I don’t think any of my players would like to see either of these gugs appear on the play mat. Which is a weird sort of endorsement for these minatures.