Kickstarter Review - Dragons of the Red Moon

I backed Dragons of the Red Moon back in April. Kickstarted by Draco Studios out of Mexico, they were raising funds to produce six gargantuan 200mm dragons. But in addition to getting physical models, you could opt to pledge for all six dragons in .stl format to print out yourself.

I was only interested in one of the dragons, the skeletal (natch) dragon Nixis. But all the other sculpts are gorgeous as well. They just released the file a couple of weeks ago.

The pose is unique, with the weight of the beast resting on its wing knuckles while its forearms remain free to grasp.

I have an FDM printer, but honestly, I am so bad with it and this print is so complex I may just pay to have it printed in resin anyway.

Kickstarter Review - Curse of the Hollow Hills

I've been hitting the Kickstarters hard lately, actually spending more money on funding the creation of miniatures than buying actual miniatures. Over the past two weeks I've either pledged, or completed the surveys for four different Kickstarters. I thought I'd list them here.

First up, the Curse of the Hollow Hills by the Greek company Crippled God Foundry. They had been plugging this for weeks around the various Facebook pages, sub-reddits and forums. So I was super ready after seeing the preview renders. In fact, I was backer number one. (We're #1!)

I backed at the Dreadful Monstrosities level - although I pledged more as I knew I was going get a bunch more through add-ons.

Here's my haul:

The Foul Abomination I really have no need of. There are a lot of the "fat zombie ogres" around and I find them utterly unappealing. Although the skeletal animal things are interesting. Of course, had to go for the Undying Wyrm. Yet another drake for my collection. However the sculpt is really nice. And the Death Watcher - another in the recent explosion of undead beholders.

One Everliving sorceress liche

One undead Alhun liche. Perfect for my Chaos: Legion of Hell. (Alhun is the non-lawsuit way to say "Mind Flayer")

A bunch of skeletal infantry.

A large skeletal rat man for my Skaven contingent.

And finally, a zombie hill giant. Not skeletal to be sure, but a good addition to a barbarian or Dark Ages army.

Fuck Yeah!

Reaper miniatures Bones IV Kickstarter. Skeletal chimera. Skeletal manticore. Skeletal owlbear.

No company has ever produced an undead manticore! Great scott! So full of win!

Dirty Little Hobbitses!

Well, the big Kickstarter is here. After several smaller ones, John McManis is asking for crowd funding for the big core hand weapon/spear units of undead Halflings! Nice!

But what weapons would Hobbits really use?

New Dragons Coming Online

Well, Reaper's new Kickstarter. Bones IV, is up today. Over $623,000 on the first day. Insane.  And now, I have to kick in some more of my hard earned cash because of this lovely model. A new zombie dragon sculpted by Julie Guthrie:

  

That is looking mighty sweet. Hopefully, there're a good deal more skellies in the Kickstarter as well.

Soon I'm expecting delivery of this amazing sculpt by Tim Prow for Fenris Miniatures. The green has been languishing for years until Fenris finally brought it to life with its successful Rise of the Draugr Kickstarter.

The next models haven't been sculpted yet, but I'm eagerly awaiting them based on the concept art. A zombie dragon, and two undead wyverns (Shrieking Horror and Court of the Damned). All part of TMS miniatures' successful Vampire Covenant Kickstarter in June. They did a pretty good job at translating the concept art to actual model for their Undying Dynasties Indiegogo, so I'm hoping these will turn out as good. I like the way the Court of the Damned model (a 9th Age analog for GW's Mortis Engine) incorporates the wyvern as the motor for the war machine.

Hail Hydra!

Ral Partha 49-091 Skeletal Hydra. 

A contribution from their recent Chaos Wars Kickstarter. You can thank me for this model. Yes, me. Personally. I backed the Kickstarter early and RP had as a stretch goal that if they got to $100K they would produce a skeletal dragon. I posted in the messages that if funding reached the stretch goal, that skeletal dragons were a dime a dozen. But if RP truly wanted to do something no previous company had done, they might consider making a skeletal hydra. Discussion ensued on the message board. In a few days, a "mystery stretch goal" popped up at $50,000 which was revealed to be - this skeletal hydra.

You're welcome.

Trough & Tankard Dread Queen on Unicorn

Great googly moogly! More great stuff from Phillip Hynes. Take a look at this female liche on a sweet undead unicorn!

Shrek 5: The Undying

Sometimes, there are weird gaps in the world of the undead when it comes to miniatures. Things you think you'd see plenty of, but for one reason or another are not really produced. Until just recently, one of those things was an undead hydra - which is rather inexplicable.

Another is undead ogres. This is kind of weird since ogres are such a common fantasy race. Trolls and Giants, yes. Ogres? Not so much. For years the only real undead ogres were the following two from the German company DSA. (You can get them through Ral Partha Europe now.)

19304 Undead Ogre with Axe

19305 Undead Ogre with Club

Also, there was this two-headed zombie ettin from Lance & Laser, now sold by Armorcast.

LL21606 Two-Headed Undead Aberrant

But now, thankfully, we are starting to get a few more representatives of Ogre-kind. Like this model from Krakon Games.

Slanga, Parthaloin Fallen Hero

And this zombie ogre from Reaper. In affordable Bonesium!!!

77284 Zombie Ogre

And here's a little something from the recent Trough & Tankard "March of the Dead" Kickstarter by Phillip Hynes. I'm not sure why Phillip is not full time sculpting for the majors. 

1. His sculpts are outstanding. I've rarely seen better work when it comes to horses or drapery
2. He's amazingly fast. He bangs out a figure in like a day!

Trough & Tankard Zombie Ogre

Then we have this model. It's an ogre(ish?) model for 4Ground's upcoming Legends of the Fabled Realms Kickstarter. They're making a lot of cool undead (Druggoi) that also include a sweet undead dwarf and two "guard" that frankly, I think are undead elves.

And from Warploque Miniatures, we have a specialty figure, a zombie pirate ogre! Undead pirates are a big thing. I'm not really sure why. Haven't we tired of those movies already?

Undead Ogre Crewman

Troll Update - Glorantha Trolls

I recently backed Fenris Games' "Rise of the Draugr" Kickstarter (and now they are finally putting into production that sweet zombie dragon by Tim Prow!)

But as an add-on, they also added these zombie trolls sculpted by Jo Brumby. The problem was, in looking at them, they didn't seem like trolls to me at all. I mean, not compared to the trolls I already have, and not like any fantasy trolls I had seen before. They had a beastman appearance with dog-like faces and tusks. Still, trolls are trolls. And obviously, the artistic conception of trolls varies widely from artist to artist and mythology to mythology. So I didn't really give it any more thought.

Fenris Zombie Trolls

That is until I was perusing a blog and found these. These are eight trolls from (the sadly no longer operational) Mad Knight Castings. And they have the same dog-faced look about them. So, obviously, I've missed something. There's a common thread in this interpretation that harkens from somewhere. So I went to the Google...

Mad Knight Castings Skeletal Trolls

Apparently, these are trolls as imagined in the RuneQuest world of Glorantha, which seems to be widely popular. In this interpretation, trolls are not solitary monsters that regenerate and vomit acid, but rather intelligent, if primitive, adversaries with complex social structures. They are also called "Uz" (the name they call themselves) and have several sub-types including "Dark Trolls" which are the ones above.

I've got the good people at Mad Casting to sell me some of their leftover stock and also am waiting for the Fenris trolls to arrive. So now the question is, how do I play these on the table top? They're labeled "trolls" but they're not really the trolls that I would use in Piquet.

Great beastmen for my undead Chaos army?

Ral Partha's Skeleton Centaurs Now Available!

RP's new skeleton centaurs that were funded by last year's Kickstarter are now available in their online store. I funded the Kickstarter and now have twelve of these centaurs to act as cavalry in my Undead Chaos army. What's cool is that you can outfit them with a variety of different weapons. I was vacillating between lance & shield or sword and shield, but then I watched this video from Shadiversity and you know, pole-arms do make sense for centaurs. Halberds, pole-axes and bills for everyone!