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.

The Rage of Achilles

Still some work needed but my undead Classical Greek (5th c. BCE) army is pretty much ready for play. Here's an overhead view of the army lined for battle. 

A line of psiloi light troops advancing in front of the phalanx. A mixture of skeletal human and cynocephale javlineers and skeletal satyr toxotai (archers).

In back of the psiloi marches the phalanx. Six units of skeletal hoplites. Mostly from the Australian company Eureka, but on the right flank are figures from Foundry, Bronze Age and plastics from the Wargames Factory Skeleton boxed set. Behind the phalanx are two giant hoplites, one a repainted skeleton warrior from Vitruvian Hacks, and the other from Ral Partha.

Attached to the phalanx is the hero Herakles, and behind him (with spear and hoplon) the warrior Achilles.

A unit of Hellas' ancient foes, Persian sparabara assembled from the Wargames Factory skeleton boxed set with Perisan wicker shields. Now fighting in service of their enemies!

A group of mythical beasts. From left to right: a Cerberus (Rackham), a chimera (Wyrd), a khalkotaur (Reaper), another Cerberus (Reaper) and another chimera (Wyrd). Behind them (between the Persian sparabara and the Khalkotaur) is a group of Thracian ogres! (Spartan Games)

In the foreground is the hero Jason, with a group of undead minotauroi behind.

A pair of skeletal Pegasi with riders (Mythic Articulations). Behind them are a Skeleton Hydra (Ral Partha) and the legendary first king of Athens, Cecrops I (converted from a Die Hard Miniatures skeleton snake man).

Cavalry on the right wing. There's a bit more cavalry here than you'd see in a hoplite army of the era (although the Thebans did maintain cavalry forces). But I can't resist using all these undead centaurs! In front, centaur missile troops. A mixture of Rackham undead centaurs and old Dark Horse skeleton centaurs. On the main line from left to right: Wyrd Miniatures Kentauroi, Dark Horse skeleton centaurs, Eureka skelton greek cavalry, Rackham undead centaurs and two undead centaurs from Cadwallon.

Cavalry can be a bit fragile so in support we have a group of undead cyclopes! Grenadier, Ral Partha, Wizkids, Grim Reaper Casting.

Magic user: Akhlys, the personification of death, or more specifically, the death mist that overtakes the dying. Converted from a banshee from GW's Mortis Engine.

Magic user: Hecate, the Greek goddess of witchcraft and necromancy (and crossroads!)

Hero: Echidna. I've been thinking of converting her into Medusa however. (Conversion from a Die Hard Miniatures snake man)

Recent Haul - Zombie Ogre

Due to the nature of my work, I am overseas most of the time. This seriously cuts into my painting, modelling time - not to mention actually playing any games.

Another issue is that I continue to collect miniatures for my undead armies, but I can't have them sent to Ukraine because a) it is impossible because I am behind the line of contact in the non-government controlled areas, b) it would be outrageously expensive and c) I have always to keep in mind that the amount of stuff I can collect is limited to what I can carry in two suitcases and a backpack.

Back in the day, when I was working in Iraq and could use the army post office (APO) - I could ship stuff back and forth relatively easily. No more.

So I order things online and when I get back home on leave - I have a big pile of miniatures to open and catalog.

So I've been on leave and am now posting my recent haul. It's like Christmas!

Zombie Ogre

Bear's Head Miniatures

This is a zombie ogre from Bear's Head Miniatures, a small, independent company run by the fabulous Phillip Hynes. His sculpting work is excellent, especially when it comes to horses and drapery. This model fills a gap in the undead world. As I've noted before, undead ogres are oddly under-represented in the miniature market.

This is a solid model. Very zombie-ish (I prefer more skeletal), but I love the ball and chain. There's a little bit of flash that needs to be cut away from between his legs, but otherwise, he's ready for priming and painting. Will go nice with my other undead ogres for use in my medieval European or Chaos armies.

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

WIP - Undead Classical Greek Army

One of the problems with my job is that I am usually off in some far lung part of the world without access to my miniatures. Most of the time they languish in one of my storage spaces or at my dad's house where I send most of the stuff that I buy.

I can't get mail in Afghanistan. Man I miss the APO!

But one of the benefits of being, how shall we say, "between jobs" for the past half year or so is the time it has given me to work on some of my armies.

This work has involved cataloging my extensive collection with the iOS app Sortly. It's a godsend, because I have no good list or database of everything I have, and I just can't remember whether or not I still need that old Lost Tribes figure from Citadel or not.

But also I've been whipping some of my armies into shape, assembling, converting and painting them as I can.

My undead Classical Greek army that I detailed in a previous post was the closest to completion, so I've been concentrating on that. It's almost ready for the tabletop. I just need to purchase those Bronze Age skeletal hoplites to finish my phalanx. The rest is pretty much just detailing.

Here's some of the work so far. Comments appreciated, especially with photography because I got the lighting all wrong despite having a light box and two lights.

All units are based for Piquet: Scramasax. Normally four stands of three figures per stand for infantry, four stands of two figures per stand for cavalry. Exceptions are for heavy infantry, skirmishers, x-heavy cavalry, etc. Large creatures and characters are individually based. I tend to use round bases for characters, square for creatures - but it's not a hard and fast rule.

Main hoplite phalanx

Five units of heavily armored hoplites armed with hoplon and dory/xiphos. I've yet to purchase the Bronze Age skeletal hoplites to complete the sixth unit.

76th, 77th, 78th & 79th Infantry (Hoplites)
Manufacturer: Eureaka Miniatures
Line: Skeletons
Part #: 100SKL02

The bulk of my phalanx is made up of miniatures from this Australian company. The sculpts are only so-so, and the assembly process can only be described as fiddly, as there are lots of different parts. However, that variance is also a strength because you can assemble the models in a variety of different configurations, making for a very heterogeneous phalanx. The 76th is my oldest unit, as evidenced by their differing paint job. The 78th was primed with black and then the bone parts were painted on directly or dry brushed. I also used a copper paint, when I should have used a darker bronze. The 77th, 78th and 79th I purchased back in 2013. I primed them using Skeleton Bone spray primer from Army Painter. I tend to use this also as the base coat to save time when painting bone. I'll then do some highlighting with a lighter bone color. The armor was painted with Citadel Warplock Bronze.  I then used the Army Painter strong tone Quickshade dip to finish the bone parts and make the metal look old and weathered.

80th Infantry (Hoplites)

Manufacturer: 

1. Foundry
2. Wargames Factory

Lines: 

1. Greek Mythology
2. Myths & Legends

Part #s:

1. WG421 Children of the Hydra
2. WG422 Children of the Hydra
3. ### Skeleton Warriors