Close ups of the Celtos mastodon

As the Holidays draw ever closer, we have some close ups of the Mastodon, as promised!

First, however, we have that artwork I told you about.  There were numerous drawings such as this in the rule books of creatures and chariots, etc., which I thought were fantastic.

So, I set about making this drawing come to life.

I won't repeat my descriptions about all the various types of sculpey used from yesterday's post, so I will mostly let you check out the images unabated by my senseless banter!

Some close ups of the howdah, and the figures inside...

The driver...

Ain't this a pretty face?

The driver again.

I am really hoping that the kickstarter reaches its initial goals, since one of the 'down the road' stretch goal DVD's I'd like to make involve sculpting big monsters from scratch like this.  I don't get many opportunities to sculpt things from scratch, and monsters are something I absolutely love to do!!!  It is so much fun.

Aldon Oathkeeper, Dwarf Paladin from Stonehaven Miniatures

On this Christmas Eve eve, we have another member of the Stonehaven Dwarf Kickstarter.  This time, it is Aldon Oathkeeper.  When danger is afoot, Aldon takes the lead, going to great lengths to protect his companions.

And here is someone who goes to great lengths to protect his precious cookies.  Master of the Cookieverse... BABO!

Scratch sculpted Mastadon for Celtos

Still in the archives during this very busy time.  Did more research on the Kickstarter front, and made some more progress for the proposal.  In the meantime, here is something I did back in 2006.

I always liked the Celtos miniature line, and in one of the original rulebooks they had a wonderful drawing of this mastodon (I'll try to include that in the next post), and it made me really want to sculpt it!  This was the summer after I sculpted Grond, so doing large scale critters was not entirely new.

I started out with my tin foil armature, which was then surrounded by the white regular sculpey.  That was baked to keep the pose stable enough for subsequent layers to be added.

In fact, these WIP images are conveniently color coded!  The white sculpey is the regular variety, which you see me using for bases all the time.  The pinkish-orange sculpey is super sculpey, while the neon pink sculpey is sculpey III.  Each type has its own properties.

The Super Sculpey has more strength and resilience, while the Neon sculpey is the strongest of the three, but also the most difficult to shape.  You can see that the most potentially fragile parts were made from the toughest sculpey.

It is possible to bake sculpey multiple times, but you have to be careful not to scorch your original layers.  Of course, I decided to attempt this piece in the dead of summer, during a massive heat wave.  Bad idea, since it got mighty hot in the house!

This was long before I knew about Apoxy Sculpt.  If I were to try this again, I would definitely use the non baking material. :-)  For those of you who are newer to the blog, you can see some of my sculpted monsters in my Lizardman and Tomb King armies.  Use the search function on the left hand column to find those, or look through the Lizardman/Tomb Kings threads.

I have some more close up shots of this mastodon that are coming tomorrow.  You will get a better glimpse at the howdah, and the armor.  The figures on the howdah are Celtos figures, some of which were modified to work with the howdah, such as the driver.

The second rank fills up...

Getting closer.  Getting closer! :-)

We get one more step closer to having that second rank filled out!

More unit shots:

From above...

The whole unit so far!

Release the Hounds!

These figures are from Dark Age Games, this time from the Brood faction.  Obviously, they like their swamps!

These could make some interesting Hellhounds, don't you think?

And some Broodlings...

The whole family together again for the Holidays!

Using the painted Tomb Kings for the first time.

Hey folks, it's still Anniversary day, so we go to a different part of the archives.  This little skirmish took place earlier this month.  It was the weekend we got the video camera!

I had never gotten the chance to play a game with all the painted minis... complete with movement trays.

It was 1600 points, which is the smallest game of WFB I have ever played.  It was against John's Chaos Dwarf army.  I was not expecting a whole lot of success, that's for sure.

The scenario was deployment Yahtzee. Almost all of John's stuff ended up on his right, while a good chunk of mine ended up on my right.  My Necro Knights were isolated on the left side, and I figured they would either see no action at all (trapped behind the river) or be overwhelmed.

This really shows the imbalance here in this image.  I chose not to do the Entombed thing with the Stalkers.

John started first, moving the dwarfs and hobgoblins as fast as he could, along with the giant.  He killed some stuff with the magma cannon.

I tried to move as quickly as I could, although not being able to march made me not much faster than the little guys!  The casket did absolutely nothing, which would be the story on every turn.  I tried to put some wounds on the giant with the Stalkers, but ended up killing one of my own.

I moved out the spider, hoping to hold up the giant or some other unit to disorganize the dwarfs.

This never worked, as the dwarfs never failed a leadership test.  It was a re-rollable 10, so it was highly unlikely that fear, terror, or casket would help at all.

I think the spider managed to hold the giant in place, giving me great hope!  That hope was immediately dashed by only 1 wound on the giant between the casket and snakes...

This looks ominous, but the two Big Guys would pass like ships on the Nile.  My Heirotitan went after the Hobgoblin unit.  He really did perform very nicely, and even survived a few rounds of combat!

Here you see him fighting the hobbos...

The Deathshrieker launcher had blown itself up the previous turn, which allowed the Chariots to charge the Magma cannon.  I almost thought defeat would not be guaranteed...

So, with Santa's Village firmly secured by the chariots and carrion, everything tried to get into a position to head toward the hobgoblins.  The archers were trying very hard to move into a position to shoot...

This is where Hope ended, and Dismay took hold.  The Stalkers and Casket did not kill off the giant, which then made a long distance charge right into the Heirophant.

End result, dead Heirophant.  The Stalkers were wiped out as well.  Things began to lose wounds due to no Heirophant.

The Final Act was a failed charge by the chariots on the giant, that only had one wound left.  It subsequently wiped out the chariots, which meant it was time to go get some food and watch Army/Navy.

Again, there was nothing unexpected here.  John had written 3 different Chaos Dwarf lists.  He rolled a d3 to see which ones he would try for a given game.  After wiping out the Tomb Kings handily, his second list wiped out Marty's Lizardman army.

It's these kinds of experiences that make me love Lord of the Rings so much.  In all the games of LOTR that I have played, there has never been a turn 1 or 2 wipe out.  In fact, even when one side had gotten the upper hand in a major way, the other side still kept it a game... even pulling out a draw and a win here and there!

We have a picture from this morning of our anniversary, showing our Uglies playing with some of Cathy's monster pets!  Also, a game that we will try out tomorrow.

Aren't they a cute pair?

So, my legions of evil minions have not arrived, which means that the End of the World has been postponed.  Again.  DRAT!  Darn those pesky logistics.

Here are the last of the Prince & Harry images.  I promise!  Today is our anniversary, so it will limit my posting for today.  I hope you enjoy these. :-)

In other news, we placed the order for the editing software and microphone.  Cathy is talking with her brother the tech guru right now about what kind of RAM we should be getting (thanks Mike!).  One of the topics of discussion concerns how much would be overkill, or yield diminishing returns.  The requirement is 2 gig, but these are going to be really huge files at 100 minutes, so more could be needed.

Once the software arrives, we will be doing to early short tests of 1/2 minutes or so just to post to the blog, and people can let us know how they played, if the text was readable, etc.  Since we will be doing a lot with scrolling text, finding the correct font will be really important.  All of our Beta testers will be very helpful in this area. :-)

So, enjoy the Solstice!  Ironically, the shortest day of the year begins with the most sunshine we have had in 2 weeks.  Go figure!  Jimmy loves Cathy... Happy 11th Anniversary!!!!