Meet the Dimensional Shambler!

Hello there,

another of my sculpts. This one has started out as something else...I think a "missing link" (something between ape and a human), but then, as I work as I go, it has became a could-be Shambler. Shambler travels between dimensions and has a body of something between an ape and an insect. Unfortunately, I did not know how to incorporate an insect part in him, so he is mostly just ape :D. His hide hangs loosely, which isn't represented either. I do like "dead-eyed rudiment of a head" that "sways drunkenly from side to side". Its fur is black, so I've figured I'd paint him blacks and grey all together.
In Strange Aeons it is supposed to be covered in moss, easily flammable, but I am not sure if I'd want to glue any vegetation on him. He is also too slim for my taste, but overall, I am quite satisfied. Just imagine how great it would look if I could paint him better! :D

So, my bestiary is slowly growing. As I am saving for my trip I am using what I have at hand and I must say it is really a nice feeling to sculpt something somewhat decent and be able to use it in games. That here is a shambler nobody else will ever have! I have few other sculpts in work, that have mostly bogged down as I am not convinced I can go on. So I need few days to gather courage and I slowly add things. I will show them when they are done. I am also converting all those mantic zombies that I have. I am working on (finished or WIP) 4 different kinds of ghost an an "ancient warrior". But that will have to wait!

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo

The horror, jungle and some more

 Hello,

last few weeks I've been working on quite some projects. Today I'll show you my Dunwich horror sculpt (from H.P. Lovecraft's story of the same name), some jungle bits and such. In few days, I'll show you my Dunwich buildings I've been working on.

Dunwich horror

This spawn of Yog Sothoth is rougly egg shapped, bigger than barn, kind of centipede monster covered in tentacles and mouth. On top he has old Whateley's face.
This is my first attempt:

 Later I've figured his face could be upright...I don't know why I automatically thought it'd be shaped as an egg in laying position. So, because it was also way too low (see the scale picture), I've cut the face and repositioned it. This is where I am now:

 One day, when the mojo strikes, I'll slowly start reshaping his legs, one by one. Then I'll cover him in tentacles and some eyes and so on. I hope he will be joined by his twin brother and his mother, I already got hasslefree's old man to be his grandfather .P

I've also finally took the time to paint the sand bags I've made eons ago:

And I've put some plastic plants on my jungle terrain bases. It needs flocking, which I still got to buy, as I only got the "straw" color. I will flock them all at once then, as it produces quite a mess.

Lastly, I call my dimensional shambler done now. I will put some sand on his base and paint him now:

Thanks for looking,

Mathyoo

Strange Aeons AARs

 Hello,

last week, me and my brother sat down for three games of Strange Aeons. I played the Treshold Agents all games while he took over the lurkers. I made pretty basic list and was hoping for 5 wins in a row, which would allow me departure in the jungle on a special mission. Thing turned bad....


FIRST GAME

Treshold squad consisted of:

Character John Raymond Legrasse
armed with dual .45's and a bowie knife

 Agent Charles Fort
armed with .45, bowie knife and a shotgun

Agent Walter Williamson
armed with .45, bowie knife and a tommy gun

Civilian Howard Philips Lovecraft
armed with .22

First mission was Escape...into danger!
Treshold agents were on a reconnaissance mission, investigating reports about haunted graveyard. Once they were engaged with strange old man...a high priest (had 2, 3 and 5 evil spells), their mission was to leave the area and report back to office.

They were not aware of great knowledge the old man possessed and tried to eliminate him. Below, you can see the scene just before contact. We got old man lurking behind a crypt on right side. Above crypt is agent Williamson with tommy gun. Left of the crypt is Legrasse, below are Fort and Lovecraft.

The old man has chanted two spells, giving his cold hands a touch of death and eldritch barrier making sure he gets hit harder. He shot a fireball straight into Howard Phillips who instantly suffered a minor injury (has left the table but was okay next game)

Then the old man charged straight for Legrasse, dispatching him with touch of death. Williamson was ineffective with his kugelspritze and he has suffered the same fate. Eventually, even agent Fort suffered the same fate.

After the game I've thrown the dice to see what happened to our heroes.

If you got the book, you can see that:
Williamson was dead.
Legrasse became claustrophobic (has to roll on insanity table when he enters scenery)
Fort suffered from ballistophobia (has to pass resolve if he wants to shoot)

 As Williamson died, I got a chance to reequip my agents. Legrasse took hollow-point bullets for his dual .45s. His range decreased, but damage increased. Fort felt he is more than uncomfortable with his shotgun, so he swapped it for a meat cleaver he got from butcher's shop. Williamson was replaced with James Woodville, armed with a bowie knife, .45 and a bolt action rifle.

Here is a closer picture of an evil doer!

SECOND GAME

Second game was a monster hunt. Straight forward scenario where our reequipped team faced a Dimensional Shambler (with bunch of skills that made him virtually indestructable)

Here is a table:

 Long story short, I couldn't really hurt him and I should've fled the table (a  loss and everyone suffers a minor injury)

A highlight of battle was when shambler threw Legrasse into scenery (forest). Legrasse got so paranoid, he immediately  lost his consciousness!

 Seeing all his friends dead or seriously hurt, greenhorn Woodville fainted. He was charged by a shambler and removed as a major injury.

 Here is the outcome:
Lovecraft suffered a minor injury and was okay by next game again. As he is a civilian, he can't get phobias, but would be okay on a roll 4-6, dead on any other.

Fort got lucky this time and came out without any permanent effects!

Legrasse got unlucky, his injuries were severe and he got D3 injuries! (I threw 2, so 1) - but he got lucky and is now a basket case - immune to psychology!

As Fort, Woodville came out untouched.

 Last  game was a bag man. Lurkers were easy this time, a buffed Herbert West and two zombies. The plan was to insert serum into uneads and make them grow!
Reality was worse, one zombie died (even with reroll!), the other got super fast.

 Long story short, they almost eliminated Legrasse, who was my bag man (he had 25% chance to guess who is it!) He has dropped a bag but Fort charged in and killed a zombie. West was killed when he charged Fort last turn.

Quite a fast win for the Treshold. As they were all still on board, I rolled 4 dice for map pieces and fount two!

We ended after this game and I really hope he will play more cultists so my .45s can actually hurt someone! 4 more games and we're off to jungle, wish me luck!

AAARGH MY EYES, MY EYES

I think I went mad then...

My sculpting mojo has came back after few weeks break and I've been sculpting little by little for whole week. I managed to get some sculpts to a degree where I call them "finished", even though they look half done.

Before we even start, let me assure you the post title refers to cosmic horrors that lurk the deepest shadow of our unimportant planet and by no means refer to the quality of the sculpts themselves! :D

I'd like to start with my crypt (from and old post ) roof. As the sign was bad, I went to fix it. Firstly, I have put a rectangle of putty on the roof and wrote the letters in. I wouldn't have been myself if I wouldn't write SCOOT at my first attempt. I wasn't satisfied with result and I scrapped the sign off. So I made a thin sheet of puty and cut the letters out. They are cruder than I had imagined, so I've added bolts (you press a toothpick in PVA and press it where you want bolt to be - voila). They still have to be painted, but you can get the general idea.

If you look careful, I've also sculpted unrecognizable face on the triangle above the name. Yikes!

 Once it get painted, I am pretty sure it should've looked better than it did!


Next, I've finished a "conglomerate" lurker for Strange Aeons games. As I've wrote in the post I've linked at crypt, he is supposed to be an experimental clump of organs, that does bad things. He is now finished. Suckers on the tentacle are horribly bad, but I couldn't succeed with any better attempt.

Overall I am quite satisfied with how it turned out.

 Backside:

Next is Shantak, WIPs were shown in few posts, for example here. He was started as early as July. When I start working on miniature, I have high hopes, which slowly sunk lower. Then I come so low, I don't know how to proceed and miniature sits until I get enough courage to do something with it :P.

If you're familiar with Strange Aeons rules, he will be used as a "winged nightmare".

 As you can see, for the ease of painting, he can be detached from his base.

Then we got a random "conversion" of mantic legs, also a few months long project. Wanted a "bloater" zombie, got a fat lady. Still considered a WIP!

We move back to eldritch  abominations....a dimensional shambler this time. You can see its start in one of the linked posts above. The miniature should be on all fours, like a gorrila, because I've planned to make a "missing link" at first, an ape-like creature, yeti, sasquatch, big foot. Whatever you'd like to call it. The wire armature broke and I just went for the shambler. Somewhow I've managed to give him two elbows per arm, but hey, hes from another dimension and something humans have never seen before! I still think he is too humanly looking, as he is partly described as an "insect". This one has nothing "insecty" about him, but never mind the details! :P
I quite like how twisted "dead eyed rudiment of a head" looks. Needs legs done. I've disobeyed laws of physics and built him upside-down. I've learned a lesson and let me tell you, people start sculpting at legs for a reason!

I got more to show!

Next is a WIP of "blasphemous construct", a Frankenstein. He my first attempt at twisted wire for an armature. I twisted wire for his legs really good, but somehow failed while coating it. He is totally out of proportions. I need to redo his girly feet, but having one hand "normal" and other king-side was my intention. I also wanted to make his fake look angry at world, but it ended up being retarded. Now that I'm writing this, he actually has stylish hair, modern in 1920's!

I've also tried to sculpt her , but plans got ditched almost as soon as I've started. So I've decided I'll make a female Treshold operative, with a 2-handed sword. Don't ask about the weapons choice, I just felt like doing a sword! Because I can't get myself to do her legs right, I'll gave her a longer skirt. Not practicable when slashing monsters from nightmare, but with strange aeons, even skirts can work.

For the end, I've put aside six 25mm bases as a "side project". When I sculpt I tend to have some leftover putty. As I don't want it to go to waste, I do all sorts with it. At first, I just sculpted on, ruining my work (sculpted a hand, worked on another one and destroyed the first one when i grabbed a miniature, for example). Then I did smaller things. Now I am making sausages that I'm putting on a pile. When pile will grow enough, I'll call it a "swarm". Pretty clever, eh? 

 Another way to use leftover putty is to make a thin stripes of it. Those can then be used at sculpting of weapons (found that on the internet!), or whatever. Works as plasticard, but its thinner!



I am glad I could finally put a somewhat decent post on my blog and I hope you guys found it interesting. I understand the sculpts are not of commercial quality, but we can't expect I'll be on par with people that have more years of experience than I have sculpts started! It is a great fun, however and it is really nice to see something become out of nothing. The Formless thing I've sculpted and painted, for example, was a great fun to make and offers a special satisfaction when I play with it. Also, Strange Aeons has rules for monsters that are not too widely available, so sculpting my own is a nice practice that also ends up useful! Last but not least, when you work on abomination that "even pen and ink can't describe", how can you do wrong?

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo