Fountain and Bridge

Here are some terrain pieces I finally finished painting last weekend. The first is a resin fountain by Airfix, first mentioned here.

Sven and Reaper fountain added for comparison.

Painting is done, though I'd like to add some water effects to the basin and fount. Painting was a simple gray basecoat and a few stones painted brown for contrast, with a couple layers of drybrushing and a blackwash to bring out details. Some of my drybrushing was a little coarse, but I'm very pleased with this overall.

Next is a nice bridge kit by Italeri. I think I first read about this kit on Sean's blog, though I can't find the post.

Even though it's marketed as 1/72, it's a pretty big bridge, probably designed for scale vehicles to drive over. It could definitely be used for larger-scale gaming.

The One Inch Guild square off against some pesky goblins for control of a key strategic landmark.

Sven hides from the obligatory bridge troll.

Painting was basically the same as with the fountain, though the drybrushing is even rougher here. The resin fountain had a nice stone texture that was completely absent from the Italeri plastic, so my drybrushing was really a sort of sloppy highlighting. The kit went together pretty well, though I had some issues getting the curved bed to fit in the sides, and the seems on the support bits at the base are pretty obvious. Still, this is an attractive, solid piece of terrain. I've already let my son play with it (while supervised!), and it handles toy cars going over it without a problem. Speaking of, here he is, helping daddy with the basecoat.

Little helper.

P.S. Thanks to those of you who posted comments this month. Sorry they are only going up just now. I only caught them in the "Awaiting Moderation" cue today. I love hearing from my readers, and I'll be more diligent about posting comments in the future.

Alliance Trolls comparison

Slowly getting back into the habit of blogging, starting with some pics of the new Alliance trolls. EY already has a nice review, and new 1/72 fantasy blogger Philotep has a great how-to on painting one of them. My contribution will be this comparison shot with some similar miniatures.

Left to right: a Reaper Bones "Cave Troll," Sven the 1/72 comparison mini, one of the Alliance trolls, a Bones "Mountain Troll," and a Games Workshop "Mines of Moria" troll. These Alliance trolls are big; not as big as some "normal"-scale gaming minis, but big enough to compare favorably. Even if you don't game in 1/72 scale, they're big enough to work, and at 8 figures for ~$10, they're quite a deal. Stylistically they are quite similar to the Mountain Troll, which could serve as an alpha or captain of these Tolkein/Jackson-inspired bigguns.

Here's a quick height comparison with Sven:

And here are the four poses in the set, of which there are two each. From the front:

We gonna stomp your citadel!!

 And from the back:

Oops, wrong citadel.

Flash is a bit of a problem, as is sometimes the case with Red Box/Alliance. The poses are maybe a bit flat (to simplify the molding), but not as much as they could be. And the detail is actually really good; again, check out Philotep's excellent "tabletop" paintjob to see just how nice they can look. That Bones Mountain Troll is clearly a better figure, but it also retails for over $5 (it's metal counterpart is $22!). The dollar-to-quality ratio of the Alliance figures should be very tempting. Good, not great, and on a budget, which is sort of the motto around here!

New Year review

Hail, loyal readers! Since 2016 was a bit slack on the new CFM content, and since New Year's is a good time to consider the past and look forward to the future, I thought you all might appreciate knowing what's going on with me hobby-wise.

I've not had as much hobby time recently as I'd like, which I regret. I have an excuse though! I started a new job in the fall, which I love, but which calls for a lot more time than my previous job. Between it and my normal parenting duties, I'd probably still have been able to do more hobby stuff than I was able. The big wrinkle is that before I was even looking for a new job, I also committed to a big freelance project that's still taking a lot of additional time. I probably wouldn't have taken it on if I knew about the new job, but now I'm obligated. Again, I'm happy to do it, but something had to give, and if you can believe it, making and painting tiny figures had to take a back seat.

The good news is that once this freelance project is finally complete, I believe I'll get some balance back in my life that I can dedicate to more hobby time. Hopefully I can get in done in the next few months. In the meantime, I've done a little painting, including these guys. I've also been doing some collecting: I got many of the new Caesar and Alliance fantasy sets in trade that I want to do review/comparison posts for. The same goes for the Battlelore 2nd Edition figures I got when the games were marked down in a recent Cool Stuff Inc. sale.

I've not given up on the hobby and hope to do more posting in the future. So keep an eye on this space! Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year!