Scrutiny: Stonehaven dwarves

A lot of people got their stonehaven dwarves from their kickstarter, but I wasn't so lucky. I hadn't noticed they had a kickstarter up. Fortunately for me, I did get in on their gnomes kickstarter! Seeing how extremely cool the new gnome sculpts were coming along I figured "lets get the dwarves from retail!" So I did.

They finally arrived last week. Took them long enough, because customs got their greedy little paws on them. I had to pay 3 or so euros worth of taxes. Not a problem. Though they did slap 15 euros worth of handling on it. Isn't that always how it goes? This really can't be blamed on Stonehaven though. Their shipping was not fast, but neither was it slow.

The dwarves arrived in a sturdy box with extra 'inflatey' bits to keep the models secure. Not that it was necessary, the models are all hard metal, very nice.

Proper packaging, bad packagers pay attention!

They came with character cards with the concept art and some fluff on them. Very nice. There were also a few 'thank you!' cards. How nice. :D

Dwarf character cards

The actual packaging was very good. One big bag, or so it would seem.

One big bag?

Not so! They were sealed individually! Awesome!

Individual sealing! Woo yeah!

So the quality of the models is really quite high. Small mold lines, hard models, very detailed. One of the models even comes with alternate hand options (he has a gun and you can either give him a second gun hand or remove the gun hand and replace it with a knife). I am leaning towards removing the gun hand. They also come with good basic blank 25mm round bases.

Some of the models also come with animal companions. There is a fox and a boar. There is also a small anvil for the dwarf smith. What makes this set of dwarves so cool is the fact that they also tackle unconvential dwarf models. For example there is a dwarf mage, a dwarf druid, a dwarf death knight, a dwarf corpse (yes!), etc.

The dwarves!

Basically I am quite pleased with the quality presented here.

Verdict: If you want one (or more) dwarves for PC usage, get these. Shipping might be a bit of a hassle, but they are very nice and have seriously uncommon dwarf/class combinations. Expect to see me painting some of these after Mansions of Madness.

Grade: 9/10

MoM: Hounds of Tindalos

Had a great game of Mansions of Madness (The Inner Sanctum scenario) last friday. As the keeper I had two Hounds of Tindalos in play. Unfortunately they were not painted, which bothered me. So the day after I sat down and painted both of them.

I went with a color scheme I found on pictures from someone's paintjob and some nice concept art I found online. Blue tongues, who knew?

Next up: Joe Diamond?

MoM: Kate Winthrop

Good gawd, I forgot how annoying I find whites to paint. You can't go for white and then highlight, you need to start lower on grey or wash it up with black or some such. Kate Winthrop was good practice on my whites, but I shall be moving on to other colors again now.

Making good progress with Mansions of Madness. Which is good! I might actually finish this thing. We played a game of Mansions yesterday and it was nice to see 2.5 of the 4 investigators fully painted. The zombies were also all painted. It made the game look much better.

Next up: Joe Diamond, the private eye

The month's MoM painting

Scrutiny: Back 2 Base-ix bases

With Mansions of Madness came the question of how to base the investigators? They would be traversing a lot of scary mansions with wooden floors. So I set off finding bases that had something like that. Harder then you might expect.

Eventually I settled on Back 2 Base-ix which is a awesome company I almost bought from before. The thing is, they are situated in australia, which makes shipping a bit expensive. Just bases is quite doable though.

I ordered some nice timber, dungeon stone and cobblestone bases. The timber ones are now being used for my mansions of madness investigators. The checkout process is quick enough and allows for paypal, not bad at all. The shipping was quite fast. I have had packages from the UK arrive later (and I live in Holland).

So what is the quality of these bases? Resin casts, not bad at all, though not top of the line. They don't need any sanding at the bottom, more filling up if you want them to look perfectly straight from the bottom up. The detail is not amazing, but quite sufficient for that classic dungeon/wood/cobblestone feel. I only spotted one cobblestone base with a minor defect. Pretty good! 7$ for 10 resin bases is also a pretty good deal.

Unpainted bases from all three lines

A quick white primer, that stuck very well, later and I painted up all the timber bases. I like my consistency and so I painted up all 20 timber bases, for future investigators!

Painted timber bases

Verdict: Good for what you'd get them for, good price. Would buy again. They are not the best bases out there, but the the value for the low price is quite nice.

Grade: 7/10

MoM: Michael McGlen

Still churning ahead with painting Mansions of Madness. This here is the second painted investigator, Michael McGlen. He is a fan favourite because of that darned tommy gun! Next time Mr. McGlen! NEXT TIME!

Next up: Kate Winthrop, the scientist

MoM: Zombies

And here are the four zombies that come with the base game. I must admit they were really boring to paint and thus the paintjob is far from inspiring. I went for the gritty, dark, kind of zombies. In comparison I liked painting the zombies from Reaper Miniatures a lot better.

Next up: Michael McGlenn

MoM: Sister Mary

And here we have Sister Mary, the first of the investigators painted for Mansions of Madness. I also worked ahead and did 20 bases so I can just base investigators without any problem whatsoever.

Next up: Zombies!

MoM: Chthonians

And here are the next models for Mansions of Madness, the two Chthonians.

Easy. Next up: Zombies!