Scrutiny: Invisible characters

I got this nifty little gift at christmas. My girlfriend surprised me with Gamemastery (a line of products from Paizo) invisible character 'miniatures'. What is this you ask? Only character silhouettes cut out of plexiglass supplied with round plexiglass bases. You can use these to represent characters that are currently invisible. Very neat indeed!

Lets take a look.

What you get

The set comes with ten varied fantasy types. It also comes with ten bases (even though I got eleven, I am always so lucky!). It is actually quite hard to take pictures of these things.

The cleric with and without base

The 'miniatures' cannot really stand on the bases without 'help' from some superglue. It is not a snug fit, which is one of the downsides. That said, I glued all of mine and the results are very cool. So far I have used the invisible miniatures three times during sessions where players went invisible, though they can also be used for invisible bad guys that only a few players can see. Very cool stuff indeed! Thanks girlfriend for getting me these things.

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

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

Scrutiny: PK-Pro alien base set (part 2)

I managed to take some new pictures of the TK-PRO bases. Unfortunately some of those also mysteriously dissapeared. I have decided to call it quits with making new ones, figuring they are probably cursed or the like.

So I present my findings with pictures that I actually have.

The sculpts themselves are not bad, they are not incredibly detailed, but they are not bad either. I'd call them average. The shipping and shopping process was fine, simple, fast, definitely good.

This is where it started to go a bit downhill for me. Now I do not know how representable of their work the following experience is, but for me it is a reason to beware.

The casts were pretty bad. Entire flat bits of resin stuck on the edges of the bases and bases were not able to stand flat without creating extra gaps between base and floor or simply wobbling. Sometimes several millimeter slabs of extra resin were on the bottom of the bases.

This is not how a cast should be

I would have to say these casts are quite shoddy. I had to try to sand them down. Now there are a few reasons I really dislike doing that.

1. Resin dust is ridiculously dangerous if you get it in your lungs.
2. Resin is notoriously hard to sand.
3. I didn't want to take a sanding machine to them, so it had to be hand work.

This is not fun to do

The results are not all that awesome. To be specific, it is incredibly hard to create an even surface. On the picture above you can see how the darker parts on the top and lower right side are still 'higher' then the rest.

Eventually I decided to simply throw the worst away and call it a day with the rest.

I think this was not a fluke batch of bases since I ordered 25mm, 40mm and 60mm and they all suffered from this problem.

Verdict: Would not buy again. Recommend you stay clear.

Scrutiny: PK-Pro alien base set (part 1)

So... I had these awesome photos of my unboxing and my experience with getting my new alien bases ready. I say had because I accidentally shift deleted them. I am a fool. Some of them I cannot take again, because I have since worked away the problems.

So... I'll take some more photos... at a later date. There are a few things I can already say about how I intend to use the bases though. I am collecting both a devil and a demon range. The devil range is being based on lava bases from dark arts miniatures. For my demons I was looking for an alien sort of landscape that I could paint up as the abyss. Enter PK-Pro, a german manufacturer of among other things bases!

I set my eye on these (painted by the PK-Pro people)

Imagine the same, but with more purple then green. That's the plan. The box arrived this evening after a speedy delivery. Happy me! Unfortunately I did have some issues with the casts. I do not know if this is indicative of the quality of PK-Pro casts or not. I am inclined to say it is, because I ordered 25mm, 40mm and 60mm bases and they all the same defects.

I can work around it, but it will take quite some time. That is time that I would rather not spent on bases that are supposed to be useable out of the box.

More in part 2 when I get some pictures in!