MoM: Shoggoth

I recently got my greedy paws on Mansions of Madness from Fantasyflight games. It comes with a whole bunch of unpainted plastic minis. Time for me to get to work.

I am aiming for simple, readable during play, paintjobs here. I like to have the set painted, but not let it take forever.

First up I painted one of the two shoggoths that come with the base set.

The venomcult

So I have been working on this here venomcult from Otherworld Miniatures most of the past few weeks. Now one massive update with all twelve models!

I am going to add some nice snakes and the likes to the cult as well.

Enough babble, pictures!

Next up some Mansions of Madness painting! I got a shoggoth with my name on it.

Cultist progress

Making progress with the cult. Footwear all done, so is skin. Robes need highlighting, cowls need washing and highlighting. After that is done they all need their model specific things (daggers, skulls, etc.)

If anyone knows of any good additional cultist (or monsters related to cultists) models, I need to expand this cultist!

Dungeon: Decorative floorpieces

Exactly what it says on the tin. I finished painting these arcane symbols and some other 'special' floortiles. Next up is ten pillars.

New photograph background

I have (yet again) upgraded my photo shoot facilities. This time I added a textured cloth in the hopes of being able to focus the pictures better on the actual models. This is the results so far! Enjoying myself here.

Scrutiny: Dragonforge bases

My severe liking for all things bases popped up again a while ago. I ordered some cultist miniatures from Otherworld miniatures. I would need proper bases for those, so I searched the web and decided on some pretty looking ones from Dragon Forge Design. I had already heard of their stuff and the talk was good.

So I ordered their new(ish) desecrated lands line multipack. That's 2x10 25mm, 2x5 40mm and 2x 60mm. The ordering proces was nice and quick, the site clean and clear. I would love to see some alternate paintschemes on the preview pictures, but most sites don't do that so I certainly won't hold that against them. It should be said that the guy running the place was behind on sending out orders by three weeks. This was clearly communicated on the main page so you'd know what you were getting yourself into, so bonus points for that.

Well then, they arrived in nice plastic baggies in a shipping envelope. Those are especially nice because they just fit in the mailbox

Here are the beauties all unpacked

First thing I noticed was the good quality of casting. There was hardly any casting left overs, the ones I did find were easily removed. The bottom of the bases is not sanded, but that is also not at all required. Where Micro Arts sand all their bases, the Dragon Forge ones seem perfectly flat on their own. Bonus points there!

Very slight casting mistakes, most of this is actually part of the design

These bases have something I have not seen on bases before. They have sections where you are meant to put some water effects (or lava effects if you want I guess). That is sheer genius! I will definately be adding this to those bases.

Notice the top section for water effects

Money and shipping wise they are a bit cheaper then micro arts, but not as cheap as for example pk-pro. The combined pack of bases was also good value.

Best of all they paint up quite nicely!

Fully painted desecrated lands bases

Verdict: Very good bases, fair pricing. Even really large base sizes are supported in some of the lines. I'd buy again for sure.

Dungeon: Serpent's Skull Catacombs

I recently did a quick build for a small catacombs dungeon in Serpent's Skull of my own design. The actual encounter just said that the players have a encounter with a strong undead creature. I put in my own twist and decided this undead must have some sort of lair. Since he has control over animals I figured that a way to retreat back to his coffin (it was vampire-like) would be handy. So I placed four special tiles in the dungeon that when stepped upon by living creatures would open the door to his inner sanctum for a round or two. He would mindcontrol four spiders to do this for him, the players would have some issues though.

The fight was rather awesome and in the end they did manage to invade his sanctum and slay the undead. Much better then a random encounter with the undead creature.

And a quick shot of the setup: (Notice the mixing of my tilesets, the new and old one)