Brain Games

Today's mid-80's monstrous offering comes from the days when 28mm actually meant, well, 28mm. One of the more interesting monsters to grace the early days of D&D, and still going strong through every edition since- the mind flayer. I doubt he was used much in the early days of D&D; at least not as he was originally designed by Gary Gygax, since the mind flayer relied heavily on using the psionic rules. If you've never read through that appendix to the original AD&D Player's Handbook, go have a look now- just realize that, about two paragraphs in, you're gonna be using math skillz you probably haven't had to utilize for quite a while. Those psionic rules, as written, are easily some of the most complicated calculations ever needed to make a victim (first) feel inadequate and afraid and, (second) pliable enough to wrap your head tentacles around, bite off his skullcap, and suck out his brains.

Ral Partha Mind Flayer. He wants to eat your brains.

I went for a much more "natural" octopus look on the head (obviously), rather than the more standard TSR/WOTC mind flayer color scheme, which I have always seen portrayed in pale aqua/teal shades. I wanted to keep the robe simple, so I went for this satiny black with gold trim. The model was pretty boring after my first pass, so I added the scripting on the skull and sleeves to jazz him up just a wee bit. The fluorescent green spot color on the eyes and gems was chosen just as a complement to the orange flesh.

Older Ral Partha sculpts like these do have the unfortunate design feature of these really large fixed bases. Unlike the Grenadier or Citadel fixed bases which are much slimmer, there is no real way to remove these, so I opted here to simply gouge the metal base with my hobby knife to "match up" with the textures on the flagstone base. Hopefully, the mind flayer appears to be standing on a rounded step or platform- that's what I was going for, anyway. My favorite thing about slotta base figures is the ease with which I can cut that tab away and mount the figure however I want. . . Ral Partha got it figured out eventually as well.

Take care, brethren. Thanks for the look in.

Killing You With Ugly

To quoth the good book:

      This nightmare creature is loathsome beyond description and has no redeeming features. Its body resembles that of a huge, bloated buffalo. . . (its) neck is long and thin, and perched atop it is a big head uglier than that of a warthog. Its legs are thick and stumpy, much like a hippopotamus. . .In any case, the most horrid aspect of the catoblepas is its bloodshot eyes.
                                                                                 -Gary Gygax, Monster Manual, 1977

Ral Partha Catoblepas, vintage 1988

Ugly is right. Although this Ral Partha sculpt misses out on a few of the nicer details from D.A. Trampier's original art, like the fleshy bits 'round the eyes and the clubby tail, I think it hits a home run in the straight-up ugliness game. More importantly to me, it gave me the golden opportunity to really work on wet blending techniques. Serpent neck blending into hippopotamus armored flesh into hairy warthog bristles. I am very happy with the grey-to-flesh blending on the abdomen. I think I could probably have gone a little warmer with the greens, but I like the "natural" look I have now and I don't want to do anything that might screw that up.

It was a very productive week hobby-wise, as I also managed to prep all of the Otherworld Adventurers and Hirelings that I still have in my queue, along with the first batch of Redbox Games Kickstarter rewards. I finished off this OW ranger mid-week, and he will probably end up replacing the thief mini that my older son uses as his character in Barrowmaze. He's a big fan of the bow here.

And finally, I (admittedly) rushed the paint job on this (honestly) iffy sculpt of an undead dog from Grenadier just to get it off my desk. It's a Cthuhlu mini titled "Hound of Tindalos" and looking it up online, it appears mine is missing a big long tongue. Dunno, but I don't think a big long tongue would improve it much. Maybe a zombie in Barrowmaze will make this his Ol' Yeller. Woof woof.

Hope your own leaden pursuits are ticking along smartly. Take care, brethren.

Year of the Monster

Well, 2015 is off to a very nice start hobby-wise, as I managed to get two monsters done after the champagne buzz wore off. A beautiful cockatrice sculpt from Otherworld and a cool frogman from Ral Partha (currently available as "Inchon" from Ironwind Metals) who will fill the role of slaad in my collection. Two nice big checkmarks in the "D&D Creatures of Note" done. Happy days.

Speaking of D&D, my family Barrowmaze campaign finally made it down underground to do some real dungeon-delving (at last!) which gave me the chance to, at long last, break out my new dungeon tiles. These were printed out from the Skulldred site, attached with spray adhesive to black foamcore, and cut out in lots of standard shapes for geomorphs. Easy to do and I think they make for a great tabletop dungeon crawl when combined with a few choice items from the old GamesWorkshop Dungeon Tiles, which are widely available as pdf's on the web.

Our adventurers trek through the mud and bog of my tea-laden board enroute

The first "real" dungeon room of Barrowmaze, complete with scratch-built block and tackle

Oh no! Not the old "portcullis drop and skeletons-in-a-closet" trap!

I hope your year is off to a smashing start as well, leadpeeps. Take care.