Dark and Dirty Dracula’s America Terrain

I loved the miniatures, art and setting of Dracula's America when it was first announced (back in August 2017) and hopped on the pre-order campaign, securing almost all of the starting warbands ("Posses" in in-game parlance) and the wonderful creatures! I've got a nice little chunk of it painted up and I had plans for a Louisiana-themed setting - swampy New Orleans gothic horror? Yes please! 

I started off by purchasing the Ghost Town Derelict Church from Sarissa Precision - a lovely American-themed church that had seen better days. I imagined this working either as part of an abandoned town or even surrounded by swampy terrain...

I also added to this a Perry Miniatures/Renedra Ramshackle Barn around the same time, with plans to scratchbuild some other similar farm buildings to complete the set - I got both of these buildings built, cut them MDF bases and added gravel and sand, undercoated them, basecoated them...then moved house several times. As you know, fellow hobbyist, life, uh, gets in the way...

After a few years I finally came back to this fledgling terrain collection early this year and around that time I discovered the Perry Miniatures/Renedra Ramshackle House which compliments the barn perfectly! One quick eBay purchase and a couple of days of building and painting and you have the set you see before you! I intend to write a separate blog post for each of the buildings as I'm really happy with how they've turned out!

How does that leave my HOBBY BINGO! board looking? After some discussion with Lewis we agreed that given that I mainly play skirmish games I could count the odd big monster I paint or a collection of terrain as a the Lord of War or Behemoth square - I think these fit that description nicely!

Feral Ghoul Reavers and Glowing Ones

I finished these rad-ghouls (radiation zombies from the Fallout post-apocalyptic universe) some time last year - I built them during October but didn't finish painting them until December. The armoured ones are "Reavers", a tougher and higher damage-dealing type of ghoul. They're basically rage zombies whose brains have been affected by the nuclear radiation, to the point where they're animalistic and lose all personality.

These are meant to be feral ghoul "Glowing Ones" - another type of ghoul that has soaked up a massive amount of radiation and can expel it in bursts of rads. These damage the non-ghoul and actually somehow help heal someone who is already ghoulified. I tried to paint them in the same luminous yellow/green that they're shown in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, with black veins threading through their translucent flesh.

The figures are Mantic plastic zombies with extra bits on the Reavers from various plastic kits.

Comments and suggestions are more than welcome.

Review: Brother Vinni's Ragnar and Eyebot

I had to put in an order with Brother Vinni when I first saw this wonderful figure!

The figure is called Ragnar and is obviously based on Ragnar Lothbrok as played by Travis Fimmel in the brilliant History Channel drama Vikings. I picked him up in order to add another interesting leader to my various Viking forces for SAGA, Dux Brit and others. The head sculpt in particular is fantastic and is a great representation of the actor. Also of note is the raven on the chest of his horn armour - this is the clothing he wears in the TV series and the Raven sigil was connected to the sons of the historical Ragnar Lothbrok.

 The kit came in several pieces - the body, head and legs as one piece as shown here, then each arm with axe and shield attached, plus a sheathed sword. Everything was very nicely cast with barely any moldlines to clean up. I did end up replacing the axe, shield and sheathed sword for ones from the Gripping Beast kits as I tend to worry about resin weapons snapping - I could quite easily have just used the original ones as the cast was crisp. 

Here he is based up - I used a 30mm round base and added some cork sheet on top as rocks. Size-wise, he fits very nicely alongside the rest of my Gripping Beast plastics and metals. 

I would very much suggest that you buy this figure if you're a fan of the series or if you're in the market for an interesting new Viking warlord!

I also picked up a figure from the Nuclear Sandbox line to add to my Post-Apocalyptic figures - the Eyebot. These were the pieces that arrived - again, another lovely and crisp cast.

One thing that I would say about the miniature is that it was larger than I was expecting - I suppose that's just the way some things need to be when it comes to transporting something from a computer game into 28mm - at scale I would guess that it would be around a quarter of the size or less, so it may be a positive that it's larger. 

I ended up using a round Warhammer 40000 base with a coin glued to the bottom for weight, then once again a piece of cork on top. I then used some straight wire to use as a flying stand - I drilled into the bottom of the eyebot and into the cork to pin it into position. I also added a canine skull to the base as it seemed to fit the theme.  

Regarding the multitude of aerials shown here, I was very glad that I'd recently invested in a set of multiple sizes of micro drill bits. I have everything from 0.1mm to 2mm for projects like this. I used some pictures of ED-E from Fallout: New Vegas and found the various spots on the model that needed an aerial. One of these in the centre at the back is a paperclip, whilst the others are actually bristles from a nylon-bristled sweeping brush. The final stage with the figure was to take some tomato puree tube metal and make a couple of metal plates for the figure to give it a "lived in" feel like ED-E.

As with the Ragnar miniature, I would very much recommend that you check out the Eyebot from Brother Vinni. I'm based in the UK, whilst Brother Vinni is located in Russia, yet the figures arrived within a week of ordering - that's pretty top-notch service! Give them a look - their Fallout range is fantastic and I'll be most certainly picking up more stuff from them in the future (after the 6MMRPC!)