Orkish Attack Hound

Hi!

Well I had a rather productive day off yesterday and completed a few more bits and bobs that have been languishing half done on my painting desk for some time now:

 Fido the death dog

First up, there's an attack dog for my Bloodaxe warband. Originally from the Mantic Marauder faction for Deadzone, he painted up really quickly and despite having rather a cartoony look to him (or possibly because he did) he fits in really well with the Bloodaxes.

 Nom!

I extended the body very slightly with a little putty and went for a really quick paintjob and it turned out surprisingly well for about an hours work. I have a second one in the queue to get put together and may convert him slightly by removing the chainsaw from his mouth and adding a tongue instead.

Bionics detail

I also managed to finish off a couple more stands for my Grey Elves for Leviathan:

Elven regiment

I must admit that the little chaps are looking good but I frankly hate the amount of work that it takes to get them ready to paint. I have to remove the original spears, clear off lots of mould lines, add a new spear from wire and then sculpt on a replacement arm. Irregular miniatures looks surprisingly good once painted but they could really simplify things if they cast individually!

I'm off to work in a couple of hours so will have to leave it there I'm afraid but hopefully I will get some more bits and bobs done soon including another Eldar who has been sat half finished for far too long now!

All the best!

Mantic Dwarves

Hi!

I recently got a regiment of 20 plastic Mantic Dwarves and thought I would post a bit of a review of them.

When they were first released I had been a bit dismissive of them as I thought the detail was a bit poor and they were too cartoony. Looking at the actual figures I must admit my first view was well out as the miniatures themselves are rather decent. Possibly it was the studio paint scheme but they really don't show them to their best.

For plastic figures they are surprisingly mould line free and only minimal cleaning was required as the sprue has been cunningly wrought to conceal the lines in areas which are not visible. In fact one could just about get away without even doing any but for the purist in me I removed what little there was. Its worth noting that the plastic sprues are really sturdy, possibly a bit more so than GW kits and I ended up having to use pliers to get the main bodies off after chopping into my finger with my hobby knife!

The figures themselves are sharply detailed but stylised a bit which makes them very different from the GW Dwarves and actually have legs! Some care needs to be taken in putting them together on their bases as I got half way through constructing them before realising they wouldn't rank up!

Hopefully I will be able to get them painted up soon so folks can see them but for the princely sum of £10 from ebay, you really cant go wrong! I will be using them both for Kings of War and 3rd edition Fantasy Battle and the only conversion work I have done was to bush out the champions beard a bit and make a new standard out of wire as the one in the box is a little on the small side for my likings!

Overall I would recommend them to anyone wanting to collect an affordable army and look forward to painting them up!

All the best!