Finally, these are done!
Well, almost. I see a spot or two of touch-up is needed, and the grey one might need a bit more matte varnish.
I tried to make the base a bit less green this time, as compared to the Ever Present Glory troops:
Partly by design, and partly by the difficulty of getting the adhesive under all of those legs, I think I succeeded.
Another angle:
Right rear flank. This pic shows the shield design a bit better. The halberds have a variety of symbols on them; they are mostly random, with the exception of the grey one - I tried to represent the circle of eight which IIRC is symbolic of the Ahoggyá reproductive ceremony.
One last pic:
Rear angle. Much earlier in the process, I lamented about how I made a mistake when gluing the loose shields onto the left arms of the Ahoggyá, and this shows the problem quite clearly. The shield face is pointing down, making it difficult to see while playing.
This is number 4 of approximately 27 elements I need for my Tsolyáni army in the Thámerü scenario...
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Painting is just about complete on my first element of Ahoggyá:
These are painted to represent the Legion of Gurúggma, 3rd Imperial Ahoggyá Auxiliary Heavy Infantry (say that 3 times fast!!).
And, now to base them up:
All of those arms and legs will make it a bit tricky; I plan to place one figure on the base at a time.
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Slightly more progress:
The basic colors are done; all that is needed now is detail work and then on to basing...
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Here is a quick work-in-progress pic of my first element of Ahoggyá:
And, another:
Slowly, slowly coming along. I am not staying with one color for the Ahoggyá. This element will have some variation: two brown, one grey, and one buff.
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Another week, another pic of my poor, abused Tékumel miniatures, specifically the First Legion of Ever Present Glory:
I painted the base, and after letting that dry coated the back half with Liquitex Matte Medium, then quickly dumped an assortment of flocking materials on the wet medium. I am a bit concerned about the interior spaces of the base, where the brush found it difficult to reach. I hope that I have not, once again, painted myself into a corner with these miniatures and my basing scheme. The fluid but reasonably slow drying Matte Medium should do the trick, though, as compared to PVA or a similar glue.
This first base of troops will sit under the dusting of flock for a while, then we will see if it worked...
Meanwhile, another pic of a slightly different part of the desk:
More miniatures, waiting their turn!
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Slow but steady progress on the first element of my Ahoggyá:
These miniatures are a fun build! I have noticed a few things, though. With the main body being resin, the long pewter arms/weapons tend to make the miniature top-heavy, which has led to some minor frustration as I have tried to assemble them. The second item of note, which is purely my own fault, is the orientation of the shields on the left arms. In the pic above, you can see my concern - the shields are angled downward, which makes the colorful Tékumel shields hard to see. In future builds, I will correct this.
If one looks closely at the right-most Ahoggyá, one will notice a problem - the right rear arm is missing! Why? Because I broke it while trying to bend it into a different position:
Here it is prior to pinning it back together. Looks like I get to try my hand at repositioning a shield sooner than I had previously thought...
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Back some months ago, I had a system organized for how I wanted my first Ahoggyá unit to look. All of the arms were laid out on my workbench in just the right order. Then, we re-organized the hobby area and everything was packed away. Scroll ahead to now, and I can not remember exactly what I had done! And, of course, no pics of the entire set... So, today I set out to fix all of that.
This is what I had to work with (a pic from some time ago):
But, this is just all of the pieces laid out, not in the order I needed. Starting from scratch, I was. To help me remember what was going on for the next time, I found some of my handy storage units and divided the pieces for specific Ahoggyá:
In this case, the arms of each individual Ahoggyá went into a specific container, along with a note to help me remember how I wanted the arms posed:
The note is a little diagram of where I want the specific Ahoggyá on the base for this unit. These Ahoggyá will be representing the Legion of the Dancer Without Eyes, 2nd Imperial Ahoggyá Auxiliary Heavy Infantry for the Tsolyáni forces. Two more groups have been sorted, one more for the Tsolyáni and one for the Yán Kór.
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As a small portion of The Plan (see previous post), my lovely wife and I have taken upon ourselves to re-do the little area that my hobby table resided in and expand the capabilities of the room; i.e. we have trashed the place and are re-doing it all including adding her own hobby space! This of course means that I won't be painting anything for a while...
Fortunately, I snapped a pic of some Ahoggyá progress before they were packed up.
In this pic, one can see the assortment of Ahoggyá arms and armaments:
Quite an assortment. For my first unit, I am trying to make a rather homogeneous look, rather unlike the Ahoggyá but there you go.
Here are some of the steps in the process:
1. I have clipped the mace from one left arm, and glued a loose shield in its place. This will be the left (from this view) rear arm.
2. This time, I have clipped the entire hand from the mace arm, and the entire hand from a halberd arm. The halberd arm is unarmored, and in trying to make the entire Ahoggyá armored I thought this would be the easiest way. Eventually, the halberd hand and mace arm will be drilled out for pinning and glue. Left forward arm.
3. Right forward arm - this is the standard sword arm, but I have gently twisted the wrist so the sword will not rest so much in front of the Ahoggyá's front eye set ( can't really say face as they have four!).
4. Right rear arm - this is the standard axe arm, but I have gently bent the arm at the elbow.
It is going to take some doing, but I find the conversion process fun and hopefully will produce some unique miniatures.
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My Sérqu miniatures have been long neglected!
Here is a pic of a couple of them with a splash of blue paint:
They are not nearly done, but this is helping me accomplish a couple of goals: 1 - keep some momentum on getting miniatures painted which will lead to getting units completed which will lead to getting in some gaming!; and 2 - keep up a posting schedule on this blog.
Also included in the pic are some more of those Ahoggyá as I try to sort out their weapon/arm situation, some brand-new paints to be used on some future projects (shhhh! top secret stuff but might be obvious), and, alas, some more miniatures that need attention.
The paints were purchased at a relatively new store (well, new to me) in Seattle - Gamma Ray Games. It is a small but nice place - they have the full line of Privateer Press P3 paints, which I am finding to be to my liking, along with Warmachine/Hordes miniatures as well as card and board games. They have also recently accomplished a successful Kickstarter to help fund the renovation of a nice gaming facility just a block up their street, something I did not discover until after getting home. Since the store is an easy bus ride and stroll away, I hope to return to have another look.
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One of the big questions with the new Ahoggyá miniatures for Tékumel is assembly - how should I put them together? The large variety of arms make the process fun, with just a bit of thought involved also.
The above pic shows most of the arm pieces available. A key observation to consider when choosing the arms is the bend of the 'elbow'. Now, with single-mounted miniatures it is not a problem, but I want to put these beasts onto element basing, and the more straight the elbow, the more space is taken on the base. I can see that the axe arms - in the center - are fairly straight and will need careful placement. I am also thinking of chopping off some hands ... ouch! ... from some arms and pinning them to others to get a more varied look, and to combine the armored and unarmored arms better.
Here is a pic of the business end of a pair of Ahoggyá:
You can see that the axe on the far left extends beyond the limit of the base. It is not bad but I will need to watch for that when it comes time to assemble the elements.
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In my last order from The Tékumel Club, I purchased a handful of these:
Armored Ahoggyá! Short, squat, ill-tempered and ill-mannered, they are among the toughest troops on Tékumel. Four arms, four legs, and four sets of eyes are among the more obvious features on these creatures; just one mouth fortunately.
Also included in the order:
These are an unarmored variant. Hopefully the detail is visible; I have not had any time to paint or even assemble these miniatures.
This is the selection of arms and armaments that come with the Ahoggyá.
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