Smartmax is taking pre-orders for The Thirteenth Hour

Ok, maybe I wasn't keeping up, but I didn't even know that Smartmax was interested in making games to go with their miniatures. They've been making such absolutely fantastic Victorian Horror minis that I just missed it entirely.

One of the strangest things is that their whole line of miniatures is at 1/35 scale- approximately 54mm. Really, I haven't seen anyone try to make a game using larger scale minis since Games Workshop gave up on Inquisitor.

Still, if you're interested in painting some outstanding minis at that scale, they have them.

If you're interested, they're taking orders on their game. They've called it the Thirteenth Hour, and at least the mood on their website is very strong. It will be a small scale skirmish game (which is good, because there was no way anyone was going to field a force of fifty 1/35 minis).

Of course, you might not need to have an interest in the game to want to paint some of those beauties.

Dreadnought in Silvers

Just a little while ago, I got a chance to paint up a dreadnought for the Grey Knights.

Doing a mini in that much metal can be tricky- especially something like a dreadnought that needs to have two different types of silver to distinguish the machine workings from the armor. Even when you can make the silvers distinct, there are other troubles.

Often, when you're using that much silver it tends to neutral out the mini a little too much. To combat this, I created a bright lava base so that I could have a light source interacting with the rest of the miniature.

Altogether, I think this approach worked out rather well.

Get your self some Crawling Chaos

Privateer Press posted up their preview of the Legion of Everblight's future battle engine. They're calling it the Throne of Everblight.

I think I might call it "the Crawling Chaos of Everblight." It might be that I'm in the middle of playing Cthulhu Saves the World, but there just seems to be something Lovecraftian about it, don't you think?

For comparison, take a look at this Nyarlathotep statue:

I could see more Lovecraftian styled Everblight.

As of right now, I understand that Privateer Press' policy is still to release one book every year, and this year it is a Warmachine book. It is possible that we'll get to see this in its full resin glory before 2012, but I'm not counting the days just yet.

More Hazard Stripes

Here’s a mini that I stopped working on for a while. I got him about halfway finished, then got distracted with other projects.

Oh, other projects. Always the bane of the miniatures painter. Can’t you hear them calling to you right now?

Anyway, I got back to this guy and finally finished him off. Overall, I think he worked out pretty well for being split up over so much time.

So, here he is. As you can see, he’s painted to match an existing mercenary force, with the blue, white and hazard stripes.