The title is probably a perplexing one as I’m not sure if we have any regular visitors who are German speakers or not. Guten Tag if you are! Unmensch is the name of a Nazi experiment that Hellboy squares up with in the very first story arc called Wake the Devil. Funnily enough, that is the character’s only appearance in Hellboy so kudos to Mantic Games for really digging deep and making all kinds of Mike Mignola characters come to life in Hellboy: the Board Game. Apparently the name translates to “Inhuman” in German which makes sense because he is a foul, Nazi experiment if I’ve ever seen one! As you can tell, he’s got an Inspector Gadget-like fist which he can swing around. Go-go Gadget Fist, indeed!
I wasn’t sure if this mini would be fun to paint and I was pleasantly surprised that other than the nasty mold lines on the back which are darn near impossible to fully remove, the mini came out pretty nicely. I experimented with some different colors like pale skin and slightly blueish metal. I think he came out looking pretty evil in the end which was nice to see. Unmensch functions as a random “mini-boss” that can show up in your games and since I only have a couple of those done, it will be nice to see more variety in that part of Hellboy going forward.
I also managed to get some terrain done for Fallout. A while ago I did one of two “turn” pieces of street and so I went ahead and finally finished the other. They’re not terribly exciting to show off but they do open up some new road layout possibilities which is a bit more exciting. The first is a subtle bend in the road.
Truthfully, its not something that has big impact in wargaming but it looks nice and will add some variety to future battle reports. The more exciting thing is when you put the two pieces together. You get a proper turn which is quite a bit more handy.
I’m pretty sure Black Site Studio made a piece of street terrain that was one piece instead of two like this for an even easier turn in the road but as I mentioned a while ago, its been retired so my hopes ever owning it are not very good. In fact, this is pretty much the only turn pieces I’m likely to acquire so I’ll have to get as much mileage out of them as I can. If you were curious, I also went back and touched up the sidewalks on the turn pieces so that they match the rest a bit better. That is where taking pictures can be handy in the hobby process.
While hobby progress has been pretty good, other things hobby-related have not been quite as nice. The first thing is that I bought an opponent for Hondo in the Kaiju diorama and ran into a problem that I tried my best to remedy. I bought Zeerox and he was packed with identical matching arms. Unfortunately, he should have reversed arms because the two arms I have only fit properly on one side. That means Zeerox is impossible to fully assemble sadly. I contacted Privateer Press promptly and its now been over a week and a half and no response. I’m pretty sure they’re winding down operations as a company since they sold off their paint line and Warmachine to Steamforged Games and this is possibly a little more proof. It also means that the money I spent was wasted on what would have been a fun model to paint. To cheer myself up, I’ve purchased another Monsterpocalypse mini which will get here next week. Hopefully there are no issues with it. I broke the first mini during assembly and then got an impossible to finish, Zeerox so surely, third time is a charm.
There’s no easy way to say it. This is not a great period to live in the United States. And I’m not talking about recent political events, which are indeed a huge mess and scary. Its actually the effect of tariffs and constantly changing rules around shipping in this country that’s the problem. I’m seeing more and more places that sell miniatures either guarantee that price increases are coming or they’re suspending shipping here altogether. And its not clear when this will be resolved sadly. For example, I would be interested this miniature which is a Limited Edition and was recently restocked after it looked like it was permanently out of stock from Kimera Models.
But Kimera has suspended shipping to the US until things settle down and this can only be purchased directly from them. In the past, Scale75 USA was a great place to order large scale miniatures but currently almost all of Kimera’s minis are out of stock and everything else is on sale which gives the impression that it is a clearance sale, possibly because they are no longer going to stock it. Time will also tell on that but you can start to see what I mean about how uncertain things are at the moment. I think bigger manufacturers like Games Workshop will probably weather this blip much more effectively but for now, it looks as though my miniature buying options for display pieces could be limited. Hopefully if there are any of you who buy stuff from the US, you aren’t suffering the reverse of what I’m describing but I wouldn’t be too shocked if that is indeed the case. I live in a city that has a pretty strong tourism industry and its been noticeably dead this summer as I think many people from outside the US are staying away, not that I can really blame them sadly.
Kuribo's Painting 
That Unmensch looks great! I haven’t really thought about painting my copy – probably because there’s so many minis in there, and I have enough of a backlog as it is! – but that looks great… might be tempted to get it out of the attic for a game soon!
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Thank you! If you have all of the Hellboy: The Board Game content, then there is a boatload of minis to paint. I’m still working on just the Kickstarter “base set” after a few years of owning the game now. I hope you enjoy painting the minis when you get around to it! I think the game is pretty fun too so its nice to hear there’s another fan of it out there in the blogosphere.
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A boatload is putting it lightly 🤣 They are great minis though, and I’ve thought about maybe just painting the heroes to start with. Though I suppose contrasts would get the frog monsters done pretty quickly?
The other thing that’s held me back, though, is that I’m just not playing it that often! A couple of years ago I’d set up a custom case file to play, and I think it’s still set up waiting. I think you’ve inspired me to get back to it soon, then!!
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I used Contrast to start on the frogs and then drybrushed over that and then added some highlights in the key areas like the face and that worked pretty well. Other than Nazis in the Conqueror Worm expansion and the frogs, there’s more variety in the rest of the minis in Hellboy, thankfully and not as much batch/army painting needed.
Playing a game can definitely get your motivation going. It always reminds me what I need to paint more of.
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Nice work on Unmensch, Jeff! 🙂 A relatively simple mini that’s come out really well! I think I’m mainly lucky that I get most of my stuff from the UK and maybe the odd bits from Europe!
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Thanks, John and you described it well. I reckon the UK and Spain are probably about the two best countries to live in as far as miniatures go. Europe is undoubtedly where the hobby gets made and in some cases, where you have to buy from, no matter where you live!
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Wow, Unmensch looks amazing! I’m sure I say this every time but the way you paint skin is just superb. I can imagine that having him pop up in the middle of a game and start messing with your team must throw quite a spanner in whatever plan you and Hellboy were working on 🙂
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Thank you, mate! I try to practice new things when I can on these gaming miniatures because I can always apply it towards more serious painting. A lot of the other random adversaries aren’t too scary, like a chimp with a gun, so I imagine that Unmensch can do some real damage but I’ll have to try him out and see! 🙂
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He looks great Jeff! Nice job on the painting, I’m especially fond of that chain, the links really pop with the NMM.
Nice to have that curvy road section, I quite like how flexible splitting the 90 degree turn into two parts is.
Those tarifs sound like hell for any hobbies. Shipping has been going up from the UK to Australia over the last few years and that’s been painful but it isn’t a blanket % increase on everything!
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Thanks, Nic! I wish I would have put just a bit more effort into a couple parts of the metal because it really does look nice. I somehow made the metal look evil which I can’t say I’ve accomplished very often!
The tariffs are definitely causing prices to increase. I know Mantic has said that prices to US only are going up and I think GW will have to follow suit eventually. I realize that Oz and New Zealand deal with inflated prices much more than us but for me, when manufacturers won’t even ship to the US, that is when it is eye-opening and concerning! I really hope that gets better soon as seeing things and not being able to buy them is almost like adding insult to injury!
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I follow quite a few smaller businesses on social media and seeing them post about their troubles with the tarifs it’s clear the US market is pretty crucial to them. So even worse we might see some people that are doing some very cool stuff go out of business which would be very sad.
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That is a real shame to hear but I’m not surprised by it either. As you can probably guess, the people creating their tariffs are not the economic geniuses they want people to believe, sadly. Hopefully our favorite hobby stores can weather these challenging times!
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Fingers crossed!
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The companies I have dealt with from the UK have been very up front and apologetic about not blaming the hobbist/customer for the tariffs, They raised the minimum amount needed for free shipping but some have offered to pay the duties and provide store credit as a discount on the next order. GW is still expensive but since they have a US warehouse/shipping (Tennessee) they avoid the tariffs.
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That’s incredibly generous of them because I think we pretty much deserve the blame for the increased costs at this point. I applaud them for trying to keep costs down as shipping costs from the UK have really gone up even pre-tariffs. I used to buy stuff directly from the UK without really thinking about it and now I actively look for other ways to get those products as $20 shipping costs is not out of the ordinary. Warhammer can be gotten online (eBay) for way less than GW retail but I don’t think MESBG is the same way sadly. That is the downside to GW’s decision many years ago to stop carrying it in stores…
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My flgs use to give 10% discount on GW products but it seems lately only to apply to Warhammer. My Warhammer store does seem to be carrying more lotr (War of the Rohirrim) thoug. LOTR on ebay is no longer a bargain.
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10% discount is not bad at all but only applied to Warhammer is not so great… I’m glad that LOTR is back in stores. The game can never truly thrive here if GW doesn’t support it. I’m guessing that the overall supply of LOTR minis finally went down enough that its even with the demand. GW no longer stocking most of the line in stores could be part of the price increases too. Warhammer often has minis or box sets that get overproduced and that’s how you end up with brand new stuff being 50% off on eBay…
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nice job on the go go gadget nazi. And I agree that a little bend in the road will make for more options of dramatic placement. 😀
don’t get me started on politics. 🤮
I just try to think about all the Welcome back sales.
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Thanks, Stew! Sometimes its the little things in our terrain collections that make a difference.
I would love to see cheaper shipping to go along with the Welcome Back sales 🙂
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