Its not every week I get to show off a completed box of Fallout minis and I also have an interesting new acquisition to discuss as well. This week I worked on the final member of Vault Security and I had one goal, try and get the armor looking more like it does in-game. I feel that I essentially failed in my efforts on the first one. Here’s a look at the armor in the video game first.
And here’s a quick look at the first one I painted.
Not really even close. It doesn’t look bad, just not accurate. So with that in mind, I really gave it my best to come up with a better looking scheme and thankfully, I think I managed some improvement this time.
I do like this sculpt the most out of the box because its pretty dynamic and the toolbox on the base gives it a bit of visual interest too. Unfortunately, this particular mini did have a number of casting issues which aren’t too visible in the photos but were annoying to work on, particularly because they’re rare with Fallout minis in my experience. If you look along the side of the gun, you might see them, though there are others on the mini’s neck too.
Even though I don’t think the vault dwellers and security terribly strong or useful in most Fallout games, its great to get the four in the box done as I need to get some of my Fallout minis painted when I can. I hope to get some Vault terrain of some kind down the road and I’ll take some more pictures of them then so you can really see them in their element a bit more. For now, this group shot will have to do!
A day or so before I wrote this update, I happened to some hobby news that caught my eye. I feel a bit out of touch when it comes to what Games Workshop is up to these days because I don’t follow it as closely as I have in the past and I haven’t been painting any of their minis as of late either. I did happen to see that they revealed the new Ogre minis and that is noteworthy because I was a huge fan of them from the get-go. Its funny because I don’t like GW’s Orks all that much but I’ve always loved their Ogres. Why is that? I can’t say for sure but I like their vaguely Mongolian aesthetic, that they’re fat and like to eat everything, and they always seemed to use a bit of humor in the sculpts back in the day. I just so happen to have a picture of some of my old ogres which are long gone now so here’s some proof that I did actually like them!
I’ve certainly come a long way on painting since then, haven’t I? Well, I don’t think the new Ogres are bad, they do leave me a little cold. Here’s one of the better sculpts, I reckon.
There is definitely some better detail throughout the new sculpt but it lost a bit of the Mongolian flavor on many of the sculpts. A lot of the other sculpts look a bit more like horrific cannibals than light-hearted ogres that are hungry. I think that change appeals to a good chunk of the Warhammer crowd so I get why GW have shifted the style of Ogres over time.
While this is totally subjective, I’d much rather paint the second-most new Ogre Tyrant pictured below, as it better captures what makes Ogres appealing to me.
My favorite Ogre mini of all time is the now very old, Greasus Goldtooth. It really encapsulates what I like about the Ogres best. I would have loved to see GW make a new version of this guy but based on the direction of the minis they just teased, I don’t we’ll be seeing that anytime soon.
Of course, not having new minis that I want to paint is a blessing in many respects so I’m not really complaining. If anything, I’m really thankful that I was able to get my favorite Ogre mini in the current range, the Stonehorn and can tackle it at some point in the future. Maybe one day we’ll see Warhammer get back to some more comedic and light-hearted minis like Greasus above or even the Scraplauncher pictured below and if so, I’ll gladly be there to support it.
I promised I’d discuss the new miniature acquisition so let’s do that before I close this out for another week. As you may recall, not too long ago I was reading Batman comics and started collecting Batman cards a little bit. I was even going to write an article about some of the characters I was collecting and reading about. Some things changed and I decided not to keep collecting cards, mostly due to financial constraints and in some ways, I don’t regret stopping as I have limited storage and all that. Even with that bump in the road, I had always planned to go back and read more Batman comics as I enjoyed many of the ones I read. A couple of things happened to get me thinking about Batman and my desire to collect something Batman.
The first is that I played through Batman: The Telltale Series which was pretty good. It isn’t as good as The Walking Dead games but I enjoyed it and was happy to get another easy perfect game on Steam.
I’ve also finally found a display case that I think fits my needs and will be sturdier than an Ikea display case which was the stumbling block for me. So at some point in the future (hopefully later this year), I’ll be able to get one and properly store my display miniatures.
And these two things got me thinking… What would I like in the display case besides the display miniatures I already have and plan to work on. You would think I would put Fallout stuff in there but I actually thought of something else that would be cool and appropriate. And yes, it is Batman related.
Knight Models, which are certainly an interesting company, actually make a Batman miniatures game. However, they are a Spanish company and the game isn’t terribly popular or well supported in the United States so I’m not sure how many people know of it. Even more significantly, Knight Models seems to have very recently gone out of business, kind of like Privateer Press has done. Over the years, Knight Models made Lord of the Rings miniatures in higher scales and even Marvel minis before Marvel Crisis Protocol, which is kind of hard to believe.
As you can see, they’re capable of making pretty nicely looking minis. And the Batman ones look very nice too. Knight Models definitely get talented people to paint their studio versions, if nothing else.
This all sounds pretty great so far, right? Well, there are complications. Knight Models has poor quality control and apparently its not at all uncommon to buy a mini and not get each of the parts you need to build the mini. Knight Models also has done a bad job supporting the Batman game and its not clear to me if you can play it any longer because it requires an app to get your stat cards and the app has frequently gone down. All this is to say, buying Batman minis is a bit of a gamble. And the scale of the minis is a bit different as well. Its 35mm, non heroic which is a little bigger than Fallout minis but smaller and sleeker than Warhammer overall. I forgot to take a couple of pictures that compare the scale so I’ll have to do that in the future.
So I decided I’d buy the cheapest but coolest mini I could find and see what I think of it. I actually ended up getting a character I know nothing about, Batwoman. She has a cool visual design and looks like a fun character to paint so I figured, why not? The mini itself is interesting because Knight Models use something called thermoplastic, which is a softer plastic than Games Workshop or Mantic use, for comparison’s sake. So the minis have some bend/give to them which is good for gaming purposes. The plastic is a little tricky to sand and has fairly frequent mold lines and flash akin to resin. The details do look fairly sharp so its a bit of a mixed bag. You definitely have to plan on more model prep time than I would expect from GW or Fallout, for example but I can live with that in small doses.
Another interesting tidbit about this mini is that you get a fairly decent cobblestone street base with the mini but the gargoyle and building corner go on top of that. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit well at all and would look a little janky if I used the provided base.
Fortunately, I just so happen to have a display disc that I bought years and years ago and have never found a good use for. Surprisingly, it works much better as a base size wise and I think if I can find a way to fill the gap, it will look quite nice. I haven’t quite figured out how I’m going to accomplish said gap filling so if you have any ideas, I’m all ears!
So there you have it, I’ve got at least one Batman miniature in the queue and I look forward to seeing how I get on with it and what I can do with it, more importantly. If I like it, I might just build up a little collection of Batman miniatures to scratch the collecting itch I have. I figure there’s nothing better than a curated collection of “art” you’ve created and the end result may really impress Bat fans. That’s the hope anyway!
I’ve yammered on for long enough so I’ll stop here and I’m sure I’ll talk more about Batman and some miniatures I’m interested in acquiring, soon enough!
Kuribo's Painting 