Interview with Rob Lane of BaneLegions

   

I thought I'd start with this impressive beast! Krull, Servile Lord of Dis.

Right well a few weeks back now I did an introduction article for the BaneLegions range, I don't mind admitting it was slightly out of of date, as it had some how got lost in my Blogger draft edits pile. Thankfully though Rob Lane of BaneLegions offered to bring me up to speed on what exactly is going on, and where the product range is heading. What follows is a *ahem* not so *ahem* brief discussion I had with him about a few things. Don't worry I've cut out all the chat about man flu, getting old and what brand of thermal socks are best (it has to be Thinsulate, right?). I've even managed to wrangle a bit of information out of him with regards time scales he's been so reluctant to be pinned down to and three sexy concept sketches I'll be showing you. So read on, there might even be a prize in it for you at the end, but I couldn't say for sure...

Frontline Gamer: Firstly thanks for agreeing to let me badger you with my questions! Before we start on the ‘real’ questions can you tell us all a bit about yourself, your staff and your company, and how you got yourselves into the industry? And why?
 
Rob Lane: Well, both Tim and I have been playing wargames for over twenty years, and it was a natural progression that – after having numerous “normal” jobs – we would decide to pursue something to do with wargaming. I began Maelstrom Games back in 2001, after becoming very tired of commuting to an IT job, and I recruited Tim (who I had known for years as part of my local wargaming club, the Dragon Slayers) to be my studio director in 2008, a job he fulfils today - which includes looking after sculptors as well as making moulds and casting the miniatures - after having to make the tea for two years. As well as Tim there's our photographer Stuart White, ex-Games Workshop; and Jamie Wright and Niall McWalter, who cast our miniatures along with Tim. Lastly, but certainly not leastly, there's Dan Melia, who cleans up and packs the miniatures into their boxes, amongst other jobs I give him.

New Citadel Paint range (it's a good thing people)

   
   

Finally, Alan Merret has revealed to us what 'that' Games Workshop teaser video was all about! Apparently Games Workshop are releasing an entirely new paint range. Wow, I didn't see that one coming! So we all now know what the number 145 means! OK so that was me being sarcastic, I know, very out of character for me. So yes, we all probably knew before the Store managers officially knew, because Games Workshop has an insane fear of actually telling their staff and customers any information. Why? God only knows. But, putting aside the companies piss poor marketing techniques, and frustrating lack of dialogue with their customers and indeed their staff at the coalface, I actually think this move is a pretty good one on the face of it. I'm going to explain why...

Frontline Painter: Maagaan Warlock of Baalor WIP 2 (Flesh and inner cloak)

   
   

He looks alright so far... but getting to this point? Phew!

So my first WIP on this miniature was a bit of a beast. For that I apologise, but I really do believe that the first thing to painting a good miniature is good prep work. So sure maybe I went over the top a bit, but if you think that was bad you should wait and see what I do with the the painting guide!!! Firstly before you start painting you need to get yourself a pot of 'dirty' water to clean your brushes and a pot of 'clean' water to thin your paints down.Plus what ever mixing palette you use, be that a tile, a mixing palette or even a wet palette.

Frontline Painter: Maagaan Warlock of Baalor WIP 1 (prep work)

  

Maagaan Warlock of Baalor and bane of green stuff!!!

So this is my first painting guide type article since I hurriedly painted my Sorylian Cruiser for the House of Paincakes HoP Idol contest. That guide was actually pretty well received, which surprised me. What people liked about it apparently was how detailed it was. So again with this guide I'm going to put a lot of detail into the guide, and if at points I'm teaching grandma how to suck eggs I apologise. But I guess I personally feel it's more important to be precise about these things rather than skip over details and leave some poor sod clueless and scratching their head.

Picking a Project

Yeah as I may have intimated to you on Thursday this is the 'one-off' project I wanted to attempt to try and kick start my desire to paint again. If the hints weren't strong enough SinSynn made me blow the big surprise by doing comparison shots for him! Why did I choose this particular miniature? Well it's pretty simple really. Although I own a lot of lovely resin sculpts from a number of high quality producers, like Studio McVey, Kingdom Death and of course Banelegions, only a few stood out for various reasons. I also knew that painting anything from the massive backlog of miniatures for the various games I currently play would be a bit of a mental barrier, as it would simply feel like I was starting to paint a faction again. Something of a psychological block that for me at the minute. So I needed a one off display project really, something to get me thinking about painting again. I wanted to do something with a bit of non-metallic-metal, or NMM from here on out, because I want all my Infinity miniatures to use this technique and quite frankly I'm a little bit rusty with it, so I wanted the practice. I was never great at it in the first place either. I also wanted a miniature I could use my Secret Weapon crushed glass snow on, because I've had it for a while now and I really want to use it so I can do a review of the stuff.

So I set about looking for a fully armoured miniature that looked a bit Nordic or at the very least like it was dressed for colder climates. Digging through my boxes (yes I said boxes) of unpainted miniatures I finally came to rest on a few choices actually. There was the Kings Men, Buthcher, Forge Priest and Survivor Male all from Kingdom Death. Meanwhile from Studio McVey I was tempted to start Vitharr Bearclaw, Isabella or The Raven Priest. I quickly ruled out Isabella and The Raven Priest from Studio McVey because of the lack of metal on both miniatures. After looking at the Forge Priest from Kingdom Death I decided he looked more like he belonged in a dusty wasteland, as does the Male Survivor. I also felt the Kings Man looked like he belonged on some pristine marble courtyard somewhere. So this left me deciding between the Buthcher, Vitharr Bearclaw and Maagaan. I started to see Vitharr Bearclaw in some meadow somewhere during spring and I really didn't feel up to painting the Butcher from Kingdom Death, as I felt I wanted to pick my skills up a little bit again before attempting him because he's limited edition. So this left me with Maagaan who I really wasn't too fussed about ruining with my piss poor paint job if I'm honest about it! I mean I can always just buy another one.

Banelegions, beasties and unpronoucable names!!!

 
    

I originally drafted this article out at the end of summer last year (2011), but for some reason I never got round to finishing it off. It was around the time I did my articles on Studio McVey and Kingdom Death, it was meant to be 'third' in a series, so I guess you could say this article is actually really, really late! When I actually started writing it though I was fairly skint. In fact I probably made Greece and Iceland look positively flush with cash, and sadly this state of affairs is still the case, in fact I might be worse off! I hadn't at the time been able to look at picking any of these up, and so for this article I asked the the lovely chaps at the Maelstrom if they'd allow me to take shots of some of their Banelegion stuff, and have a general ferret around in their boxes (it's not as dirty or illicit as it sounds), so I'd be able to do some reviews maybe... this turned out to be a cunning sales ploy. Because I ended up getting the Terror of Fortriu and Guillaume le Perlerin as they're both lovely figures. Hell I've also picked up a few more since and will be reviewing them all separately over the next few months. This article is just a brief overview though of the range of models and a bit about the Banelegions range in general.

Photography courtesy of Mrs Frontline Gamer, aka Dr Brainiac.

The first thing to point out about the Banelegions range is that it is split currently into two categories, Banelords being your heroic miniatures and Banebeasts being the gribbly monsters. The second thing I have to say about the product line known as 'Banelegions' is that without a shadow of a doubt it contains some of the most incomprehensible and tongue twisting names in the entire hobby. That's saying something, because we love our weird sounding names us nerds. We all know that fantasy and sci-fi universes tend to suffer from what I like to call 'random name generation syndrome', a process whereby letters of the alphabet are picked at random to create names that not even a cunning linguist can pronounce. But, Banelegions takes the gold medal, and by a big margin! Names like N'nhaak'chshir and Oacyning make the likes of Euryalia, Magagg and Guillaume le Perlerin seem positively bland by comparison... however, I'm reliably informed by Rob Lane that the names are all indeed ye olde English, and not just a random conflation of letters drawn haphazardly from a hat. I have no reason to doubt him, but, I still have my suspicions! All I can say is thank the lord that we still don't speak ye olde English like Geoffrey Chaucer, it's hard enough being dyslexic with modern English.

Painting Guide: Sorylian Fleet

This article first appeared as part of the HoP Idol Contest but I've since had a few people send me emails and ask me to put it up on my blog, with bigger picture files so they can take a closer look... so I hope this works or its pointless!!! By the way voting is now live in the contest and you can vote for me here. Thanks

Right I need to get this out of the way fairly rapidly before anyone gets a snide dig in and says I'm shit at painting and shouldn't be doing any painting guides... I know I'm no where near as good as many of the painting bloggers out there. I never will be so I'm not going to pretend I am. However I do have a few tricks up my sleeves and various people have asked if I'd consider doing some painting guides, but I'm doing this one for the HoP Idol contest. So against my better judgement here's my first full on painting guide, and to ease myself into this its an easy one, I'm just painting my Sorylians from Firestorm Armada. Given though that people have asked me to be specific about what I do to the mini's I'm putting a lot of detail into this painting guide and as such it's a damn hefty beast.

Get the painting area right

I think its fair to say the first thing most people get wrong from the get go is their panting area. There are a few essential items I think you must have:

• Comfy chair
• Dedicated painting table / desk
• A place to store you paints within easy reach
• Ceramic tile / mixing palette (also, or instead a wet palette)
• A pot for cleaning your brushes of paint as you go (dirty water)
• A pot for watering down and mixing your paints (clean water)
• A roll of kitchen towel
• A good lamp with a daylight bulb, or if you can afford it two.
• Two jugs, one empty to pour dirty water into and one full of clean (preferably filtered) water.

I might return to a few of my tips or things I have / do when painting like airbrush and paintbrush care etc. at a later date, but for now I'll leave it at that.

The concept

Right, you have to start somewhere and my rough concept for these guys was to simply paint them predominantly red hulls with white accents. The guns engines etc were to be painted in metallic colours, but at this early stage I wasn't sure what sort of metallics, gold, brassy or a gunmetal type colours or indeed if I would use metallic paints or try None Metallic Metal (NMM) technique. However I did not want my ships to look like they were newly out of the space ship yard... no I wanted them to have a 'lived in' look so I was going to attempting a few weathering techniques, but more on those later.

My Painting heroes

Before I start putting my painting blogs up I thought I'd better clear a few things up. Firstly I know I'm not a very good painter, my stuff is passable. You see the trouble is while I might know all the tricks of the trade (well a fair few) I'm still just basically an overly enthusiastic amateur. So when looking at my painting blogs please take them in the spirit that they're meant, i.e. an enthusiastic bodger showing you what they're getting up too. However just to show you how crap at painting I know I actually am I've compiled a list of my painting heroes and explained why I've included them on my list, so here they are in no particular order:

Angel Giraldez

Is he the best painter in the world? Well that's a subjective thing really and I'm not really sure there will ever be a 'singular' best painter ever, because we'll all have our favourites. However what does continually impress me about the work Angel puts out is the speed at which he paints to a consistently high standard, now when I say high I mean stupidly good. Some painters might churn out a single masterpiece every 2 or 3 months or even longer 1 piece every 12 months, but not Angel. He is putting out fantastically painted mini's at sometimes 10 or more a month, every month and each piece is a work of art many of us will only be able to dream of getting close to. Not only does he do the Infinity studio paint jobs he's also responsible for a lot of the newer Anima Tactics paint jobs and many more besides. He has a style all of his own but he can adapt it like all the best painters out there depending on the subject his Infinity stuff looks subtly different to his Anima pieces and so on and so forth. Simply brilliant.


Mike McVey

Well he's the original master for me, when I was young my dad used to tell me about thinning paints and shading things properly. However he'd be the first to admit I think that he wasn't the worlds best painter and although it might sound big headed, even without doing all the right things I was a better painter than him so I saw no point in listening to his advice. However when I saw Mikes work... I waxed lyrical about his stunning Green Knight paint job that made me realise there was way more to painting than using a tank brush to do some dry brushing. He inspired me to become a much better painter than I was. I'm still awful but it was his work at Games Workshop and then Privateer Press and indeed now his own Studio McVey that inspired me to want to get better and look up painting techniques. I know from speaking to my many friends that an awful lot of them feel the same way as I do. He's the Godfather of miniature painting for a generation. His better half Ali's not too bad either.

EotBS Work in Progress shots

Right one of the reasons I started blogging was to force myself to bloody paint some miniatures. However the fates conspired against me and I've been thrust me onto the scrap heap of society as one of the great unwashed and unemployed. Now this might seem like a good thing hobby wise, insofar that I would have more time to get some painting done wouldn't it? Ironically not! No I've spent the last two months sorting various crap things out and quite frankly my search for gainful employment has kinda become a 24/7 task... its grim out there if you're looking for a job. Seriously I've suffered more rejection than a ginger Jahovah's Witnesses going door to door trying to spread the word.

However recently I have been able to slosh a bit of paint on some miniatures with my airbrushes, I've started my Sorylian Fleet for Firestorm Armada and I'm writing up a detailed painting guide for them as I go along and I'll probably do something similar for what I'm about to show you, which is my Empire of the Blazing Sun Dystopian Wars fleet. I was in two minds as to whether I should paint my Kingdom of Britannia ships first or these Japs. I went for the Japs in the end as I just love the steam train vibe of them. Rather than going for the usual green theme many EotBS fleets seem to have I decided to go for a more traditional naval grey but with white dazzle for Arctic operations.

Here are some of my frigates, I'm quite pleased with them

Kingdom Death, Deranged, warped, disturbed and sexy miniatures!!!

Kingdom Death

OK yeah I said it, sexy! I'm not normally one to go for 'cheese cake' poses or indeed female barbarians with huge melons wearing thongs that belong on a Florida beech sometime in the mid 80's. But there is something undeniably sultry and sexy about the Pin-Up range of miniatures on offer from the wonderfully warped minds of Kingdom Death and Adam Poots, a man who must have come close to being sectioned at least once in his life!!! Only kidding Adam... I'm sure you've probably been sectioned multiple times, now put the axe down and step away from it!!!

You see, to say some of Kingdom Death's weird and wonderful creations... are well... disturbing is somewhat of an understatement. I don't mind saying when I first saw the Wet Nurse I was somewhat disturbed and may even have muttered 'WTF is that?' indeed I think that might have been the exact response that they wanted to illicit. However it was another delightfully disturbed creation that I first saw that drew me towards the range The Grandmother miniature that is as stunning as it is... well disturbing. Sadly I have yet to add The Grandmother to my range, but I will as soon as Adam manages to remaster it (that is a none too subtle hint Adam, hurry up man!!!)

Grandmother concept art

As you can see from the concept art above its a pretty 'interesting' design and miniature, its an utterly fantastic sculpt as well. As you can clearly see by clicking on the picture to the left. I think even in an industry that's known for dreaming up weird fantasy creatures and elves and such like, you'd all probably have to concede that the Grandmother and Wet Nurse are... somewhat... unique in appearance. Granted if you've seen the brood mother in Dragon Age they are somewhat kindred spirits, but nevertheless they were clearly developed separately of each other given the time frames involved. I also have a little bit of 'love' for the sexier type of mini they produce, or the Pin-Up range. As I said at the start of this blog I don't normally go for cheese cake pose's but these are just so damn cool its hard not to like them!

Dragon Forge Resin Bases: Tech-Deck

Dragon Forge Designs

You see in the interests of thorough investigative journalism I felt it was wholly unprofessional of me to judge the wares of Dragon Forge on their admittedly brilliant Omega Prime bases alone. I felt I owed it to you, my loyal readers to order more of their product to ensure the standard remained consistently high!!! That's my excuse for buying these Tech-Deck bases, and also my excuse for buying my new Nomad army, because after having purchased the bases I needed to buy stuff to go on top of them!!! So in short I'm blaming you lot for me being skint and Jeff for making lovely bases, and that's what I'll tell the Bailiffs when they come a knocking on my door!!! 

Review: Al-Vianna Studio McVey

 
This is the final miniature I'll be reviewing for now from Studio McVey as its the last one I've got!!! Although Lisbeth and Kara's last stand are tempting... any who this is another one of those faeries; see told you I liked faeries. She has a cool 'lady of the lake' vibe about her, strutting her sultry self forward and holding that sword out as an offering, or a taunt maybe... or could it yet be part of some magic incantation? Who knows, its just a really nice simple pose that could be any of the above and its up to you as the painter to decide. She's also got crabs (no she's not a skank!!!) in her hair (no not 'that' hair get your minds out of the gutter) and that continues and confirms the watery, nautical theme of the piece... so I'll be painting her all brown and red then!!!

Product Description

For those of you with an aversion to super glue you'll be pleased to know that Al-Vianna comes in one piece. Yep you'll get to save on super glue too, and like Isabella before her she also doesn't come with a resin base, like before this is both a shame and a bonus, as it'll allow the creative juices to flow in terms of how I or indeed you should set the scene for her. Yannick Hennebo has again do a pretty bang on job of capturing Stephen Tappin's original concept art.

Review: Y'Sidyra Studio McVey

 
Again another miniature I was always going to buy. The pose is just so dynamic and full of movement. It looks impressive in the pictures you see of it and it only impresses more in the flesh. Its one of the few pieces in the Studio McVey range that looks like something truly energetic is happening and that the evil Y'Sidyra is about to pounce on something... and brutally kill it. Its just a really nice piece. Oh yeah and did I forget to mention that he's the second of my dark and nasty faeries!!! Yay more faeries.

Product description

So he's another naughty faery and from the looks of him, he's a pretty deadly naughty faery, with twin 'punching blades' attached to his hands. He's comprised of 5 pieces himself, those blades make up two of them, with two further strap type thingies that attach around his hips and flail off behind him helping greatly with the sense of animation and motion in the piece. The largest component though is his main body. There is also a highly detailed scenic resin base as well, which in itself is a work of art and easily the best scenic base out of all the Studio McVey pieces I own, its highly detailed and creates a 'scene' for Y'Sidyra to occupy.

Review: Y'Sala and Darkness Studio McVey

 
I had to own this model, when I first saw pictures of it I just thought it was a beautiful piece conceptually and it had been realised in a fantastically detailed way. Its possibly my favourite of the miniatures that Studio McVey have done so far, vying for that top spot with the delectable Ruby. So yep the naughty faery and her summoned beastie had to go into the shopping cart.

Product Description

I think out of all the Studio McVey pieces that I own this has to be the most complex in terms of composition. Y'Sala herself comes in only 3 pieces, main body, staff and a finely detailed thingymebob (yes that's the technical term) that goes on her back. Simple. Except that she also has to fit into her base and her staff has a cloud like structure coming off of it which joins up to the 'Darkness' and is clearly summoning him as he coalesces into reality. You still with me? Yep that's right the Darkness is coming out of her staff, he himself is attached to the base his two hands which are sculpted onto the base, and his head comes separately. I'm a bit bamboozled as to what to do to be honest, because I think if I put the critter together on the base with Y'Sala it'll be an utter bitch to paint. Hence the reason why I have no shots of her completed in one piece. Yannick Hennebo has not only conceived and sculpted an amazing miniature, its also possibly the worlds first puzzle miniature, its a very bold and brave piece to attempt and I think he pulled it off as the piece does look fabulous and I can forgive its complex composition when it looks this damn good.

Review: Isabella Studio McVey

 
This was the first miniature that went on the order from Studio McVey, there was just something about the pose that made me think I had to own her. There's something Gaelic and French about her, she's chic, nonchalant yet remains totally deadly looking... in a feminine and none brutish way. Its probably the cigarette and the bob hair cut now I think of it, but still she's cool.

Product Description

The concept for this piece was done by Ali McVey and I think its fair to say the image is just as sultry and sassy as the final piece, which was sculpted by the brilliantly talented Jacques-Alexandre Gillois. This is the first of two miniatures from Studio McVey that I have who don't come with resin bases, the other being Al-Vianna. Not that this is a problem at all because it just means I get the chance to pick the setting for the sultry vixen!!! So without that resin base the miniature comes in two parts, the main body and her right arm that is nonchalantly holding a very long cigarette.

Review: Ruby Studio McVey

 
This was part of my 'splurge' order I made from Studio McVey after having decided that I needed 'little presents' or rewards to keep me going while painting the figures I have for the gaming systems I play. I have to be honest I wasn't going to put Ruby on the order until Mrs Frontline Gamer said, 'what you're not going to order the the kick ass cowgirl on the dinosaur'... and when you put it like that why the hell wasn't I going to order her?

Product Description

She could have thrown sassy and sultry into the old descriptive mix as well!!! Honestly I have no frigging idea why I wasn't going to add her to my original order from Studio McVey, I really don't. She's a Cowgirl, with a stetson hat, long trench coat armed to the teeth with a kick ass look... while riding a fricking dinosaur, a dinosaur people and everybody knows things get a hundred times better when you put a dinosaur into the mix!!! Sam Wood's original concept for the piece was pretty 'sick' as the youth of today say and Jacques-Alexander Gillois has done a damn fine job realising it in 3D. Utterly fabulous darlings and this years must have mini... she might just be my favourite of the lot!!!

Review: Ar-Fiach Studio McVey

Well this is the first model I got from Studio McVey. I'd seen a fair few miniatures of theirs via other people who shoved them under my nose and I'd been impressed, but never taken the plunge as I had so many identikit plastic toy soldiers to get through first. However on a very grim night while realising that I was was no longer enjoying the hobby, painting miniatures I didn't like for a game system I was starting to loathe... I had an epiphany... I should really be only painting things I wanted too. It was that short sharp shock to my system that lead me to this little lady, or faery.

Product Description

This is a really nice little sculpt, its part of the studio's faery series and I think it was the miniature that actually made me want to pick my paint brushes up after a few months of inactivity. I just loved the look of the Victorian chimney sweep urchin faeriness of it all (forgetting that TV aerial for a second). Stephen Tappin's original concept was ace and a lovely idea and Yannick Hennebo has done an amazing job of bringing that concept to life with a brilliant sculpt. The miniature comes in 6 parts, the main body and the chimney are sizeable pieces but the others could be fairly described as 'fine'.

From the creative minds of Studio McVey

The name Mike McVey will be familiar to those of us of a certain age and indeed a certain gaming persuasion. He has been responsible for so many Iconic paint jobs for Games Workshop that were I to try and list them all I'd probably be here all day. He's also spent time working at some of the biggest names in the industry including Wizards of the Coast and Privateer Press, so he's been around the block and probably has multiple 'the T-shirts'. However for me he did paint the miniature that made me want to get better at painting, the Bretonnian Green Knight. I'd always loved painting but never really thought too much about what I was doing, the Green Knight made me want to learn as much as I could about figure painting... and I've still not learned anywhere near enough to be an even half competent painter!!!

However Mike and his also insanely talented wife Ali decided to turn their hands to producing their own fantastic range of one off miniatures for painters and collectors alike. Thank the miniature Gods that they did because honestly they're producing some of the best models around right now. I make no bones about it, I love pretty much every single miniature they've produced and even those that don't necessarily appeal to my particular aesthetic tastes I can see and appreciate for the gloriously detailed individual sculpts that they all are. I have hammered my bank card recently ordering far too much resin from Studio McVey... but its probably worth not eating for a week or two... although I think the other half disagrees with me on that one, but not as vehemently as some of you might think after I showed her Ar-Fiach!!! What can I say she's a girl, and girls like faeries... now if they did a faery on a Unicorn!!!

Micro Art Studios resin bases: Urban Bases (Infinity Bases)

Micro Art Studios

So then, I've got bases for my Aleph from Dragon Forge Design and some desert bases from Secret Weapon Miniatures for my Haqq Islam force (review coming up)... this left my Yu Jing sitting on my ordinary crappy old bases and as every good citizen of the glorious empire of Yu Jing knows, that just will not do!!! So I set about rectifying this grave error, and hoped the Emperor would spare my life for such a betrayal. Firstly I didn't actually own any of these bases, however after helping a friend pin his entire Combined Army to a set of them I decided that perhaps I should remount my Yu Jing onto them, as they seemed a suitable setting for all my high tech space ninjas, you can't beat a good space ninja. So with the fact that I'd seen a set of them and still decided to buy them means they must clearly be worth buying, you should bear that in mind when reading the rest of the review.

Dragon Forge Resin bases: Omega Prime

Dragon Forge Designs

Resin bases and me didn't get off to a very good start as I mentioned earlier today, years and years ago before gravity had been discovered I brought some resin bases to mount some nicely converted knights onto. Things didn't start well, doing my usual washing trick with the resin and even though the water could be fairly described as tepid they started to dissolve a little bit like an Alka-Seltzer, things went from bad to worse when the first one I managed to save had more air bubbles in it than an Jacuzzi!!! In the end I binned them, muttered something about never again and cursed the gaming gods!!! However it turns out though things have moved on a fair chunk.

As I'm sure I may have mentioned at least once or twice now, I have turned into a pretty damn lazy hobbyist. Whereas before I'd gladly whip out the green stuff, slate, sand and plasticard now I just want an already done base and for me to just pin my minis to their already wonderfully sculpted bases. In my Games Workshop days I have to be honest and say the thought of plumping for resin bases for an entire Warhammer Fantasy Battle army brought me out in hives and gave me panic attacks... but since I'm now playing skirmish games its not so bad.

Its one of the many reasons I'm starting to love the smaller game systems because you can afford to go to town on things like resin bases to make your entire force look super awesome. So imagine my delight when my lazy eyes saw the Omega Prime bases from Dragon Forge Designs. It was meant to be, as I was trying to work out whether I was too lazy or not to dig out a compass cutter and some plasticard for mounting my Aleph force, and then a solution presented itself to me, so perfect it'd have been rude not to!!!

I finally have a workable Gyrocopter... and its in Finecast

OK right lets be clear, I do not know anyone who enjoyed putting together the metal Dwarf Gyrocopter, its a shocker, awful, terrible and a right pain in the ar... you get the picture. Although actually a really cool concept, well I always liked it! However once you got the bloody thing together the agony didn't stop there, oh no, then you have to transport the damn thing and game with them without those fecking blades falling off mid game and chipping either your own, or heaven forbid your opponents models. In short its a gaming piece I've rarely used because my modelling skills have just not been up to the task, nice idea but badly executed. Therefore I felt the lightweight nature of resin would see the Finecast version win hands down, no problem.

It should have done shouldn't it? Guess what its not even a contest! Like all metal Gyrocopters before it my current metal Gyrocopter remains partially built, while the resin one is actually built. There's your comparison right there as far as I'm concerned. However it wasn't all plain sailing for the Finecast model, there's a slight miscast on one of the tail fins where it looks like the detail was scrapped by something while still setting, no biggy though, well not as big as I initially thought it was because after the undercoat it wasn't really visible (no undercoat pictures as I've painted it black and they don't show anything interesting). The tail fin spru and the pieces on it were however really quite badly warped and required some quite careful water bath treatment, as did the main blades. Not going to lie it was this which initially caused my ire with the model after about 4 or 5 hours trying to get them right, had they not being so warped and so fiddly to put right, my whole outlook on Finecast would probably have been quite different. There was also some mould lines those little channels that are on all Finecast sprus but compared to both previous models I've had it was minimal.