Scraping and gluing Daemons

Thanks to a very generous present the previous weekend I found myself in possession of all the new plastic Plaguebearers I need to get my Daemon army up and running.

I say running, some of them look like they are half way through falling over!

So how long does it take to make 40 Daemons?


As it turns out about three days and one 13 episode series on Netflix (Hemlock Grove, I'll come back to this later).

Here they are in all their glory

 Things I like:
- The designers have done a great job of making sure you construct your models correctly by actually sculpting letters to the inside of the body sections (they are two part, legs/spine in one part chest/belly in the other). This means that you can happily clip them all out and clean them in a large batch rather than having to construct them one at a time or concoct some elaborate storage system to avoid mixing them up.
- Whilst at first glance I was concerned their would be little to no variation in the models the three body shapes produce some subtle but significant differences once you introduce the other components.
- If you don't want to add in the large number of Nurglings you are given then you could use them to make a base or two to help bulk out your army with a unit of the cheery little fellows.
- There are loads of spare parts. The number of heads you get is particularly impressive and once you add in the command models you can easily avoid using any components that you aren't fond of (for me this was the fly, proboscis and maggot mouth heads). Also, the choice of two standards is refreshing rather than having to buy some fine cast addition to create variety in the army.

 I particularly like this chap but his spike is so large I'm worried he won't fit in a standard foam tray with out scarping off the paint on the horn.

My favourite head, but what could have made him so angry?

 Things that made me go hmm:
- In an effort to keep the Plaguebearers spindly and diseased as they appear in the artwork, some extremely thin sections were sculpted but it makes cleaning them harder as you can easily make them too thin when removing the unwanted mould lines (yes Plagueswords I'm looking at you!). This is also a real problem with the Champion and Musician arms as they are separated at the wrist which is extremely thin, making it not only hard to glue but potentially weak too.
- The placing of the connections to the sprue was particularly poorly placed on some of the parts meaning that it was not only hard to clip (I was worried about breaking the swords as I removed them) but also meant that cleaning them caused me to damage a few.
- The increasing use of CAD to design miniatures has begun a trend of complex kits which some how have less detail than traditionally sculpted miniatures. I'm not a great fan of this as features like eyes have less definition and more the miniature is just a smooth surface. I wonder if this is because the miniatures look more detailed on screen, something to contemplate.

All made and sanded, ready for undercoating next week.

Overall I'm very impressed with the models and they are clearly an improvement over the metal ones (I've put the remnants of my army on Ebay to use the money to get the other units I need). It has changed my opinion from when they first came out, as I was underwhelmed. I did have one peculiar thought as I lined them up for the photo. This is a decent amount of models for a 40k army but is probably just one unit for Fantasy. Just another reason I can't see me expanding my army to also do some square basing (though a team up could work well!).

Plaguebearers: 4/5 Daves (my new review measurement) 

Quick TV Review: Hemlock Grove

As I mentioned at the start of this post I helped distract my brain from the monotony of cleaning so much plastic by watching the 13 episodes of the Netflix show Hemlock Grove. A show about a series of killings by what appears to be a wild animal, you would be forgiven for not giving it a try due to Werewolf/Vampire/Supernatural burn out but it is actually really interesting as they focus far more on the characterisation and do a great job of not explaining everything/planting plot threads without being too obvious. 

Things I liked:
- Believable characters who you begin to care about.
- Intelligent mystery that will keep you guessing right up to the last couple of episodes.
- Part of a much larger world from the start, meaning that it hopefully won't give you a WTF moment in series two by introducing concepts that don't fit with the feel of the show. An example being the balance between science and magic right from the first episode.
- Little nods to the classic horror stories (one freakishly large and disfigured character is called Shelley).

things that made me go hmm:
- My only complaint would be that despite watching it almost completely back to back some times I wondered if I had accidentally clicked the wrong episode. Some early episodes jump almost a whole month and others continue from the same scene as the one the last episode ended with.

Overall if you like a show with a bit more psychological than physical horror (though it's still there) then this is probably for you, but beware the first three episodes are a bit slow so you'll need to push on through.

Hemlock Grove: 4.5/5 Daves