Full Thrust Sa'Vasku Gallery

 

Not sure why these never got put up when I was doing painted galleries for the other Full Thrust factions years ago, but better late than never.  My Sa'Vasku collection was never very large, being restricted to a medium-sized raiding/interdiction fleet, so this gallery will be a less complete showcase for the range than the others with only five ship classes represented.  You can find the complete range here at Ground Zero Games' web store and their official stats in Fleet Book 2.

The complete force. 

Shyy'Tha'Varr-class heavy strikeships with their spines slightly re-positioned - roughly equivalent to human battlecruiser classes

Var'Thee'Sha-class strikeships, roughly equal in mass to human escort cruisers

Vra'Kiir'Sha-class strikeships with minor added detailing, again roughly equivalent to escort cruisers in terms of mass 

Fo'Vur'Ath-class destroyer equivalents

Custom battle damaged "drifting hulk" Shyy'Tha'Varr-class along with a Thy'Sa'Teth-class drone podship, roughly equivalent to a human escort carrier

Group shots for scale and relative sizes

Silent Death: Worm Pods

 

Found some more ten year old images, this time a squadron of Silent Death figs I'd forgotten about.

These are sold as Worm Pods.

In Silent Death they're fancy boarding pods, delivering bio-engineered crew-killers to enemy ships - which is how the Night Brood dealt with the much larger human warships.

Unsurprisingly, I mostly used them for Tyranid escorts in Battlefleet Gothic or as smaller astrofauna in Full Thrust and Starmada.

If I had them to do over again I'd probably go with a color scheme that makes them look less like the unholy spawn of Cthulhu and a cabbage, but a decade ago it seemed like a good idea.  

I've also added these images to my old Silent Death gallery for completeness.

Reaper Clown Miniatures

 

Some more figs from ten years ago, this time a pair of metal Reaper minis from their hodge-podge Chronoscape range.

This is sold as Bonzo the Killer Clown, but comes with spare parts that let you make a non-psychopathic versions as well.

Four-part model with separate hands, head and body, based on a 1" metal washer. 

IIRC you get two or three heads to choose from and maybe two each left and right hands, although Reaper can't be bothered to show the actual parts on their store any more.

There was a time when Reaper's catalogs (both in print and online) were excellent resources for a minis collector, but those days are long gone.

Their current online catalog is fairly dreadful, with far too many minis having only a single small image and only a few showing multi-angle shots or unassembled part layouts. 

Did an awful job on the liquid in the seltzer bottle there, my painting's improved quite a bit since 2013.

And this is Zonkers, this time assembled as a proper killer clown.

Pretty sure I mixed parts between the two kits to make these, but after a decade I can't swear to it.

The bodies are very similar to each other but do have minor differences in the details.

Reasonably happy with this one, especially since it was a quickie paint job for sale on ebay.

The local game store downsized their Reaper section years ago, first disposing of the metals at deep discounts and later selling down the Bones range when it became clear Kickstarter sales had effectively reduced demand to near zero.  

It's a sign of the times I suppose, but even five years before Bones first came along a store that didn't stock Reaper was cutting its own throat with all the lost sales. 

And here we are in 2023 and Reaper's been largely shoved out of retail, with Wizkids happily moving in to take their place.  Kind of sad really, but hardly the most surprising turn of events we've seen in the industry over the years.

Iron Wind Metals Spellcaster Miniatures

 

Todays post looks at a couple of 54mm miniatures, a scale I almost never painted owing to its relative rarity.  The figures come from Iron Wind Metals' rather obscure boardgame Spellcaster.  The game itself is nothing to write home about, but there are some nice sculpts in the range if you're looking for a painting project.

This gent is sold as a Gnome Conjurer with "Pet" Dragon, which probably spells out their relationship pretty well. 

Much like cats, you don't have a "pet" when you live with a dragon, you have a roommate.

If you're lucky you get along with each other, if not one or both of you are going to be miserable.

While 54mm scale, this is a gnome and therefore pretty short, although the dragon's head comes up to about 50mm in height.  The base is a 40mm diameter.

 

This grumpy fellow is supposedly a Barbary Mage, although I ignored that and went with a skin tone that isn't particularly North African.

 

I suppose the actual Barbary pirates were quite a varied lot anyway.

What a semi-historical reference is doing in an otherwise all-fantasy range is beyond me anyway.

His markings are sculpted on as raised detail, so I suppose they're meant to be ritual scars or something rather than tattoos. 

I've tried to paint them to suggest they're glowing slightly with a blue-white light.

Kind of wish they weren't sculpted on, or that they sold a "smooth" variant to make doing your own ink-work more viable.

As a 54mm human sized fig he's pretty big, as Mister 28mm Scale Figure shows.

If I were going to pick up more of the range, it'd probably be the lizardman and troll shamans, both of which are larger than human by a bit.  Back in the day they were more expensive than the rest (which kept me from buying them at Historicon), but now they're all the same price and they're by far my favorite remaining sculpts.

Reaper Gallery: Merchant, Bodyguards & Assassin

 Another set of minis painted back in 2015, all from Reaper Miniatures.

The merchant and his henchmen were sold in one pack, while the assassin was a separate model. 

Everything here is a single-piece casting with integral base, no assembly required.

Not the most sophisticated paint jobs ever, but I'm still rather happy with the color schemes.

The pointy shoes on the assassin are pretty snazzy and his pose is very dynamic for a one-piece cast.

The merchant wins the sartorial contest on the strength of his hat, though.

If I still had these I'd probably be using the set in Frostgrave.

With the new rules for cargo transports in the Wildwood supplement I might use these two as a single transport, perhaps rebased on something a bit larger with one or two of the various "porter" figures added on as well. 

They'd also make a nice mobile scenario objective for homebrew scenarios.

The sculpting sells the weight of the chest pretty nicely, although the guy in the lead is going have some sore muscles pretty quickly in that pose.

He certainly doesn't look very happy about it.

It's nice that they're armed and all, but getting to they'll need to set that load down if they want to fight.

One of Reaper's more whimsical packs without being outright cartoony, something they used to do more of back in the day