Dreadful Things: Squirming Brain-Eater

 

Quick conversion today, using a Reaper Bones Bathalian body and arms with a head swapped on from a Troll Forged Games alien head.

I've done quite a lot of Bathalians over the years, in part because the arms and heads swap easily between the three different Bones sculpts.

It's also very simple to find other heads that can be swapped on, obviously.

They are quite large, which offsets the usual Bones white tendency to flex and bend despite the relatively thin limbs.

This one's mounted on a 60mm base and positively looms over the Frostgrave barbarian here, who's mounted on a 25mm base.

Assimilation Alien Host: Alien Queens, Guards and Eggs

 

The new year in a few days will mark eleven years gone by since the now-defunct Ed Fortae as Troll Forged Games ran his Assimilation Alien Host kickstarter, a project that could safely be called ill-fated.  Ed has long since left the industry following some health issues without managing total fulfillment, and Impact Miniatures (one of my fellow backers who went in big on the project) stepped up and volunteered to try to finish it off, which still isn't entirely done.  Looking at the most recent comments shipping costs seem to be the main sticking point, and it seems unlikely that these sculpts will ever be on sales at retail.

Now, I have no personal complaint about the project, but that's only because I was one relentlessly pushy SOB back when it started to show signs of having problems, and managed to not only pester my own pledge out of them, I bought another backer's pledge on the TFG market page and managed to get that too.  People who weren't as demanding are still waiting and have been for over a decade.  It's not something that has a good fix, but it does serve as an excellent cautionary tale when considering backing a crowdfunding project.

Anyway, in the interest of preserving some memory of Fortae's sculpting for posterity, I've done a full gallery page of the stuff I painted from the range which covers about 80% of the minis that were promised, not all of which were finished and produced.  I've still got a fair number of figs unfinished even after all this time, but I did do a few of them this year so I'm adding them to the record.

   These are the Alien Queen and the Queen's Guard sculpts, along with a couple of bases of Eggs.

The Queen is a seven piece model - thorax, abdomen, head, two arms, two pairs of legs - and is one of my favorite sculpts in the whole range thanks to its truly creepy design.

The Guards are five pieces - serpentine lower body, torso, head, two arms.  The eggs are all separate castings, I've just clumped them together here on 45mm bases from Reaper.  I believe there are three or four different variations of them. 

The bigger models are quite large, fitting comfortably on 60mm bases.  Everything is made of a restic material that was a proprietary formulation of TFG as far as I know.  It's light and pretty durable, although its flexibility seems a bit variable.  There was (and maybe is) a vid of Ed bending the heck out of a goblin spearman fig without the stuff deforming permanently or breaking, but I've had small protrusions snap off while cleaning off the excess from casting.

Still had enough of them to do two sets with minor pose variations.

Started with three sets, you can see the other ones on the gallery page.

The arms on these figs (and the majority of the rest of the range) are simple spur and socket affairs, very easy to position as you like.

Truly a shame this project went as badly as it did, the minis probably would have done well at retail.  Still, I give some credit to both TFG and Impact for not selling them until the project fulfillment was complete, despite the fact that it most likely would have led to a cash influx that could have concluded fulfillment many years ago now.

If they ever do become available on the general market (most likely through Impact) I heartily recommend picking some up.  They go well beyond merely being Tyranid proxies and show some real creativity.

Couple of shots to give a feel for their size.  The gentleman with the pistols is an old Mordheim fig, so pretty much 28mm scale.

Say, what's that other thing there in the center?  Guess we'll find out next time...  

Assimilation: Alien Host Gallery

Way back in 2012 Troll Forged Games ran Kickstarter for their Assimilation: Alien Host miniatures range, the project page being here:

 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/131182444/assimilation-alien-host

 

The project was funded successfully with 399 backers and was meant to ship starting in 2013.  This did not go according to plan.  As of 2019, somewhere around half of the backers (including myself) have received their figures, Troll Forged Games is closed, the owner has left the gaming industry, and Impact Miniatures has taken over fulfillment efforts with the main sticking point apparently being postage costs.

 

This is unfortunate, albeit not a complete debacle as many crowdfunding projects wind up being.  The figures I received were creative, well-sculpted, matched the concept art well (mostly), and had a lot of obvious appeal for use in a variety of scifi, horror, and fantasy RPGS and minis games.  It's a shame the minis are probably still years away from going on general sale, and that so many backers are still waiting on their rewards seven years after donating.

 

Since I've painted the majority of the alien figures at this point it seems like this would be a good time to put up a gallery page showing off what the models look like.  I've still got a few things that I haven't done, and a few others that were painted and sold a while ago that could use better images, so I'll be updating now and then as I finish more, with the newest stuff at the top of the images.

 

Sadly, I never ordered any of the "alien hunter" models so I can't help with images of those.  Perhaps one of the other lucky backers who did get them will do their own gallery page so this range will be preserved online if they don't make it to retail after all.  One of the problems with kickstarter projects is the way limited run and exclusive miniatures can fall through the cracks, leaving us with holes in the internet's historical record of what was once available.  Must drive the Lost Minis wiki guys crazy.  Consider this page to be my effort at preserving their sanity.  :)

 

Without further ado, the pictures:

There are more images of some of these models on this post from the end of 2022, for anyone browsing this far back.

 

Carnage Hound on 60mm base

The first of many quite large models

 

 

Drone & Larvae Swarms

This is the biggest of the lot

 

 

Cannon Drone & Eggs on 120mm base

You could probably squeeze it on something smaller but I wanted room for the extra eggs 

 

 

Alien Wyrm on 60mm base

A slightly modified build with the mandibles moved around and the tentacular "hair" left off

 

Alternate take on the build from a mispack (they shipped it with no head) and some spare parts

I think I actually like it better this way

Fiend on 120mm base

Another modified build with some parts moved around or left off

 

One of two Goliath Worm types, very heavily modified into a burrowing creature with its tentacles based separately as grasping limbs coming from below.  The base build is a mess to assemble and full of gaps and badly fitting parts, but the parts are handy in different configurations.

 

Converted Overlord on 45mm base.  This one's had a head swap from one of the warriors and an alien egg added to the base, and is up for sale.  You'll note the KS page says he's meant to be big enough to need a 120mm base, so this is one of the models that wound up being not quite on spec in the end.  Still, a neat mini overall.  Comes in six parts, body, two arms, two wings, choice of one of four head variants.   

 

 

 

A pair of Queen Guards on 45 bases

This is the stock model, and comes in five parts - lower snake body, upper snake body & torso, two arms, head.

 

 

 

Queen Guard #2

 

This one's a bit of a cheat, since the majority of the model is a Deadzone Stage 1 Plague mini from Mantic, slightly reposed and with a head swap from the Alien Host Overlord.  Many of the Host figs include multiple heads and the Overlord's the best of them with four variants.  The coincidence of the sculpting style of the carapace on these two kits is a happy one, and this is by far one of my favorite conversions of the last few years.  A big model standing on a 45mm base.

 

Sky Hunter on 60mm base, although it might have done better on a 120mm with that wingspread

Comes in six pieces IIRC - head, torso, snake body, two wings, and the chest tentacles.  No variant parts on this one.

 

 

Grub Worms, including the KS exclusive "Big Grub" mini

The little guys are on 25mm bases, the big one on a 45mm.  All are two piece minis - head and body - and the regular Grubs have many, many head and body variants.

 

 

The actual Alien Host figures that gave the project its name

Pretty much infested zombies bloated with growing larval worms.  There are six variant sculpts of the standard type on 25mm bases, and a KS Exclusive version that's about ogre-sized and sits on a 40mm base.  All are single piece figures.

 

 

Swarm Adults on 25mm bases.  These are two piece castings - body and one of several head variants.  Taller than a human but not huge.

 

 

Swarm Warriors on 40mm bases

Four piece models again - body, two arms, one of several head variants.  These are armed with ranged and melee bioweapons, and are much bigger than a human.

 

 

Stealth Warriors on 40mm bases

Pretty much melee-only warriors, albeit with entirely different parts.  Four pieces - body, two arms, one of several heads.  You could probably get even more figure variety by swapping parts between the Swarm Warrior and Stealth Warrior figs as they're quite similar in size and style.

 

 

 

Swarm Master on 40mm base

A four piece model - body, head, two arms.  Don't remember there being variant heads on this one, but I might be misremembering

 

 

Queens and Eggs on 60mm bases

The eggs are single piece models and have about four variants, mostly quite similar.  The Queen kit is seven pieces - two pairs of legs, two arms, abdomen, torso, and one of two head variants. 

 

 

 

 

Alien Wyrm on 60mm base

I've altered the assembly on this one - the two long limbs on either side of the mandibles are meant to be attached to the lower body where the two small tendrils are, but I preferred this look.  Comes in many parts - upper body, lower body, head, mouthpart tentacles, "dreadlock" tentacles, two forelimbs, and eight or ten individual tentacles, some of which are spares.

 

 

 

MORE TO COME - WORK IN PROGRESS