HP Lovecraft

In the eldritch confines of my study, I unearthed a diminutive relic of unspeakable provenance—an accursed miniature that defied the feeble constraints of mortal comprehension. The blasphemous sculpt depicted an otherworldly figure, a ghastly visage that whispered of realms beyond the ken of human perception. In the sickly luminescence of my dimly lit chamber, the colors upon my palette seemed to shift and writhe, revealing cyclopean landscapes and nameless horrors. The twisted sculptor, a shadowy adept in the forbidden arts, had rendered the accursed author with a fiendish precision that echoed the cosmic malevolence of the Great Old Ones. As I gazed upon the diabolical creation, a palpable chill gripped my very soul, and I could discern the spectral murmurs of eldritch entities weaving their inscrutable tales within this infernal masterpiece. The mere act of contemplating the arcane artefact threatened to plunge my psyche into the abyssal depths of cosmic horror, leaving me teetering on the brink of sanity.

I tried out ChatGPT for the above paragraph- horrifyingly good.

Here's a fun figure from Impact! Miniatures. I originally got him as a Blood Bowl coach. They've captured his eldritch chin.

HPL and his friend LP Hovercraft

"I am Providence."

Howard Philips Lovecraft age 43 (1934)

Unfathomable

Father Dagon leads a wave to assault the Atlantica.

I painted the Deep Ones from Unfathomable, a boardgame where you are crew on a 1920s steamship being attacked by Lovecraftian watery monsters. You have to work together to allocate finite resources, resolve dilemmas, and repel boarders- but at least one of the players is secretly helping the monsters and trying to keep their real allegiance hidden!

Fairly simple paintjobs with Contrast and gloss varnish and plain black bases. There are twenty Deep Ones and they're identical, so it wasn't fun painting them and they've been stalled in my painting queue for over a year. Father Dagon and Mother Hydra are pleasantly hefty chunks of plastic.

Deep Ones

Father Dagon spawns more Deep Ones

Mother Hydra smashes the ship

The boardgame is a retheme of the 2008 classic Battlestar Galactica, which is well out of print. In BSG you are humans evading the Cylons, but some players may be secretly Cylons. The two games are very mechanically similar. The retheme acknowledges the heavy debt to BSG and other SF:

• You're on the SS Atlantica
• One of the crew has a dog called Starbuck
• There was a ship's cat called Ripley
• The Engineer is Jeanne Lafarge
• etc.

I was a traitor in our recent game- it was challenging trying to teach and supervise the game, because mistakes and oversights would favour me!

Mansions of Madness monsters

There are a variety of new monsters in Mansions of Madness 2nd edition. The bases they come with are, like the first edition, truly awful. I rebased and painted the figures and added them to my eldritch collection!

The Hunting Horrors were stuck to Citadel flight stands I had had lying about for years.

The rioters come three to a base, but I've left them individually based for use in other games if necessary.

The cultists are the first edition ones, so I didn't re-do them. The High Priest of Dagon is a little too fluorescent, and I may do some more work on him.

The deep one hybrids really came to life with a blue-green lower lip, and some dodgy eyes. Suitably batrachian!

The child of Dagon looks more like a zombie.

The deep ones were easy to paint with a mix of green and blue washes. I wasn't a fan of these initially, but now I think they're my favourite.

The ghosts were easy to paint, with a green wash over white.

The star spawns are suitably large whilst somewhat static in pose, but look fine after a green/ brown paint job.

Here's the second edition content, and the combined first and second edition.

Ia! Ia!

Mansions of Madness investigators

I was pleasantly surprised when FFG announced a new edition of Mansions of Madness at the end of July. I played the first edition a few times, and pictures can be found here and here.  

 

 

 

The new edition is an undeniable improvement and comes with eight investigators.

 

Wendy Adams, urchin

   

Agatha Crane, paranormal investigator

 

   

Carson Sinclair, butler

   

Preston Fairmont, millionaire

   

Minh Thi Phan, secretary

   

 

Father Mateo, priest

   

 

Rita Young, athlete

 

 

William Yorick, gravedigger 

 

The new edition can be used with first edition map pieces and investigators. Here is my entire collection of investigators!

 

Mansions of Madness investigators

 

Next time: the monsters!

Three go mad in the woods

I had another game of Mansions of Madness recently. We replayed the survival scenario 'A matter of trust', on a variant board from last time. Would this time end any better?

As Ashcan Pete, I found a sniper rifle, but never got to use it- I was having more success beating cultists over the head with a shovel. Meanwhile, Mandy Thompson went mad and set stuff on fire, luckily including several cultists. Unluckily, she also set me on fire and I burnt to death* (again...). But then she was overwhelmed, and a cultist ate her face. Her sacrifice, however, bought time for Michael McGlen to run away- he'd already dropped his tommy gun in a panic and gone insane (who wouldn't after barely defusing a landmine they'd stepped on?). But he couldn't run from the flying Mi-Go, which picked him up and dropped him to his death...

* whilst I was holding a fire extinguisher! Oh, the irony!

Pics from The Dwarven One

Meanwhile, can you hear the sound of another project?

"Damned funny. Like a train... in the distance..."

I'm going slightly mad

I haven't got much painting in recently; instead, I've been gaming. I dusted off Mansions of Madness, and have played three of the new scenarios from the Call of the Wild expansion. (See my miniatures here and here). The Dwarven One took the pictures. There are no pics of the first one, but suffice to say the Dunwich Horror was nigh unstoppable. In the second game, the investigators had to deduce the murderer's identity before he (or she) struck again. Here's Amanda Sharpe, who had no luck in the game whatsoever, facing a cameo appearance from the Dunwich Horror. I'm pretty sure that shortly after this she fired, missed, dropped the gun, turned to run, tripped, and died, handing the game to the forces of unspeakable darkness.

We played the survival scenario, which has an automated keeper. Things got nastier and nastier. Here's Jenny Barnes surrounded by a Child of the Goat, two cultists, and a witch. Jenny gunned down a cultist and ran but the witch stunned her and the other cultist killed her by the
river.

Monterey Jack tried to hide in the water mill, but the monsters caught him and a Mi-Go put his brain in a jar. As Diamond Joe, I went swiftly mad well before that, and ran around the place setting everything on fire. Then I burnt to death.

It was awesome!

Mansions of Madness- Call of the Wild figures

I just received Call of the Wild, the expansion set to Mansions of Madness. I rapidly painted the miniatures in the same style as my previous effort. I prepped them in the morning (including my own basing modifications) and smashed out the paintjobs in the afternoon.

Bob Jenkins

Monterey Jack

Amanda Sharpe

Mandy Thompson

Dark Druid

Children of the Goat

Night Gaunt

Goat Spawn

Wizard Whately

The Dunwich Horror

A Dark Young

When I first saw Mansions of Madness, I had to have it. The tiles and components alone are excellent and have great uses for any horror skirmish game. The figures are variable quality, but paint up OK, and the resulting games can be great fun. On a read-through, this expansion seems excellent and I can't wait to give these scenarios a go.

Cars, ships, and unspeakable nightmares

Had a great evening's gaming- DC introduced me to 'Uncharted Seas', where his Bone Griffons and their zombie whales just beat my fleet of Dragon Lords. We got a lot of rules wrong, but I'll happily play with DC's well-painted ships again- and I saw the 'Dreadfleet' components- lovely ships, measuring sticks, and islands- not to mention the high quality sea mat!

Not much later there were three ships left in total...

Then Shannon joined us for 'Mansions of Madness' (see my painted figures here)- Professor Harvey Walters and private eye Joe Diamond investigate my sinister cult. They fought off hordes of cultists, only to discover the horrible truth that the cultists were raising a terrible monster. In a race against time, they failed to prevent the creature being summoned and tried to fight it- Joe Diamond went down, but Professor Walters used an arcane spell to destroy the beast and win the game- but at the same time went insane! Totally Lovecraft!

Game over as the monster falls and the professor loses his mind...

Finally, the three of us played a game of 'Formula De'- I'll be keeping an eye out for this myself as it was a great fun game. DC won that game as well- three wins for him tonight, the dice gods were smiling...