Menhom Dark Shadow - Review

Another mini under the loupe, this time my first purchase from Andrea Miniatures.

Menhom Dark Shadow

(c) Andrea Miniatures

I felt in love with this piece few years back, when a friend send me a link with the pic. And it was the love at first sight. Unfortunately at that point I was on a verge of quiting the hobby, or not sure if I should get back to painting (don't remember exactly when it was), and the mini itself was too pricey just for a whim, so I didn't buy it. But never really forgot about it. And finally managed to buy it few months ago.

The mini itself is from an Andera's range Warlord Saga, the line of 54mm fantasy miniatures (some really nice stuff there - check it out).
I did measure it, and from the top of the spike to the floor it has 80mm, so it's quite tall even for it's scale (please notice that Menhom is bending forward, standing straight, he'd be even taller).


Packaging:
The mini comes in a paper box, not too stiff, but parts are secured with thick sponge, so there is no way anything can move inside. It's very important, as the metal used for that mini is rather soft and can bend easily.

What's in the box:
As you can see, in the box we find 15 metal parts and one resin (the bottom part of the body).
All the spikes and horns are on one bar, which is nice, because they're tiny and some of them are really thin.

Quality:
The metal parts of the mini are rather clean. You can find few mould lines, but they are easy to remove. You need to be careful with the thin parts, like sword or spikes, because the metal is very soft and can bend almost under the weight of the brush.
Unfortunately the resin piece is way worse. The resin is rugged, especially in all these places that are hard to access, and by the look of the dress, you can say, that there is lots of such spots. There are also few mould lines, but comparing to the roughness of the surface in the recesses of the folds, it's not a big deal and easy to fix.

 

Assembly:
I'm rather happy with the way parts fit together. Even hands and wrists have little 'pins' to make the joints stronger. The only problem here are spikes, especially the longer ones. It's very difficult to make them fit the recesses and even if we manage to do that, making them stay there - it's completely different matter... I guess the only way is to paint them separately and glue to the mini at the last minute.


Overall opinion:
'Beautiful mini with issues' - that's the simplest way of describing this piece. If you don't mind prep work and can be patient with fixing all the imperfections, Menhom will be a very nice addition to your collection.  I'm not the fan of the intense preparation myself, but luckily the mini isn't bad enough to discourage from buying more Andrea Miniatures in the future (I got my eye on few Vikings there:D).


Were to buy:
If you're from Poland, I'd suggest to go straight to Jama store, they have great choice of minis (and even if they don't have it at hand, they can just order it) and the service is swift and very firendly.
UK - SK miniatures.
For the rest of the world - google closest retailer:)

Or of course, you can buy directly from Andrea Miniatures website.


Other Andrea Miniatures reviews:
Urmuth Scars of War

New arrival, and Bombel the Inspector:D

My latest purchase arrived today:D

First historical piece, new company in the collection.
Awesome BadA$$ Viking Chief from Pegaso Models.  Scale 1:20, so he's quite big, impressive, and expensive:(.

Ahh look at him! So bold and beautiful;p
Staring somewhere at the horizon. His whole posture screaming: I got the power!! (and I won't hesitate to use it, but I guess just my gaze should make your knees tremble!)

(c) Pegaso Models,
sculptor: Andrea Jula,

painter: Diego Ruina

And of course my Not So Little Green Eyed Monster (not that he's jelaous or something... he just has green eyes... and is a true monster most of the time) had to check everything first.

And final conclusion??

Hmmm lemme think...

Nah! I prefer minis with boobs:P

Can you blame him??:>

cheers

'eM

The Grinder - review

The Grinder - awesome bust from Roberto Chaudon (here, on his blog, you can check other of his works out).


When I saw it frist time, on MassiveVoodo blog (known there as a Dark Elf Berserker, with altered ears) I knew I'm gonna buy it. Simply, love from the first sight:P


And now here it is. In my hands, waiting to be painted.
But first, few words of description. 

The bust is scale 1/9 and that means he's seriously huge, around 70mm.
Casted naturally in resin.

It came in a plastic bag, you can see below.

I wouldn't say that's the most secure packaging, especially when you take a look in how many fragile  parts the model comes. But I guess, I was lucky, because everything arrived in a perfect condition (I mean not damaged on the way).

 As you can see, there are four parts: torso with head, two swords and something, I think, I can call 'hair accessory'.

The torso itself is quite good quality cast. With few mold lines and imperfections, but they should be easy enough to get rid of. The only one that can cause me some problems is the mold line under his chin (some imperfections going on there aswell),  thorugh his neck, leather stripe and chest. Cleaning shoulders and hair on the back, should be easy.
The most important part - face is clean and with great details.

With the smaller parts it's not so great though. In my cast I can see few issues that will be quite time consuming to fix.

But maybe first the good sides:
All the thin and brittle ends are secured with a bit of resin (you can see it at the end of swords for example). The parts are really thin, especially the hair accessory and ends of swords,  so without this precautions, they would probably broke down in transport.
The details are also really good in general.
But every part has some faults, more or less serious.
With this hair thingy there are few small holes between strands of fabric, and some see through places closer to the ends.

Wepons have few air bubbles, one rather serious at the corner of the mount of the bigger sword, few delicate, and two serious, mold lines on the dagger.
I hope you can see it on the left picture, the misplaced line inside, between hilt and sheath.  For me it's gonna be a pain to get rid of, mostly because  it's quite detailed part and not easy to reach (and I'm not the biggest fan of the prep job;p).

But luckily for me resin, the bust was casted from, seems to be easy to work with. So hopefully, with a bit of patience,  I'll be able to fix all those problems, and enjoy painting this piece.

Overall pros and cons:
Pro:

• great concept,
• full of character and charisma,
• huge (dudes 70mm bust??:>),
• good details,
• resin nice to work with.

Con:

• mold lines in annoying, hard to get to, places,
• specks of resin in rather annoying places (but on the other hand, It's quite compliated mini...),
• few  seriously misplaced mold lines.

My personal opinion: 
Awesome bust, maybe not so awesome cast (at least the one I got in my hands), but hey, it happends sometimes.
And I'm still deeply in love with this piece.

Assembly:
Parts seems to fit quite well together. Hair thingy even has sculpted hair facture underneath to fit better. And swords are nicelly placed with a system of small insertions and matching holes (check the four holes on the leather strip on the left chest).


Where to buy:
You can contact Roberto via email posted on his blog, and buy directly from him,
or you can check El Greco store (but be carefull there... way too many awesome minis, to get out with just one in your basket!!
There are probably some other places, where you can buy this bust, but I wasn't really looking:D  Way to bussy being happy that I got mine:D


cheers

'eM

JMD Succube - review

In my first review I decided to describe one of my new minis: Succube from JMD.

Beautiful piece of resin I must say.
You can check what I have to say about her on Chest of Color website, in their article section.
http://chestofcolors.com/jmd-miniatures-succube-review

cheers
'eM

It's been a long time:)

It's been a really long time since I posted anything here. But there is a good reason for that.

First I was on holiday in Poland (combined with Hussar 2K!!).
You know the drill while wisiting friends and family... not much time for internet activities (but plenty of time to be hangover);p

And then, after safe return home, I found out that my graphic cardwas boiling slowly for quite a long time, and I can see 'Things' on my screen that shouldn't be there.... So no processing pictures, not even using my computer for a longer period of time;/

But now everything is working again so I can post some news and photos:)


cheers

'eM

New arrivals

Today I received  my first mr. hobby paints. And they are no ordinary mr. colour, but mr. colour super metallics;]
I really hope they'll be worth the price and effort to get them in my hands.

 
As you can see the bottles are around the size of P3, so more or less 18ml. And they look fantastic. Metal pigment is really tiny, so they should give smooth surface and cause no problem when used with aerograph. The only drawback is that they need special solvent to dilute them: mr. colour leveling thinner and that can be slightly inconvenient while painting with acrylic paints.
And well... there is the smell... not entirely unpleasant, but quite intense.

Anyhoo, can't wait till I'll be able to use them. It makes me almost eager to prep 5 of my raptors (old GW metal and not really great casts).

cheers
m