Darzoni's Blog: A Week in Miniatures: May 23rd to May 29th

Most of this week was spent ruminating and deciding on how to proceed with various projects. There are a lot of photos in this post.

First of all I worked on the Silver Tower models off and on. There's quite a bit to assemble and I did most of it this week. I've only got six of the Kairic Acolytes (read as Chaos cultists dedicated to Tzeentch) left to assemble. Because I got really tired of assembling similar models in a factory line fashion. To put it into perspective, I assembled thirty-six out of fifty one miniatures that come in the Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower Box. The heroes, Gaunt Summoner, and Ogroid Thaumaturge were finished up earlier in the week.

I'll be honest, the models in WHQ:ST are very detailed and delicate. I was lucky enough that the pieces that broke when clipping the heroes off the spue were places I could find. Otherwise the Mistweaver Saih and the Fyreslayer Doomseeker would have pieces missing. If you get the set, be very careful and gentle with removing the pieces from the sprues.

There are two sprues of generic minions in the Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower box. So there's a duplicate of every pose. The Goblin Scuttlers have some leeway as they are two pieces, each of which is mix-and-match with the other halves. I'm not sure if I was supposed to assemble them in a specific way but it's a little late for that.

What stood out was the Gaunt Summoner and Ogroid Thaumaturge. Both models are very nice. The Ogroid Thaumaturge has enough pieces that assembling him was a bit of a chore. The Gaunt Summoner was tricky largely because of how thin his arms are. But he went together just fine. My friend Daniel's Gaunt Summoner seems to have trouble staying in one piece; he was reglued twice while we were playing Silver Tower yesterday. I hope mine doesn't have that issue.

EDIT 5/31/2016: Since more than one person has had trouble with the Ogroid's horns, I'll explain how I did it. Local GW guy Joe told me the horns were a bit of a pain to glue before I even got my set. So I glued the Ogroid's face on first because it has some of the surfaces the horns glue onto in order to maximize the amount of surface area the horns had to glue to. I'm fairly certain the instructions tell you to glue his horns on before his face, which is not what I did.

Knight-Questor

Of the heroes, the Knight-Questor is the easiest to assemble. Everybody else was more delicate and/or more pieces of increasingly smaller sizes. The Tenebrael Shard's chest plate and face were small separate pieces that were finicky get right. There's a tricky piece of the Fyreslayer's beard as well that sits on his chest and connects to the rest of his face/beard piece.

A good sharp knife with an intact point is definitely an invaluable tool for cleaning these models. You'll also want sprue clippers that are as fine as you can lay hands on; some of these things had very tight spaces for cutting. I've said it before on this blog, but you will want to test fit everything to understand how the pieces fit together. This skill has become increasingly important as newer models become more complex to assemble.

The Darkoath Chieftain has an alternate hand. The two options are with an axe (this is what Games Workshop shows on all its studio model) or a severed Tzaangor head. I thought the severed head was more interesting.

It's a little strange that the Gryph-Hound that comes in the Silver Tower Set comes on a 25mm base since the Gryph-Hound that comes with the Lord-Castellant is on a 32mm base. Not that the base size matters for Silver Tower or Age of Sigmar.

Lord-Celestant On Wings

The last thing I want to talk about before the large gallery of miniatures is the Lord-Celestant with wings that I built. I plan to just run the model as a Lord-Celestant on Dracoth. Four different kits went into this thing, and most of them were spare parts from sprues that were lying around. In no particular order:

A Prosecutor's wings, helmet, legs, and weapon arm.
A Liberator's chest and shoulder pauldron.
A Lord-Celestant on Dracoth's side helmet crests.
A Paladin's hammerhead and shoulder pauldron.

I thought I would require the parts from a Dracothian Guard box, but it turns out I needed none of those pieces. So now I will have two Concussors to smite Sigmar's foes on the battlefield.