We got a winner!

Hey Jungle Readers,

last week we showed you the MV review on Awaken Realms - Objective Markers and Terrain Sets and we put out a lottery so one of our readers can win this set:

Today on this Monday we are happy to tell you that the randomly picked winner of this set is:

... dumm
... dumm
... dummdurum ...

The Responsible One

Please write an Email to mv(at)massivevoodoo.com with your postal adress and the MV monkeys get these shipped out to you in a hurry.

Best Wishes
Your MV-Team

Mu79 - Lands of Ruin, Baleans: Mulcibur

Hello ladies and gentleman, 
today it is time for another review on cool hobby products out there.
We do another Miniatures Unpacked and if you want to see more, check this link for Material and Miniature Reviews!


This time Peter of MV takes a closer look at some miniatures from an innovative game:

Lands of Ruin

Lands of Ruin are some nice guys from Munich, Germany, which are working hard to develop a new way in tabletop-gaming: combining the well-known tabletop mechanisms with mobile technologies via apps. A pretty cool idea and as they focus on realism in the game, it´s a hard task to take care of everything without driving the gamer crazy. But as it seems, they are ready to take off. There is a Kickstarter running and today we will have a closer look at some of their miniatures.

Find Lands of Ruin Kickstarter here!

First impressions:
After receiving the parcel on Friday, Peter could not wait to open the box. Inside he found two pieces of bubble foil and some papers with a short description of the game. Pretty cool: there were also some background information about the minis he received. Seems like Mulcibur is a pretty badass guy, even for his tribe. Enslaving people and using them as mobile bombs is not the nice way of dealing with the rest of a former society. But as long as it works out... :-P

The four minis were inside the bubble foil. Peter was not happy with this solution. The minis can move lot inside the foil and if there would have been bigger pieces in the box, they could have easily damaged the minor ones. But as it appears, this was just a wip-packaging and there will be a more professional solution as soon as the kickstarter is finished. 

For packing there will be 2/5 available Voodoo points.

Let´s take a closer look at the miniatures:

The main charakter Mulcibur is a pretty badass appearance: with his facemask and his weapons he must be a dreaded enemy.

His minions are no less disturbing. They are described as brainwashed and chemically lobotomized and they really look like it. The C4-explosives underline the idea of a post-apocalyptic world, where the life on a single human is close to worthless. 

 Size comparison with a GW-miniature:

When looking at the sculpts you get an idea of the world in which Lands of Ruin is taking place. A dark and bitter world, where only the strongest or cruelest will survive. The details are nice and compared to other tabletop games the quality is very good.

For the nice sculpts and the good implementation of the post-apocalyptic theme MV hands out 4/5 Voodoo points.

Let´s talk about the casting quality:

As the cast of Mulcibur is the biggest and most detailed one in the team, you can rate the casting quality here at best. There are only minor moldlines and resin parts which can be easily removed. The details are sharp and there are no displacements.

   
You get the same results when you look at the minios:

There is nothing to criticize. Just a few strokes with a cutter or sanding paper and you can start painting them. The ideal quality for a tabletop game!

For the casting quality MV hands out 4/5 voodoo points.  
 

Let´s talk about money:
At the moment you can only order the miniatures via the Kickstarter-Campaign. Here, you will get 8 miniatures for 40 GBP (= 50 EUR / 55 USD). It´s a usual price for that amount of miniatures and for this nice quality. But: you can get a lot of free downloads, e.g. the app, the rulebook and even some of the 3d-models-files. Because of this, the price gets a lot better as you usually have to pay a lot of money for the additional stuff when playing other tabletop systems.

For the pricing MV hands out 5/5 voodoo points.

Overall score of Voodoo Points: MASSIVE VOODOO APPROVED!
15/20 Points

Find Lands of Ruin Kickstarter here!

Hasslefree: "Lewis", the color study

Hello Jungle people,

Roman recently painted up another cool Hasslefree sculpt, this time it was "Lewis" from the modern Survivors range in 28mm.

Here is a photo of the model primed black and white:

Roman is recently in a joyable mood for painting - he is not aiming for anything right now - no boundaries, just freedom and color. That means he is studying on his way of a painter again, doing test models, doing bigger projects, doing smaller ones, just as they happen.

With Lewis here Roman wanted to create and test a color scheme and a light situation, quick and dirty - a study sketch. We hope you like him:

Lewis

Hasslefree, 28 mm

Keep on happy painting!
Best Wishes
Roman

Tutorial: Using Cars in 28mm miniature projects

Good Saturday morning Jungle dwellers,

time for this week's result in Tutorial voting. 
Again sorry that it took Roman this long, as he was quiet busy with doing a private coaching last week Thursday and Friday. He just did not find time to do the write up.

If you want to keep track with an overview on what articles happened so far 
please check this link!

Support MV!
If you like to support the monkeys of Massive Voodoo in what they do, please feel invited to drop a jungle donation in their direction via paypal or check their miniatures they got on sale.

Romann now takes care of the article.
We hope you enjoy!

_______________________________________________________________________________

Counting the votes we saw a clear winner once again: 
17 to 4 votes for the article about cars. Maybe we should throw the garbage article out of the voting system, eh?




During my so far Basing Classes with a modern topic my students and I often encountered the thought on how to introduce cars in our basing projects.

On the first two classes about a good year ago we solved these issues rather unprofessional and spontanously. We just used what was able to be grabbed in a close by discount store or Roman even asked his god children for one of their Matchboc cars. Worked well, but not perfectly.
Why you might ask?

SCALE.

All the cars we used so far were not in the right scale for 28mm or 32mm Miniatures, they looked off. Still they looked cool on the bases though.


One of my students of my basing class used this Matchbox car and placed a section of it to his base. It integrates rather well, but if you imagine the miniature standing beside the car actually sitting in the car it's more like he would be packed inside a kid's electrical car. What was good about this one was that the quality and material was good to work with.

Another student asked for a car too and we found some really, really, really cheap ones in a discount store.  They were a little too big concerning the scale and compared to the miniature it looked like a superhuge american SUV. Superhuge. Additional to this the material was weird chinese plastic and after we primed it and started painting on it the color of the orignal piece (blue) always pushed back on what we did there. That was weird and scary.

So it was about time to think about cars in the right scale and I searched online for good articles about it. I found some in the tabletop gaming sector and decided to give these cars a try. Everyone said that the perfect scale for your 28mm or 32mm models is 1:43. 

While I was searching online in stores, ebay and other places I was quickly attracted to

Model Car World.  

They seemed to have the biggest selection of available 1:43 cars. As these cars are collectors pieces some of them are very expensive and I told myself for my needs of putting them on my miniature project bases I will only order ones that are on Sale. Not willing to pay more than 8 € per car, which is still expensive if you look on what they will be used for. I was able to even find some for 4 € which in fact became my future goal. Browsing took a while, but if you want to save money you can not save on time.




So many different cars. So many stories to tell with them.

As Bene and I are also in need of some cars for our big Zombieproject I ordered some cheap ones for testing them. This is how they looked when they arrived and I already placed some 32mm and 28mm to it. From left to right: Hasslefree Dwarf, Zombie by Zombicide and a Tom Meier sculpt.
 

Well, now how to check if they are the right scale. Get out and stand beside your car or your mum's car. Look for its size, now get back to your models and your model car and see if the miniature could fit inside and try to imagine the figure sitting in it. Does it look natural? I'd say yes.

So some more cars showed up in my collection mainly for the upcoming Zombie-Diorama. The icecream truck was quite expensive compared to the others, but I just needed it.

Diorama ideas already popped up in my head by just playing around ... Sorry for the F-word in the photo.

 
Pierre Julien mentioned the company "Heller" on facebook. They produce 1:43 plastic car kits, which definatly might be very useful when it comes to handle car conversions. They are made from plastic and we all know bending and breaking plastic is much easier than metal. Thanks, Pierre Julien!

How to use these cars - EXAMPLE
Following I want to tell how I used my first car in a Dioramabase that I am building and painting at the moment. Usually my bases do not offer the size to place a full car on them. So I have decided to saw mine in half. As these cars come in high quality, made from metal, offer great details and more there is one thing very important: Wear your protection glasses, just in case:

Using my metal saw I gave it a full go with maximum gorilla force. I planned upfront how I want to place the model and how my cutout from it should look.

Then I placed it in my base while building it with tons of superglue. The following base you see is a Fallout 4 inspired project and soon I will be able to tell you more about it.

As I want to have the car rather rusty and old I used my dremel and added some damage to it. I really enjoyed doing so as I was able to scratch away the color on the model and was rewared with a 3dimensional surface I would be able to paint later on with nice detail - Protection glasses and breathing mask!

Primed it looked really sweet I'd say.

Painting is fun on this ...

... and even more fun the more you proceed.

 Crazy base in Progress ...

Well I guess there are many more options that might pop in your own head. You do not have to make your cars all rusty and messed up. You can use one for a Zombie Diorama which looks rather intact, but left behind because of the lack of gasoline for example. You can use some to build up some gaming terrain for your table or just pimp one  as a Mad Max Car for our actual contest.

Options are endless!

I am pretty sure I will have more fun with these in my future projects.
I hope you enjoyed the article One more thing about inspiration: My future brother-in-law is at the Philippines right now enjoying a well deserved holiday and he made such a wonderful photo,fitting well to this article - a Siquijor Mercury:

Keep on happy painting!
Best Wishes
Roman

Today ...

... there will be no big posting on MV.
You will find this week's article from Tuesday's Tutorial Voting here tomorrow.



Roman is preparing his private coaching with Waldemar. 

Happening on Thursday (today) a Gaul Chieftain and a Roman legionary will see colores. Roman is painting up the Gaul Chieftain (Pegaso Models) and Waldemar will work on the Aquila (Nuts Planet). 

Roman is prepared ...

Wonderful subjects and both will focus on these private coaching learning markers:

- Learn to plan your work upfront
- Learn to paint skin
- Learn to paint metals
- Overall push of personal painting quality

And Roman is now off until Monday.

Want to learn more about MV's private coaching sessions?
Follow this link!

Mu78 - Awaken Realms, Objective Markers, Terrain Sets

Hello ladies and gentleman, 
today it is time for another review on cool hobby products out there.
We do another Miniatures Unpacked and if you want to see more, check this link for Material and Miniature Reviews!

In this unpacked we want to have a closer look on stuff that came within this box:

As you can see the company is called "Awaken Realms".
They are a big painting studio from Poland, offer comission painting and much more.

At the moment they are running a Kickstarter mainly aimed at tabletop gamers with bases, terrain sets and objective markers, but after the review you will agree that some of these pieces are very cool for miniature painters too, not only for gamers.

Find Awaken Realms Kickstarter here!

Allright to the subject. 
Inside the parcel Roman found a metal box which makes everything so cool. Roman loves the packing tape too, something we need to have for MV too in the future.

Inside the box we find many pieces wrapped up in bubble foil.

The package is quiet nice with the metal box and everything in it is sound and safe. I am not sure if this format will be the same for the kickstarter, but I had wished the interiour being as impressive as the metal box. For packing there will be three of five available Voodoo points.

Unpacking them leads to some of the Awaken Realms objective markers, which on first sight can be truely something cool for a diorama. You see different types: "Demon themed", "Tesla-Steampunk-themed" and some floathing crystals for magical moments.

What is really cool is that they are mainly all standing on their own, they are balanced. Just the floating crystal in the middle back needs support, but all of the pieces have a solid plattform so you can glue them easily to your bases or gaming landscape.

The one that caught my eye was that demon gate with the demon hands that try to pull themselves into reality. A pretty sick sculpt.

For size comparision you can see a GW and Corvus Belli Infinity Miniature.

The concepts and sculpts of these objective markers are really cool and will for sure bring some cool stuff to your gaming table or your diorama idea. 

 For the fresh sculpts and cool looks MV hands out 4/5 Voodoo points.

Now to the casting quality. 
The pieces were unpacked and untouched, just as they are delivered. As you can see there are several rests from the casting process that have to be cleaned. It's not awful much, but this will take some twenty minutes. There are not much mould lines from the first view, rather more stuff that has to be scratched away. Resin rest.

We got the same on the other pieces, but all looks managable with a little time and the right tools.
For the casting quality MV hands out 3/5 voodoo points.

About the price of these pieces: 
The Kickstarter price sounds really fair for that you are about to recieve several of these pieces if you decided for a pack. It's a fair price if you see the amount of stuff you are getting and to see that this company is also doing everything on their own. From 3D-Sculpting to prining to painting and more. It is also worth mentioning that you can pick only a single set you like and get this one via their Kickstarter. Keep it up!

For the pricing of the pieces MV hands out 5/5 voodoo points.

Overall score of Voodoo Points: MASSIVE VOODOO APPROVED!

Let's have a look on the pieces painted up by 
the Awaken Realms Team. 
The following photos are taken out of their Kickstarter, courtesy of the photos are by Awaken Realms, we were just allowed to use them for this review:

These are pretty nice and we recommend if you like them to check out their Kickstarter for even more stuff, even LED lid Crystals, crazy:

Find Awaken Realms Kickstarter here!

Hey you MV readers? Wanna win something?
Want to win 4 pieces from Awaken Realms? Then check this photo, write a blogpost to this review and on 2nd of March 2016 we will draw one lucky random winner who wins this set: