Friday 7 October 2016

Shadows of Brimstone Night Terrors and Slashers

I return to my reviews of the Weird West figures from Flying Frog Productions' Shadows of Brimstone game. This time I'm featuring the Night Terrors from the City of the Ancients core set and the Slashers from the Swamps of Death core set.
Standing nearly ten feet tall, the Night Terror is a hideous demon with sunken glowing eyes, a grotesquely wide mouth, lined with razor sharp teeth, and covered in dark blue fur and rocky skin. Often found roaming the icy halls of the long dead cities of the Targa Plateau, the Night Terror's dark and thick fur allows it to move unseen in the shadows. Its clawed hands can rend a man limb from limb in a single sweep of its mighty arms, yet it often prefers to grab hold of unwary explorers and steal away with them into the dark night. Where it takes the unlucky victims is unknown, but it is rare that any have escaped the clutches and lived to tell the tale. Many times the only indication of the presence of a Night Terror is the faint menace of its gurgling and hissing in the dark, the likes of which will cause a chill to the bone on a primitive level of sheer terror.
These three multi-part plastic figures stand about 50mm tall and come with 40mm diameter bases. The Night Terror at the far left is unconverted. Just to add some variety to their poses I converted the other two by altering the position of their arms. The one in the middle of the group had his left arm repositioned at the elbow so it bent closer to its body. For the one at the far right, I repositioned both arms, again by making cuts to the elbow joints and filling in the gaps with Milliput. Painting them was a very easy task.
Large beasts with thick chitinous shells, Slashers are insectoid creatures with brutally efficient slashing claws. Burrowing through rock and stone with their powerful hooked arms, they greedily search for Dark Stone to feed on. Two pairs of heavy mandibles surround their mouth, used mainly to hold their prey and pull it closer so their powerful jaws can crush and devour. A pair of large, black and soulless bug eyes belie their cold dispassionate hunger, and the hateful chittering sound they make would chill all but the most stalwart to the bone. Just one of these creatures is difficult to overcome but they most often travel in small packs of two or three, scouting ahead of a larger Slasher hive and searching for their next source of food, be it Dark Stone or humans.
These three multi-part plastic figures are roughly 40mm tall and come with 40mm diameter bases. Because their arms were separate components it was easy for me to convert two of them simply by glueing the arms in different positions. The Slasher at the far left has not been converted - the other two have. I must admit that when I first saw their colour scheme I knew it would be quite a challenge for me to replicate it but in truth, it was not as hard as I feared. The hardest part was the blending between the black, red and orange. I'm very happy with how they have turned out.

22 comments:

  1. Wow Bryan!! Your peepers really are working well these days aren't they!?! Love the work on the blue fur of the Night Terrors (in fact I may well have to buy the City Of The Ancients Starter Set based on my need to own them alone!!). But your work on the Slashers is awesome!! I certainly won't be painting mine anytime soon now; not until people have been given plenty of time to forget your lovely blended colour scheme anyway,as I was thinking of just painting mine crab-brown :-)

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    1. It is a wonderful gift to have perfect eyesight, Simon, and it should never be taken for granted. oh, and a steady hand and a good paintbrush helps as well.

      I have seen quite a few copies of "City of the Ancients" going for sale on eBay at very reasonable prices. I consider anything under £70 a reasonable price seeing as it should retail for £110. Sorry to burden your overworked wallet, but you really NEED this set! ;-)

      There certainly is a lobster like quality to the Slashers, so a crab brown colour scheme should work well. I'd do a Google search for pictures of crabs and lobsters if you need inspiration.

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  2. I think I prefer the Night Terrors, but both are really scary monsters!

    Mind you, I always wonder about the ecology of the "10' tall, man-eating monster". If they are indeed ferocious predators then where do they find enough food to sustain a population? Hmm...

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    1. You're right, Hugh, they are both scary monsters. I never bother about the ecology of monsters - it is an exercise I prefer to leave to the more academic minded gamers. For me, I just want to have some fun whilst gaming.

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  3. They'll make a nice addition to the tabletop.

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  4. Really nice figures, but superb painting Bryan, especially the Slashers.

    As you say, why worry about the ecology if you like the monster! I always think remaking dinosaurs and human shaped giant robots, is probably a really bad idea...but if you could you would just have too because they'd be so flippin' COOL!!!

    Cheers Roger.

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    1. Many thanks, Roger. I have to agree with you that your ideas have to be done simply because they are so cool! What better reason do you need?

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  5. I love the blue you've managed for these, really nice dude

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    1. Thanks, Andy. I used the Foundry Deep Blue 20 triad and then gave them an ink wash of Citadel Nuln Oil, which both darkened them and gave them a nice matt finish.

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  6. The night terrors are easily my favourites - the paint job is something I think i'ĺl be attempting at some point. Not so keen on the slashers, but that's due to the figures rather than your painting. Very nice work, Bryan.

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  7. Great work on the beasts ... Night Terrors and Slashers alike!

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    1. Thanks, FEM - that's very kind of you to say so.

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  8. These are awesome. Your rocking with your painting with all these monsters loving the Night Terrors in particular! Keep up the good work dude!

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    1. Much appreciated, Simon. It seems there is a split over which monster type is the best.

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  9. Some of your very best painting I would say.

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  10. Very interesting colour scheme, nothing like mine at all lol. Did you do yours from the book and box cover art? It really works, what ever you did, and the blending of colour tone is very effective. Certainly a lot more colourful than mine, they will go nicely with your others.

    Quote Blaxkleric {{as I was thinking of just painting mine crab-brown}}

    That's sort of what I did with mine, except I wanted an overall Lovecraftian feel to augment the Cthulhu thing going on with this game... of muted matt hue and dull earthy tones (with the slightest sheen of oil and deep aqua marine).

    Excellent Bryan. I like what you've done here.

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    1. Hi, Steve. Yes, I did copy the colour scheme from the book (see page 44 of the Swamps of Death Adventure Book). I totally see why you and Simon would go for a crustacean colour scheme for the Slashers. I think it'll work well.

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  11. Really nice job on these monsters, especially the slashers, they look very different.

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