Corsec Engineering bases

After the big mess about the Spartan Firestorm Armada mediocre bases for my big ship I hunted down some solutions and after looking at the videos on the Corsec Engineering site I decided to give it a try.

http://corseceng.com/

After just a few days I got this on my mailbox.

It's a 3 part screw thingy and its very sturdy.

Very useful for transporting your bigger ships but above all damn strong!

I could not be happier with this base, its strong & practical and cheap... the service is also great so 10/10…

My Firestrom armada mini experience

Firestorm Armada is a widely popular range if you are into spaceships wargames and since I'm creating my little fleet I took a peek of what Spartan Miniatures had to offer.

Lots of fleets and spaceships to choose from and I was quite interested in one of their newish designs and releases, I introduce you the so cool:

Zenian League Ba'Kash Sharnak Class cruiser

Got the nice blister within just a few days from purchasing from Maelstrom online shop so I cannot vouch for spartan customer service on this review.

I choose the closed version of this model because it was more appealing to me. The design is just superb and its going to be one of the bigger spaceships for my fleet. The blisters contains the following:

Ship main small body ( resin )

Ship huge 4 body parts ( metal)

Base ( acrylic rectangle and pole)

Printed card

This mini is quite heavy when assembled with the metal body, in fact it's VERY front heavy!

After assembling the base the ship was quite fiddly because only one acrylic pole did not sustain all that weight... I decided to add another pole to the front of the ship just to make it at least reasonably stable...

If you check the pics you will notice how ridiculous the 1 base pole Spartan provided is, it's just not strong enough for such heavy ship.

Well nothing a competent modeller would not fix bu nevertheless a bit annoying this base thing... also the acrylic rectangle had 1 hole in it that did not fit the supplied pole.

The casting is something that always concerns me; that's why I refuse to buy things like Finecast etc... upon checking this ship I was quite disappointed because you could see lots of 3D print lines on many parts. Not cool! Check the pic of just one of the parts, the other parts are similar.

So many 3d Print horizontal lines a bit everywhere makes me not a happy bug.

But apart from all this mess and little hick ups I still love this mini design.

PS- And this spartan experience got from meh to a nightmare in a second! While I was priming all these ships the Spartan acrylic pole BROKE in half while I hold the mini in the horizontal, so yes my homemade pole still intact but the spartan one  just snapped... Not impressed.

Prometheus a new begining

The much anticipated prequel of the Aliens movies finally arrived.

PROMETHEUS

Little review with no spoilers

To celebrate the Queen's Jubilee I got myself one ticket for what I consider the best ever made scifi movies... I know Starwars, Star trek, dune, bladerunner etc are quite iconic but none of them combined the genius of master Giger and none of them had a sense of panic, emergence aliens portray... in fact the Alien creature influenced a full generation of monsters and space creatures all over hollywood, comics, gaming etc Yes Giger did create something unique.

So I have been into the UK  for just a few months and this is my first going to the cinemas here and they look just like the ones back home, everyone buys popcorn, makes noise on cinema and that's OK for the usual blockbuster you go check with the family, sometimes I even buy some popcorn and coke but NOT on Prometheus, this was special this deserved my full geek attention and I was set with my 3d glasses ready for something... different.

Big canon or Something else?

I was afraid that 2 things would ruin this movie: One is that it would be the typical 3d SFX galore with no content and the second is that the alien would be splashed so many times on the screen that it would kill the mystery surrounding this creature... fear not my friends it was just the perfect balance.

The movie was breathtaking and if you are expecting conclusive answers for the aliens movies you will get: in one hand lots of answers regarding Aliens, but most importantly, in another hand LOTS of new mysteries and you are left again with so many things unanswered that you think Dammmmmn I want more!

The iconic moments of previous movies are there but a new roost of races, amazing gadgets ( I want some scanners now) spaceships etc give this movie a extra dimension of interest. Prometheus is the kind of movie, just like aliens, that you want to see it over and over and over again because there are many little things, mysteries and details that you just don't see in the middle of the Horror going on.

I will have to see this again now not in 3D just to check some things I know I missed.

The actors are 1st quality and( I'm going to say a heresy here) but you almost forget about Ripley... convincing acting on most of them and you get stuck into the plot quite nicely, they are not there just to be alien food ( well some are hihihih) but they are all cool in a certain way.

I cannot reveal much without spoiling so I will leave at this... It was a tribute to aliens and revealed some of the aliens mysteries and in doing that it also opened lots of new riddles and options and that makes this movie really the perfect prequel and more...

As a fan of Giger and aliens I now want to sculpt some of the new creatures introduced in this movie and I have extra material to have fun for many years now... I will go to the cargo bay and pick up some vases now.

Brilliant movie!

Fleet Mods

Modify! Modify! There's something about man and their toys that makes us go nutty and modify things... so my fleet got some really simple, fast & furious mods. Took me 15 minutes and its just some little things modified to make my ships less similar. The only one not modded is the one in the back.

Done now back to sculpting my commissions before someone sends me a mailed bomb.

Oh speaking of mods I wants this:

Perfect family car my wife would love it for sure!

Noble Armada ships

Me and my buddies are starting to have a huge interest in space ship dogfights games specially after we had a gaming night with GZG Full Thrust rules... in short Brilliant game!
So, yet again, you see me introducing another random project to the mix. I know what most of you are thinking ( bugman will sculpt some ships) and yes that's right I will make one bug fleet for me but since I don't have much time atm I will buy a small fleet from various manufacturers to speed up things.
Here's the first.

Mongoose Publishing

I picked up some Nobe Armada ships and this is my small review.

Mantis Frigate

Got one blister with 5 little ships and let me just say that It took just a couple days to get here  so good service from Mongoose chaps.

Here's a pic of the contents... I never managed to find out the exact size of these on the official site so here's a tape measure next to the goods... around 3cm wing span... good size for frigates.

The bases have some little hubs that can make things easier for storing etc but to be honest I prefer the stands without all those shenanigans and as such I kept it simples.

The casting is not the cleanest but sharp enough, the price not the cheapest but after checking the detail and size its ok I guess. Since its popular to give notes to things these days I give it a fat 8 out of 10...

BAEL sculpt for fractured dimensions

WOHOOO well this one was a blast! I Loved sculpting this big 40mm Bael demon for Fractured Dimensions Miniatures.

The arms are bluetaced because they will be casted separated from the mini... This got to be one of my fav sculpts of the year so far, not because of the theme but because I tried to catch movement and I almost managed that... great experience.

BAEL 40mm

Now I need to catch up some other projects I have on my table... sooooo crazy month, I still don't understand how I manage to find time to sculpt these days but damn if I will not do my best to sculpt every possible minute that I can.

Random sculpt for private collector

Well, the second half of this month has been short of news over here on the bug man blog but in my real life nest it has been quite epic...

The real life job is keeping me busy and the fellas there are enjoying my work so we are negotiating contract there... Also I picked up my backpack and travelled back home for one weekend to check my bugling and bug queen I miss them!!!!! In the process I returned with some of my 15mm collections and almost 10 kilos, or should I say litros, of my vallejos paints!

On the sculpting side of things finished some random crazy project... sculpted in Fimo and greenstuff ... its something for a private collector a sad unicorn bust?... well, interesting experience but not something I would like to do again... to cute and strange for my bug tastes.