Wednesday, February 25, 2015

28mm Servitors of Nyarlathotep from ‘Achtung! Cthulhu’ and Greyscale Mat from Deep-Cut Studio


This entry sees me return to some pulp adventure figures. This time it's a trio of models from the game where the world of H.P. Lovecraft meets the Second World War: ‘Achtung! Cthulhu’.

Several weeks ago a friend had mentioned that many of the Cthulhu miniatures currently available are not really horrific enough to convey the vision of the literature.  For the most part I tend to agree, but I think there are some exceptions, such as these creepy fellas below. 




These rather disturbing creatures are described as Servitors of Nyarlathotep. They’re beings that use a human host as both an incubator and delivery device.  Lurking until their dark designs are required and then tearing themselves into our reality in order to wreak havoc.  Sort of like tax assessors with a skin condition. ;)



These are 28mm figures from Modiphius Entertainment’s ‘Achtung! Cthulhu’ range.  Nice figures, with very fine features and excellent detail.  They're perhaps a smidge smaller than most other 28mm WWII lines, but not markedly so.



Many of the paint schemes I’ve seen online for these figures depict the emerging creatures' bodies as a single uniform colour/texture.  As the figures' design reminded me of the art of H.R. Giger (famous for his conceptual art of the first Alien movie) I chose to portray them as something almost quasi-sexual, with a nasty pink pseudopod emerging from a carapace.  Ewww, yeah, sorry about that.



Okaaay, so to help take your mind away from that disturbing image I’d like to point out to you the wonderful cobblestone mat that I've used in my photos. Yes, if you look closely you’ll see that the mat is in greyscale. Now, how neat is that!


You see, when I approached the good people from Deep-Cut Studio about the possibility of them being a Challenge sponsor they recollected my Great War greyscale work and so offered to do up a cobblestone PVC mat in a similar motif.  Very flattered, I happily accepted and am extremely delighted with how it turned out.  


 

Georges Boillot and his Renault 'Taxi de la Marne'
As you can see it works very well with my greyscale collection and building facades.  The original coloured mat had a few manhole covers as part of the design, but I did not want to have to work around them in laying out my buildings so I asked to have them removed.  No problem, the designers quickly made the necessary adjustments and I now have a wonderful 4x4 cobblestone layout for my Great War and Pulp gaming. Thank you very much Deep-Cut Studio - you did a brilliant job!