I've got a short post-christmas blog post today. I figure lousy of you are off enjoying family and presents and too busy to read my boring blog!

So I've managed to avoid having to buy to many models for Frostgrave, and that is one of the things I like about the game--I already have everything I need. But when the Forgotten Pacts Nickstarter was started I couldn't help but sign up for the Plastic Barbarians. At this point, anyone who's interested in them has seen the sprues already, so I won't bore people with pictures of that.

My verdict is that these models are great. The scale is perfect, they aren't mammoth like GW stuff, but they have enough exaggeration that they are easy to paint in a way that true 25mm models can lack. This is especially true with the eyes; I find true 25mm models have impossible to paint eyes!

I've also read a lot of people that say that the official Frostgrave models don't scale well with heroic scale models. But, at least with the barbarians, I don't find this to be true at all. I thought they fit in quite well. A tad bit smaller, but nothing that makes them stick out. I think the aforementioned exaggerations help a lot with that.

The aesthetics of the barbarians are one of my favorite part of the models, they look like barbarians, but not like cartoons. That's the problem I have with the plastic Chaos Marauders, they look like professional wrestler characters, not actual barbarians. Sure, these models probably would be out of place in a historical game as they don't appear to be patterned after any particular historical peoples. But whomever they're modeled after, these guys look weathered and hard lived. I was pretty amazed at how much character and expression they have in their faces. You can tell they've lived hard lives and those hardships have etched their faces.

It's not just their faces that are well sculpted, most everything is. These models look like they're wearing clothes that have been repaired, scavenged, and make-shift. The weapons are menacing. The posing of the bodies is excellent. There is only one problem I found with the sculpting: the fur. The fur is very shallow. And that made it difficult to paint. But now that I know to expect that, I can compensate when I paint more.

As far as the sprues are concerned, these are great too. They come with tons of options including missle weapons, two-handed weapons, hand weapons, shields, and more heads than you can ever use. The only downside is that you get 4 of the same sprue of five bodies. But with all the options previously mentioned, that's not a bid deal. They also come off their integral bases really, really easily. I think it took less than a minute with my razor saw to remove them and with no damage to the shoes. However, I did find one problem with the sprue as well. As can be seen in the picture below, the weapons that require both hands were very difficult to line up right. I've gotten used to the recent Games Workshop plastics, where many of these types of arms are a single piece with both arms attached to the weapon and they slide perfectly on. As you can see below, the bottom of the axe haft isn't really in his left hand--it just kind of sits below his hand.

That said, those were the only two things I didn't like about these models. They are excellent. I know if I wanted to do an Oldhammer Norse army, I would uses these as my basis.

But enough rambling, It's time for a quick picture. I do want to apologize for the paint job below, I'm not particularly proud of it, or even happy with it. I was trying to get the model done quickly and it was time to replace my brush but I wanted to get just a little more out of it. As such, the tip wasn't as fine as it should have been and a lot of the model looks spotchy and dirty almost as if parts had been drybrushed.



And now for the Zombie I mentioned in the title. Way back on my old warseer thread, I posted a picture of my Frostgrave warband with a zombie that had no snow on its base as I had forgotten to base him with the rest of the warband. Well no longer! He is now fully based!