22 June 2021

Taking a look at Cthulhu: Death May Die Season 2

I have a few shreds of sanity left after Monster May(hem) and it's not like I need them, so why not?

First off, I want to apologise to my reader(s) for the lack of posts this month. It's because I did a very stupid thing: I got a job. Stacking shelves. Yes, 49-year-old out-of-shape me is lugging bags of dog food and boxes of frozen pizza around a supermarket for the princely sum of $11 an hour. To put it lightly I'm constantly shagged out, hence the lack of scintillating posts.

I am working on some Forgotten Heroes projects, but one is being made by me out of greenstuff so you can probably imagine how that's going. The others need bits I ordered off Ebay, and despite it being June 22, Ebay is still telling me they'll be here last Friday. Yay. Frankly, I'll be gobsmacked if I get any of the projects finished before the end of the month.

Anyway, onto the new game. After finishing all the models from Cthulhu: Death May Die (well, almost all of them) I kind of missed painting chunky tentacled horrors. I knew CMON made a sequel to C:DMD so I looked it up on Amazon and bought it a couple of weeks ago, although as of know it's out of stock.

So for $50 — or, as I now think of it, the equivalent of 4½ hours of putting crap on shelves or 1½ Space Marine Primaris Apothecaries — I'm the proud owner of another 10 investigators and 17 monsters! 

Sorry for the crappy photos; the battery for my DSLR is dead so these are taken with my phone on the kitchen table.

Let's kick off with the night-gaunts. Lovecraft introduced them in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, which I think I've read, but if I did it was years ago. They inhabit the earth's Dreamlands and are basically demons. They're described as being smooth and black, so I have to find a way of not making them look like my Hunting Horrors.

I'm a bit annoyed because at first glance I thought these were Mi-Go, of which I already have three. Mi-Go are among my fave Lovecraft monsters because they're just so horrible and they infest Vermont. Still, I can live with a pair of night-gaunts.

Next up we have the Hounds of Tindalos. They're the invention of Frank Belknap Long, and come from his 1929 story "The Hounds of Tindalos". Lovecraft mentions them in The Whisperer in Darkness, but neither author actually describes them. CMON has done a good job on this sculpt, which is bang in the middle between "awesome" and "they'll be a bugger to paint".

Here's a classic Lovecraftian monster: an Elder Thing. I painted an RAFM one back at the start of Monster May(hem) and I love these monsters and At The Mountains of Madness, the novella they appear in. Guess I'm gonna have to come up with a different colour scheme for this chap too.

A menacing group of five Tcho-Tcho. I've heard of them but know nothing about them. They're the creation of August Derleth and are a cannibalistic people who live in the jungles of Burma and worship Hastur. They first appeared in the story "The Lair of the Star-Spawn" from 1932.

The bokrug is also known as The Great Water Lizard and is counted as a Great Old One, meaning it's pretty powerful. HPL created it for one of his earliest short stories, "The Doom That Came to Sarnath", published in 1920. This mini has lots of different textures so it should be an interesting one to paint.

Flying polyps come from 1936's "The Shadow Out of Time", which also features the Great Race of Yith, another mini I was disappointed didn't come with the set. Polyps colonised Earth 600,000,000 years ago and are considered incredibly dangerous to humans, as if we had to be told that.

This is a dimensional shambler, although it could just have easily walked out of the 2016 Doom reboot. Shamblers are capable of switching between dimensions, and although visible in ours they cannot touch or be touched. Lovecraft introduced them in "The Horror In The Museum" (1932) although there are arguments that they were actually created a year before by Clark Ashton Smith in his "The Hunters From Beyond".

Yugg are huge worms that live underground and will tempt humans with wealth if they do their bidding. They were invented by writer and editor Lin Carter in his 1975 story "Out Of The Ages", which forms part of his Xothic Legend cycle of tales. This is totally one of those figures where I'll think, "that doesn't look too difficult" only to be proven completely and utterly wrong once I start painting it.

Here's five of the 10 investigators who are pitting life, limb and sanity against eldritch evil. From left, Margarethe Richter, Ariele Venturi, Haila Hovath, Adilah Vidal and Mary Diaz.

Here's the other five: Alex Parker, Tony Boyle, Father Luke, Sergeant Mario Braghieri and Sam Wood.

Just like the original game, all these sculpts are outstanding. Bags of detail, minimal flash lines (not that I bothered much with those last time) and I'm beyond happy that none of them need to be painted yellow. I've learnt a lesson from last time and will not just blast them all with black spray paint and instead actually put some thought into the primer colour. 

Of course, it's just a case of when I'll get around to painting them. My Forgotten Heroes projects need to be finished, and as I'm working 2pm-9pm today and then 8am-2pm the next four days, short of me calling out sick/dead I have no idea when I'll have time, not to mention energy. Man, I wish I had another 14 months off...

10 comments:

  1. Some great looking models Matt, should be fun to paint/ tricky in places !
    The lack of posts now makes sense, hope you get a balance soon

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So do I, Dave. It's not that I don't want to paint, it's just I'm so knackered even on my days off that I can't face doing anything other than flopping out on the sofa. I'm looking at getting another job soon.

      The minis are superb again and will make for an interesting painting experience. I'm hoping to avoid some of the mistakes I made when I painted the first box set.

      Delete
  2. You've put your foot in it now, Matt. That's another big box! Look forward to seeing what you do with them. They're very nice miniatures, and definitely interesting takes on the monsters themselves. Those do NOT look like nightgaunts or a dimensional shambler to me, but there's no doubt they look great and they are very unique and creative interpretations. Have you actually played the game yet, or are you like me: forever painting and never really playing? :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We haven't played it yet, although we want to. I'm so tired that I just can't face reading up on the rules or setting a game up. We might try on my day off next week.

      You are right about the shambler looking nothing like its description (I think they're smaller/shorter?) but CMON has done some excellent work again on these figures.

      Delete
  3. Some nice stuff in there, it's a good job your not stacking shelves in a games store, you owe them money at the end of the week!

    Cheers Roger.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I would love to have got a job there, but they weren't advertising for workers and they also do a lot of actual games like Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering, about which I know nothing and have even less interest in. So I don't think I'd have been a successful applicant :-)

      Delete
    2. Remind me to write a blog post about things I've seen working in comic shops someday...I swear there's a novel in me.

      Delete
    3. Mate, you should absolutely do that post.

      Delete
  4. These sculpts look great and I'm excited to see you paint them up! That's great to hear about your new job as well. You'll be in lifting, pulling, and pushing shape in no time, I reckon :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am looking forward to doing them! Some will be pretty straightforward but others... the Hounds of Tindalos in particular will probably be left till last lol.

      Delete