Cemetery Creeps

These two were done a while ago and I completely forgot to post them

Ghouls are Black Goat units that are delightfully annoying.

Although they are poor combatants, they can be given the ability to go to any battle location after the fight is over and force a "pain" result (retreat) on each side in the battle - one pain per ghoul.

You can do this even if you weren't involved in the combat.

This is great for letting others fight and then clearly out the territory for yourself, or forcing opponents into unfavorable or weakened positions, or just to aggravate everyone at the table.

To be honest, although I love playing with these in the game, I wasn't that excited about painting them and I think it shows.


Cthulhu Wars is one of my favorite games to play.  It is loads of fun and with enough variety to last a lifetime of playing.  The miniatures excited me when I first got them, but as I paint more of them I am disappointed in the material of the models (pvc), which becomes tacky when painting (pvc is actually a terrible and unhealthy material as it is) and the casting isn't as crisp as they could be.  This has dulled my enthusiasm for them somewhat.

The Undead

Yellow Sign likes to be left alone.
It doesn't have much in the way of strong combat units.

Here we have Undead, which is a 1-power monster that can be summoned and has a combat strength equal to the number of Undead in the area minus 1.

What are they good for?  Mostly following around the King In Yellow and helping him to desecrate regions, which can then be set up to generate power or Doom points (through The Third Eye spellbook).

Undead can also be used to convert enemy cultists into more Undead for you (with the help of the Zingaya spellbook).

I have been painting these over the last couple of months, one at a time...

Flying Wurms

Crawling Chaos (the blue faction) has two Hunting Horror monsters available to summon.

These are the faction's strongest monsters.  They get the benefit of moving two spaces, like all of Crawling Chaos' units.  The faction can obtain the upgrade that allows Hunting Horrors to move to the location of a battle before the fighting begins.

These are pretty large and cool looking monsters.  I was going to go for a brownish paint scheme.  A lot of people that paint these miniatures do a color theme around the faction color to make them more easily identifiable during the game.  I decided to do a different approach, by putting each faction's color in the base of the model's (except for the cultists, who get it on their clothing instead).
When I was researching how these were described in the fiction, they were all black and I was somewhat disappointed in that.  I thought, How many all black monsters are there in thee Mythos.  I want color.  I may start deviating more from the "official" descriptions of these, because a board of nothing but black monsters is a bit boring and not so much fun to paint.

The Blob

The Great Cthulhu faction of Cthulhu Wars has two Shoggoths available to it as part of it collection of monsters.

These blobs with loads of 'eyes' are not the most exciting units to summon in the game, until you obtain their ability to eat your own units, giving them super strength.  The Great Cthulhu faction is a combat focused one.  Including some cultists or Deep Ones to accompany hungry Shoggoths is an inexpensive way to increase the combat strength of your forces.

This little guy is in trouble...

Born Ugly

Oh my, sharp teeth and tentacles!

These Dark Young for Cthulhu Wars belong to the Black Goat faction. They are some of the larger miniatures that come with the base game, though not the largest.

In the game, these monsters are able to get the ability to control gates and generate power points like cultists do.  This gives the Black Goat player more power and point-generation ability than the other factions.

These nasties would be great Cthulhu monsters or alien beasts in any miniatures game.

Their large size is makes them perfect for big, scary monsters.

This Way Madness...

I finally got around to finishing up the Cthulhu Wars base set cultists.  The last six belong to Yellow Sign.

Twilight is pretty much the worse time to try to take pictures at my desk.

This makes the twenty-fourth CW cultist I've done.

I've already started on painting the monsters.

A rainbow of mayhem.

Feeling Blue

Continuing with painting the cultists from Cthulhu Wars, this time around it is the blue faction, Crawling Chaos.

Crawling Chaos has fast units, which means that the cultists here can travel around quickly.

With these getting done, I now have 18 of the 24 base game cultists finished.  Next up is Yellow Sign...

Green Team!

I'm not on a green kick, it is just coincidence I tell you.

I've finished the next batch of cultists for the Cthulhu Wars game.  This time it is for the green faction, Great Cthulhu.

In a previous blog post I  showed pictures of unpainted and painted green cultists. 

Reusing photos makes things so much easier!

Dark picture for the dark arts.

Here is a shot of the six of them together with the red, Black Goat cultists as a group.

X-Wings not included in Cthulhu Wars game

First Cultists

Last time, I posted pictures of the power markers I painted for each player for the game Cthulhu Wars.  This time, I finished painting the cultists of the Black Goat faction.

Unpainted Great Cthulhu cultist.

The models in the game are sculpted well and cast adequately.  They are made of a "board game" type plastic, sturdy but flexible and not the type of plastic I normally associate with miniatures wargaming models.

I had already painted all the Black Goat cultists before deciding that an unpainted example would be nice to show.

The models needed to be washed before painting to remove mold release agents.  There was some mold-slippage and flash.

"Come to the meeting," they said.  "There will be coffee and cake," they said.

Each faction of Cthulhu Wars has six acolyte cultists that provide the faction with its weakest, but most vital units.  Here, I've painted the Black Goat faction's cultists (the red faction in the game).

The shading on the robes was too subtle, I think.

The cultists of the faction are one of the primary means through which the faction will gain power (the currency of the game) and doom points (the victory points of the game).

Cause and effect.

Each cultist in play provides their faction with one point of power and each faction can have a maximum of six acolyte cultists.

Raise your hand if you are a servant of the dark gods.

Cultists are usually the only units that are able to control gates, which then provide more power points and doom points to the player.  This makes them the most important unit for most factions, despite being the weakest in terms of strength.  This forces players to want to protect their cultists, who would otherwise be victimized through combat or by being forcibly taken and sacrificed (for power) by other players.  Yes, you can capture and sacrifice other players' cultists to gain more power for yourself.

 

28mm Foundry miniature for size comparison.

The miniatures have been purposely made to be 28mm scale (for the most part), making them useful for playing miniatures games as well as their original intended purpose.

Super sneak preview - a green team Great Cthulhu cultist.

I've Got the Powah!

We've been having fun playing Cthulhu Wars, lately.

Despite it's high cost, it's got a lot of appeal to us.  Fun game play and MINIATURES!

I started painting them and this will probably be a main focus for me for a while (once you start painting the miniatures for a board game, you are stuck following through with it).

These are the power/point markers that come in the game.  Each player gets two in the color of their faction.

They are meant to be piles of stones with a skull on top (perhaps grave markers of some kind?).
I painted these with the player colors in the cracks of the stones, the idea was to create a sense of otherworldly power emanating from the markers.  It's okay looking.  It gives a good indicator of which marker belongs to which player.