The bad news for me was that I couldn't find anything that resembled this miniature in terms of design. Mind you, that isn't a knock against the miniature itself. When I first review a miniature, I tend to look it over in terms of what color I'm going to paint it. When say comparing this version of Moloch against Frog God Games and their version from the Complete Tome of Horrors, there is no match. When looking at Paizo and their version? Man, I WISH this looked like that version. That artist did a Moloch who is a gigantic armored tank.
Throwing a quick edit in here to note that thanks to a kind hearted soul, I've been informed that the look here is inspired by the Moloch from the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual II or yesteryear lore. Strangely enough, while I still have my Monster Manual I for AD&D, my II has long since passed this world. Maybe we'll get lucky and WoTC will do a premium reprint of that since they did Unearthed Arcana.
Mind you, there is nothing wrong with this version. Federico Genovese who I believe sculpted this puppy, did a great job of providing the buyer with a large resin miniature on a 50mm base. The muscle tone is well crafted and the lack of extraneous things like dozens of belt buckles, pouches, daggers, skulls, chains, and other bits that seem so common to some sculptors are thankfully missing here.
The miniature is three pieces. The main body contains head, torso, left arm and both legs. The base is a separate piece that you will need a knife to cut open to insert the tabbed figure into. The right hand holding the flaming whip, Moloch's signature weapon, is a separate piece. Because it is resin, it's a light weight piece and doesn't necessarily need to be pinned, but wouldn't be hurt by pinning.
Clean up on the miniature was minimal. I did clean the tab a bit to insure a proper fit and a few snips on the bracers but that was essentially it.
I primed the figure with Vallejo German Red-Brown and followed up with three generations of Citadel paint. I provided a almost complete basecoast of Mechrite Red, one of the 'new' Foundation paints. I then used in lesser degree, Mephiston red, the new paint. The final layer was Blood Red, one of the oldest paints by Games Workshop that I still own but still in the small bottles. The gold was done with Vallejo Alcohol gold with a wash of GW's Sepia and more GW pain for the talons and teeth and whip. I made the eyes a dark blue because I read either in the Tome of Horrors or the Paizo book of the Hells that his eyes were blue.
While I could have thrown a few washes on him to darken the red or a few coats of red ink to enhance the red tone overall, since I don't have any planes for Moloch to be a power players in any games any time soon and I just wanted a 'win' in the complete column, I was happy to finish him off at this stage.
The base is Army Painter flock with army painter tufts. I do have the Games Workshop ones, but for some reason the glue on the bottom of those continues to stick out like a sore thumb after their put down and unless their put down first, it is really a sorry site to see. I gave the dark gravel a few drybrushes of progressively lighter grays to give it some contrast.
While I may not use this figure as Moloch proper, depending on what setting I run next, if ever, I would have no problem using this figure, which fits snuggly on its 50mm base as a chaos giant say, one of the variants from Mayfair's old Role Aid line that were corrupted titans, or a fire giant wizard or even a effereti or some other type of otherworldly servant. While it doesn't scream Moloch to me, it does scream big friggin miniature.
I'm working on a few others now including the two Horned Devils and others. Has anyone else started working on their Center Stage Miniatures backlog? Any favorites thus far? Any avoid at all costs? Any assembly problems?
This is great, Joe. I like how you included the artwork to show just how spot on the sculptor got it!
ReplyDeleteThe art was sent to me by the person who pointed out the foundation of the sculpt! I thought it couldn't hurt to add it.
ReplyDeleteSo cool. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDelete