SLM Frogs with Tridents

I was very happily surprised to see Splintered Light Miniatures recently release not one, but two amphibians in 15mm – the Frog Hero and the Villager Personality Toad. Imagine my excitement when I heard from David that he was releasing more frogs!

The first pack has just been released and comprises 6 figures total (2 of each of 3 different sculpts).

These figures are the Frogs with Tridents… and they are awesome!

These figures are very nicely sculpted by Bob Olley and cast. In fact there was nothing to clean up on two of the three sculpts above and the third was cleaned up in under a minute.

The frog on the left is an outstanding sculpt, was a pleasure to paint and just looks fantastic! With the nice Crocodile Dundee necklace around his neck and menacing size, this guy would be a great secondary Hero or Captain figure. he stands around 18mm tall, but is very bulky. A perfect Bullfrog! He is my equal favourite, along with the one on the far right. This guy is ducking down low, moving forward, avoiding the Fox warband’s deadly arrows, shield at the ready. He stands 15mm tall and has a slimmer build, fitting in really nicely with the Frog Hero. The frog in the middle is a very nice figure too. Standing around 17mm tall, he is quite bulky and bulbous, having a more flatter face than his brethren. He is very cute and was the easiest to paint.

As you can see, I’ve kept the paint scheme the same as my Frog Hero, but would really like to paint these up as several different tribes, exploring darker greens, browns and maybe even some exotic Poison Arrow Frog species. I will most certainly post those results when I’ve done them. The board that you can see them on is a work in progress, a 2’x3′ set table for Song of Blades and Heroes/Splintered Lands/Fur and Buttons games that I will post more of later.

Below you will see a nice comparison of all the different frog miniatures released by Splintered Light so far.

As you can see, these frogs really are suited to be the brutes of your warband, but what wonderful brutes you could not find! Figures like these and the Splintered Lands line really make me want to create some HOTT or SAH armies with them, but I have to be strong and stick with 10mm for those… don’t I? …Oh, who am I kidding, it’ll happen soon. Just have to be able to paint faster. It takes me long enough to get a skirmish force to the table!

I eagerly await the arrival of any more frogs that David decides to get done, but whether you are collecting the Splintered Lands figures or not, I must recommend that you get yourselves a set or two of these guys. They are the best 15-20mm frogs on the market by far and are excellent figures in their own right.

Cheers,
Ben.

nb. I do not work for SLM, I did not receive these for free and was not asked to write a review. I just really LOVE these figures!

SLM Mini Review Villager Personalities Part 1

Well, I’ve just finished painting up four of the six Splintered Light Miniatures Villager Personalities. I’ve painted the four that most people would recognise. The other two are outstanding sculpts as well, but I can’t place my finger on who they represent.

The Villager Personalities pack contains six figures and is available from Splintered Light Miniatures.

I have found that out of the four figures I’ve painted, all are nice, clean sculpts with lots of great detail to pick out. In fact, while painting them, the urge to do so for a display was very strong. Lucky I bought a second packet just for that! 🙂

The Toad Villager was the first sculpt that I painted. Boy oh boy is that a really nice figure to paint. The only issue was some tiny little vent tails that I needed to tidy up, one of which I missed, forcing me to repaint a small section of the figure. But this was probably due to my eagerness to get started. It is one of the larger figures in the set, being shorter than Badger, but more rotund. He is about 18mm to the top of his eyes. The sculpt really shows off the exuberance of Toad, with the huge grin and upraised arms. A truly lovely sculpt to paint.

Click on the photo for a larger version

The Badger Villager was the second figure I painted. It was a very nice sculpt with little to no clean up required. It was incredibly easy to paint effectively and would be a great model to start with from the set. It is around 22mm to the top of his head. His jacket is very nicely done, with the way he is holding his head, very reminiscent of the character he is based on.

Click on the picture for a larger version

The last two figures I’ve painted were the Mole Villager and the Water Rat Villager. Both are very nicely done, but I think the Mole Villager was the better of the two. He is rather small (same scale as the other Mole figures in the SLM range) but the detail on his jacket is fantastic. With his cute little face sniffing the air, he really looks the part. The Water Rat Villager is very nicely done too – especially the detail on his jacket/coat. The things that I thought made it the weakest of the four sculpts (which doesn’t mean much as its still an excellent piece) is perhaps the hat, which I thought was too large – was expecting more of a boatman’s hat like Toad’s and his eyes/face which I found much more challenging to paint than the other characters. This is most probably a limitation of my skills more than anything, but thought it was worth mentioning none the less.

Click on the picture to see a larger version

So there we have four of the Villager’s pack. If anyone knows who the other two figures are supposed to be – a Lady Muskrat and a Gentleman Rabbit, please let me know, as I’d like to paint them accordingly.

On the SBH Yahoo group, there is a great set of stats that will allow you to use these figures in a game of Song of Blades and Heroes. They are written by sosullivan18 and can be found here. Bear in mind you must be a member to see them. I really like the stats, but will most likely make some minor adjustments to fit my image of the characters, which I will upload here when they are done. But check out sosullivan18’s as they work very nicely and may just be right for you! 🙂

Until next time,

Cheers,
Ben.

SLM Aardvark Hero Mini Review

Welcome to the third mini review. This time, we have a look at the Aardvark Hero from Splintered Light Miniatures’ Druid’s Children line. This mini can be found in Hero Pack 3.

The mini itself is roughly 15mm to the eye and 18mm to the top of the ears. It is a single piece cast and is sculpted by Bob Olley. It is a very nice sculpt and great to see niche creatures getting some love for once! The miniature required a minuscule amount of clean up before painting. It basically had some “vent tails” to knock off and some levelling of the bottom of the base. All in all, less about a minute’s work (mainly to find them).

This Aardvark miniature fits in perfectly with the existing Splintered Lands line (especially being a little smaller than the Turtle Wizard and Frog Hero, the second of which is one of the larger minis in the range) The sculpting of his cute little face is fantastic and certainly defines this little guy nicely. He isn’t in any particular “heroic pose” and so if more Aardvarks are released in the future, he may get lost in amongst the regular warriors, but at that stage I may rebase him onto a more scenic base to reflect his heroic nature.

Click on the image to see a larger version

He was very fun to paint, but due to the nature of the colours I used and the texture on the fur, it required a number of highlights and inkings for me to be happy with the transition between hair and skin (on the face, snout and tail). This may be me being not particularly great at it, or could be me being picky. But this little guy is a great addition to the line and my third favourite mini the Druid’s Children Hero Pack 3, which is evidently, one of my favourite packs in the range.

The aim is to move onto a few of the figures in the Splintered Lands Villagers pack and then move onto other figures that I enjoy painting. Some of these include the Otters, the Rats and more. If you have something you’d like to see, just let me know and I’ll try to get a mini review up. As I do some of the more rank and file figures, I’ll be reviewing packs as a whole (for example Otter Archers – 2 sculpts). So this might take a bit longer to get these up. I will jump around a bit – this is in part to help cover some of the different races, but mostly due to my serious lack of attention span, so I like to mix it up a bit.

Cheers,
Ben.

SLM Turtle Wizard mini review

This is the second in an ongoing series of mini reviews.

Splintered Light Miniatures’ Turtle Wizard is the first Turtle released for their Splintered Lands range (but hopefully not the last).

Click image to see an enlarged version

It is a single piece casting, sculpted by Bob Olley (if I recall correctly). It is a very nice sculpt, with the front and back of the shell coming up really nicely. When I first saw the miniature, I wasn’t sure of the fire in its left hand, but it has grown on me over time. It would be challenging to remove cleanly without some modelling skill (mainly for cleaning up his hand afterwards).

The Turtle Wizard’s skin is textured nicely and his satchel and glasses are nicely modelled. There was again little to now clean up required on this model (probably less than the Frog Hero). He is 18mm tall to the top of his head, but is quite a bit less bulky than the Frog Hero, so, even with his shell, looks rather well proportioned in comparison to the rest of the range.

In terms of painting, this one was more challenging than the Frog Hero, due mainly I believe to the textured skin which I found difficult to highlight. That is most certainly an indication of my restrictions as a painter and has no bearing on the quality of the model (which is excellent). The shell was fun to paint, with a base colour, ink and then while the ink was wet, working up the highlights three or four stages.

I am hoping that Splintered Light Miniatures eventually add more Turtles to the range, as not only do I love turtles (although admittedly not more than frogs! lol) but this is a very characterful sculpt, and I can see it being a nice little range of figures (perhaps with crossbows and some with halberds). In the mean time though, some people will be pleased to hear that the Turtle Wizard scales well with the Eureka Terrapins. So if you have a real craving for Turtley goodness to support SLM’s Turtle Wizard in the Splintered Lands, they will be very nice additions, despite the differences in sculpting style.

The Turtle Wizard is available from Splintered Light Miniatures in the Druid’s Children Faithful Hero Pack 3.

Cheers,
Ben.

Splintered Miniatures Frog Hero Review

The first in a series of new Druid’s Children Hero models painted by me.

These figures are outstandingly fun to paint, but I have a huge soft spot for this Frog Hero. I look forward to seeing more of his type from Splintered Light Miniatures soon.

The Frog Hero figure is roughly 18mm to the top of his head and is on the large side in terms of bulkiness.

The sculpt is crisp and clean and was an absolute pleasure to paint. The sculpt takes washes well, pooling nicely into the right spots, making this a very easy figure to paint. I used a base colour, which was inked and then highlighted with the base colour. I think very effective considering how easy the process was. There was very little to clean up, with just a small, what looked a mold-line on the edge of the swords and one or two tiny strands of metal off the base (I think they are called ‘vent tails’ or something) that came straight off with my nail. The little details like the leaf on his arm and the “Crocodile Dundee” style necklace really help make this such a nice figure to have in the collection.

It is available from Splintered Light Miniatures in the Hero Pack 3 in the Druid’s Children line. It comes with an Aardvark Hero, Prarie Dog Hero, Turtle Wizard and Racoon Highwayman/Bandit. I plan to upload photos of them too as I paint them. These figures are from an extensive and ever-growing range of figures that I would love to see continued success from. They work well within their own context, but scale nicely as talking animals against 28mm figures as well.

I have no affiliation with SLM and am not a sock puppet. I just REALLY love the line and want to see it experience the success it deserves. Keep up the great work David!

Cheers,
Ben.