I have a confession - I love mushrooms! Now settle down, it might not only be for the reasons you think! I watched an interview where Paul Stamets talked to Joe Rogan (Who also loves shrooms!) and it was incredible when you understood the intricacy and potential this organism has.

Grab Your Own Box Of Mushrooms Here

So, let’s get them into our armies! The guys in the studio handed me a box of 108 Mushrooms from Spellcrow with a wry smile and the motivating words of - "here, you can review those if you stop giggling long enough" And, that's exactly what I did. Between fits of giggles, of course.

Cracking Open The Box

First thing you notice when opening the box is that there looks to be a lot in it.

There are actually fifty-four individual mushroom sculpts in the box and a pair of each of the sprues has been individually bagged. It's tidy and keeps the fragile pieces all together in case some snap off in transit.

The Sculpts And The Finished Product

The sculpting is lovely and I particularly like the broad range of shapes and sizes in the box.

The finished models in my box were flawless, and there was tons of lovely details on the mushrooms to take washes and contrast paints. This helps to really speed up the painting process because lets be honest here, who has the time to spend painting shrooms?

Picking Your Mushroomy Primer

I opted to glue the sprues to my priming sticks. The sprues are both fragile and don't have a lot of foot print to stick tape to. So, to ensure I had no mishaps, I glued them down as this seemed to be the best idea.

With them being so small and the details quite fine I opted for Wraith Bone primer as it has a lovely smooth and delicate finish. It also comes together to provide the perfect underlying colour to throw the paints on for a quick finish.

The models took the primer perfectly with no hassle at all. For example, it didn't feel like I needed to was the models before hand. No fuss!

Fast Stem Action

Right, it's worth pointing out now "I am a hobby everyman!". I look for nice fast ways of doing things and I’m not out to win any awards, just have a satisfying hobby experience. If shortcuts and slapdash offends your sensibilities… look away now!

The stems were a piece of cake. I grabbed a pot of Skeleton Horde and just slapped it roughly round the base of each mushroom (except for the puff balls!). It did its job perfectly, shading all of the little details and giving a lovely fleshy earthy colour to the stems. Shrooming like it's 1984!

I could have continued with lots of lovely colourful contrast paints and finished the job, but I wanted something a little different. So I grabbed my trusty Fluorescent Paints from Green Stuff World and set to work splashing colour all over the heads and caps. I think in the end I used every single colour I have!!!

The effect under normal lighting was lovely and colourful which is perfect for the end project I had in mind for them. The party really starts when you switch on that black light!

Avatar eat your heart out I say!

Putting The Shrooms To Use!

Now the time had come to add them to their destined project - My Fantasy Ratmen Army! I found it best to just clip each shroom off the sprue with its "lug" attached meaning it was easier to remove the delicate model using either the clippers or a hobby knife.

Then it was simply a case of a little dollop of super glue to attach them to the bases that I wanted to add a splash of colour to.

The effect was exactly what I hoped for. The basing scheme for this army had a strong green tone to it and I wanted to try and break up the "sameness" a bit with some splashes of colour. The shrooms did the job magnificently and there is more than enough in the box to give good coverage right across the army.

And then I hit the blacklight switch. BANG! That's what I wanted! A cool, fun talking point for the army.

When I pop these guys into their display cabinet, I’ll hook in a couple of UV lights in there to help with the glow effect.

In Conclusion!

It’s little products like this that can make the difference in a project you are undertaking. So, my recommendation to any hobbyist is if you can pick up a box and have it there when you need it, go ahead and add it to your hobby arsenal!

What do you make of these Mushrooms from Spellcrow? Will you be using them?