On the Trail of Cthulhu
Recommendations: 140
About the Project
When it originally came out on Kickstarter, I paid little to no attention to 'Cthulhu Death May Die' from CMON (which I still pronounce 'seemon' despite attempts of the company to have their name pronounced otherwise). I suppose I was, at the time, not ready for a boardgame delve in the Lovecraftian world, or maybe was I all 'kickstarted out'. Whichever it is, I missed the game release and do not even remember reading any review about it, until the Spring of 2020. Thanks to Alex from BoardgameCo (check out his excellent channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUKEGjiSoFnemBsCLKrdeJA) I started paying attention to a game he professes as being one of his very favorites and what a game it appeared to be. Besides having been a huge fan of the Call of Cthulhu RPG, which I ran for a regular group in France for over 10 years, I have always been a fan of the Cthulhu mythos and all its pop culture adjacent creations. Taking a close look at the magnificent miniatures produced by CMON for their game, along with what appeared to be familiar yet engaging play mechanics, I started hunting for the game on Ebay and soon found all but the R'lyeh supplement (actually, I did find it but at a price that was abusive even for Ebay scalpers). This series of article recounts my path through painting and playing what I hope will be one of my favorite games.
Related Game: Cthulhu: Death May Die
Related Company: CMON
Related Genre: Horror
This Project is Completed
From The Ocean To The Cemetery, Delving We Go
Let us start with the classic Lovecraftian monsters:” The Deep Ones. One contrast paint (grey) and a pinkish colors for the lower belly made thee craturtes a breeze to paint. I am not in love with the shark look, preferring the misshapen fishy look of the deep ones of old, but these sculpts will do OK in the game.
Right on their slimmy heels are the ghouls, which were similarly preshadded and painted with two blended contrast paint, so as to reach the proper mix of fur and skin. As always Army Painter Blue Tone is a good choice to paint protruding veins.
Enter the Cultists!
What would be a Lovecraftian drama without cultist? Cthulhu Death May Die delivers cultist with flair and color, to be accompanied (in a future posting) by their sinister masters. Here, two different shades of contrast paint red did wonder on the robes and hoods, making the miniatures a breeze to paint. A very fine marker was used to illustrate the grimoire pages.
Investigators Arrive on the Scene
The investigators of Cthulhu Death May Die core box are quite diverse and were a blast to paint, as a unique diversion from my usual regiment of fantasy or scifi warriors. They also provided me with a great opportunity to try out Citadel contrast paints.
Note: I wish I could figure out why all my photos are posted sideways. Let me know if you have a trick to straighten them.
Elizabeth gave me then opportunity top try the yellow contrast paint and I must say I was impressed. Skin color was a bit of a problem and I used a mix of Darkoath Flesh and Wildwood, I still prefer my Foundry skin tones but that was not the goal of the experiment.
Lord Adam Benchley was rather straightforward and I played with his stare
Rasputin gave me an opportunity to play with fire
Borden's dress was painted using Blood Angel contrast and a lot of patience with a fine brush and orange paint...
Fatima Safar offered many contrast test opportunities and she was technically the first of the investigators I painted. Still not in love with the face details but from a distance (AKA playing the game) she is fine
Sergeant Ian Welles is very straightforward to paint and provides a good deal of backstory questions that may be welcome for a Call of Cthulhu RPG character background.
The Kid and John Morgan were fun to paint (well, despite the myriad of little white dots on the Kid's dress. In retrospect, I would have created more contrast in Morgan's clothes but I wanted to stick with the Indiana Jones look.
Last but not least Sister Beth and Ahmed Yasin gave me an opportunity to try out Black Templar contrast and some mix of Skeleton Horde (I could not remember the other component). The miniature are quire thematic, despite their lack of dynamic posing (I like Ahmed's pose in the art book better than that of his miniature).Mythos Menagerie (Part 1)
Right on heels of the investigators come the first mythos monstrosities
Fire vampire, painted with GW contrast paints
Cthonian, maybe the most complex miniature of the lot so far, due to a complex sculpt and a variety of tones and textures. Once again GW contrast paint were great tools for the job.
Hunting horror, which I took the liberty to highlight with green stuff neon colors tro break the monotony of its carapace.
Biakhee from front and back. Beautiful, haunting sculpt…The King in Yellow and his Court
Hastur cultists were a good opportunity to practice yellow contrast paint and highlights.
Hastur was quite a challenge, due to a plethora of maws and folds. Once again, contrast paints came to the rescue and blended nicely with each others.
The Black Goat Comes out of the Woods
Zenital highlighting helped greatly preparing the simple paintjob, especially given Shub- Niggurath is essentially black
Shub-Niggurath was a rather challenging miniature as it is basically duo-chromatic and needed some highlights to avoid visual boredom.
The dark youngs were probably some of the weirdest miniatures I ever painted. Make certain you paint ALL the mouths on them (there are many).Cthulhu and Cie
The great Cthulhu is less impressive than the baby sized 'miniatures' that was offered with the KS but is still an interesting addition to the unspeakable menagerie.
The spawns are barely smaller and can be painted along with Cthulhu so as to save time and create a more unified look.Investigators Geek to Classy
For diversity sake, I decided to paint a new batch of investigators, which were, as the first one, very fun to paint. As for the first series of investigators, I tried to speed up the paint job by using GW contrast paints, followed by traditional acrylic highlights and details.
Richard Irons - Dapper and slightly Groucho Marx like
Professor Vincent Haas. The suit was quite a pain.
Maxim Grey. I would have preferred a nicely sculpted Luger in his hand.
Prof Einstein brings brain power to the party.
‘Pop’ Duperon rocking a colorful garb and arcane powers.
Julia Hollister, classy, cool and collected.
Cthulhu Death May Die - The Last Investigators...
The last of the investigators were a blast to paint, in reference to the excellent art book released by CMON, and, once again, GW contrast paints came to the rescue, followed by dry brush for highlights and a few highlighting detail with my favorite zero brush. The weapons were painted black and highlighted with leadbelcher. Eyes were created with a very tiny marker, which saved me a lot of time, given my inability to ever paint them properly.
High Society, Tina and Josephine
Ernest and Walter on the Hunt
Maki and Roxie bring the heavy artillery. I first tried to paint Roxie's plaid coat but failed miserably, hence its single color finish.
Olivia and Fleur bring a French flair to the scene
Margie and Meryl, a new flavor of M&M, the Mythos Buster!
Marcelo and Al, accountant and 'The Boss'Cultists and Monsters Oh My!
Closing the parade of Cthulhu Death May Die Season 1 are a series of very interesting cultists and the last two Great Old Ones
Lord Nameless and Lord Faceless, two joly fellas
Cultmaster X, because a letter for a name is kewl...
Yog Sothoth. This was a really fun and bizarre miniature to paint as it has no real from or back and mandated that I play with mixes and gradients of contrast paint to escape a monotonous blob of a body. I touched up the many eyes with gloss varnish.
Wilbur Whateley. Another fun blending effort with GW contrast paints.
Additional deep ones, introducing...
Dagon! I decided to keep a semi gloss finish as it is supposed to be a water creature.
