Manda’s (Amachan) Sacrifice to Hel

My Gripping Beast order finally came in with the last pieces I need for this project. This is the Sacrifice to Odin set from Gripping Beast. I will be using these 2 guys as those that are sacrificing the Blood Eagle figure to the statue of Hel. I might put the little runestone on the base as well, not yet fully decided on that and the dead horse can be use to make lasagne if nothing else. I will probably find a use for it somewhere else.

The pain is slowly going down, so hopefully I can do some work on this before my surgery.

Just a quick update. I am not going to be able to finish this before the TerrainFest deadline for 3 reasons.

1. I have been in so much physical pain throughout my whole body over the last weeks that I have not been able to focus on doing much hobby at all sadly.

2. The Gripping Beast order still hasn’t arrived. I got a notification from PostNL that they were going to deliver it like 2 weeks ago and I’ve still not got it. I’ll give it another week and then it has been a month since it was shipped and I will contact Gripping Beast. If they are then still able to re-send my order I do not know because of the GPSR coming into effect on the 13th. So that might put a much longer delay on this project.

3. I am going to have surgery on the 27th of December meaning that I need to get it done before that if I am going to make the TerrainFest deadline. I am going to assume that at least for a couple of weeks after the surgery I am not going to be able to focus on much hobby at all.

This is still a project I want to get done, but I will just have to work on it when I can. At least now that I am aware I am not going to be able to make that deadline, that pressure is off.

Because some people have been asking what the models look like that I am going to use, here is a portion of it. I am still waiting for my Gripping Beast order which only shipped yesterday even though I ordered it like 2 weeks ago. They must be overwhelmed by EU orders because they are now IOSS registered. I would have posted the pictures of them when everything came in, now it is just waiting on Gripping Beasts order.

The Goddess Hel and Jörmungandr from Bad Squiddo Games.

Blood Eagle from Footsore Miniatures.

I will be painting some of them up soon I hope. I just depends on how my body is doing. I have been in a lot of pain lately and not been able to do much hobby.

This might be a weird topic to post in this project, but it is relevant to what I am doing. I ordered some 3D printed braziers to use with my statue of Hel. The first time I ever bought physical 3D prints rather than printing it myself. I got some 3D printed stuff gifted to me in the past and those where technically worse than these, but that was years ago. My problem with 3D printing has always been the material, the resin. Not so much working with it with the printer and all that stuff went fine mostly. It is working with the material for a miniature or a scenery piece. It is way too brittle in my opinion and when you add a flexing agent to the resin, it becomes way too soft. I never liked cleaning, building and to a certain degree even painting the 3D printed resin figures. So I thought there has been years of development in 3D printing things must have gotten better…… These are from Greenstuff World and since they offer a lot of prints in physical form they must have quite the experience with it. I can honestly say my old Creality LD-002R that stops working when you look at it wrongly did a better job than these.

Anyway, let’s go over the print errors they made that I think should not be on a sold product.

1. It looks like there is a small chunk cut off from the side. They most likely printed it too close to bed edge.

2. There is a bit of island forming underneath the frame and thus that was not properly supported.

3. Is that a support coming through the feet of the brazier? 🤔😞

And these are just the major issues that I found. There is too much to go into.

Overall these cost me less than €5,- to buy, so I am not going to make too much of a fuzz over their quality control. But after cleaning them off the supports and such I just ran into the same issues that I don’t like about 3D printed resin to begin with. And therefore I am not investing in a new printer and really going to avoid buying 3D printed miniatures and scenery bits.

For this project however 1 is a complete write off because of the cut off edge, the other 3 will be fine and I will use 2 of those in this scenery piece. I was originally planning on using all 4……

And yes, I am basically giving up on 3D printed resin as a viable material for my hobby. It is only slightly better than that flexible rubbery stuff some companies think making miniatures out of is a good idea. Anyway, rant over. 😔

To start off I got a 130mm round, 3mm thick MDF base. I chopped the edges into a slope with a hobby knife and sanded that smooth.

And then since my whole army is going to be magnetized to be able to carry it with me, so will this scenery piece. So I drilled 4 8mm holes in the base and glued in 4 8mm round by 2mm thick magnets.

I will seal in the bottom of the base tomorrow with a coat of thinned PVA glue. I thin this to roughly 50/50 with water for sealing MDF in.

For a long time I’ve had my fantasy army the Order of Heimdallr and recently I started to plan and work on enhancing and expanding it for Kings of War. Now this army is also still for SAGA: Age of Magic, but I never actually made a terrain piece specifically for it. This project is going to change that.

I had a miniature of the Norse Goddess of the underworld Hel from Bad Squiddo Games for a long time and never done anything with it, that is going to change. I have found this image of a Norse statue, I highly doubt it is actually form that era, but I am going to use it as my inspiration. At least, the plinth or base of it. I am going to sculpt something similar out of clay and line it witch stones to get a similar effect. This project is not going to be very historical any way as it is for a fantasy army. On top of that will be a statue or the miniature of Hel with Jörmungandr which I will paint as a weathered bronze statue. In front will be the sacrifice, in this case the Blood Eagle miniature from Footsore Miniatures which I ordered for this project. I know the blood eagle is technically a high capital punishment and not a sacrifice, but it works for the setting. There will most like be some people praying or worshipping around it.

I will do my best when going through this project to list what I do and how I do it and hope I can get it finished before the deadline.