Happy new year to everyone!
I hope all of you are doing fine after the season excesses, I'm coming bact to normal too.
First of all, a (not so random) tought about Blogger itself. I've been experiencing annoying issues when trying to comment on other blogs. Either the system doesn't allow me to publish anything or directly doesn't even allow me to sign in. I suspect it has something to do with cookies, but I'm experiencing it randomly and on different browsers, so I cannot say for certain what the problem is. I sometimes write the comment and try to publish it for ages, until I have to give up. That's why I'm commenting with such delay on some of your blogs, or even I cannot comment at all. It has also happened on my own blog when trying to answer your comments. I know I'm not the only one, but well, it sucks anyway.
But enough rants! You came here for minis!
These holidays I made a trip through nostalgia road and I rescued this monstrosity from oblivion. The infamous Manticore from the Dark World board game:
 |
| Painted in... 1992?... 93? |
I had this beast totally forgotten for literally thirty years. I had it in a bits box and these days I decided to tidy it up a little. I don't think that WIP pics will add much to this post, but anyway I made just this one:
 |
| Still hurts at sight |
I honestly couldn't be bothered with stripping it, so I have to confess I simply primed it again and painted over it. The pics below are quite overexposed, I'm afraid, but will give you an idea of what I achieved:
 |
| That's all I could get out of this mini! |
 |
| Glorious 90's hair! |
 |
| It has clearly working out at the gym |
 |
| The tongue remains a mystery to me afrer all these years |
Of course the sculpt is what it is. I believe (I have no proof, but also no doubt) it was an attempt to reproduce the Manticore by Citadel (I may be wrong, haven't checked it, but I believe it's a sculpt from 1987 or so). Well, there was an attempt. The head obviously doesn't belong to a lion, but some other kind of anthropoid monster. I tried a lighter colour on the snout, yet not fully reproducing a lion.
There's some kind of convention about painting the lion's mane darker than the rest of the fur, but after checking some reference pics I have to say I've been fooled all my life, manes are quite in a similar colour to the rest of the animal. Anyway, I went with the convention.
The same goes about the scorpion tail. There's some kind of convention about scorpions being red, and I haven't ever seen an scorpion other colour than black. I've seen pics of some other colours, but definitely not bright red! So you can see I went mostly for red, but turning into darker tones, almost black, on the upper side. And this is it!
I don't have any immediate use for this beast, but I'm pretty sure there were homemade rules for Manticores in HeroQuest, for example, so I may try those.
 |
| Random encounters in the wild |
Well, this feels weirldy calming, after three decades! I think I still have some other Dark World minis somewhere, so who knows, I may try to recover some of them!
I don't think I'll buy the current model from the Cities of Sigmar ranges, but I'll leave it here for your own consideration, if you want to compare this mini with my own Manticore.
 |
| Find the seven differences. I dare you |
Well, I guess I can declare that 2024 has officially started! Let's see what projects does it bring!
Cheers!
