Dust: Spawn of Cthulhu

Dust has been catching my eye for a long time. WWII with mechs, gorillas, and jetpacks. What’s not to like? At Adepticon this year they had Lovecraft monsters. Even better! I went to the con with Sean, my regular gaming partner, and we coaxed each other into buying in.

One of two boxed sets currently available for the Mythos bloc, these Spawn of Cthulhu models make up 2/3 of the First Summoning. Each one represents about a quarter of a standard size 100 point game.

Spawn of Cthulhu (pouncing)
Spawn of Cthulhu (pouncing)

One of the selling points of Dust is that the models are available as “premium” painted models, for about twice the price of the unpainted ones. They look pretty good (and I was super impressed that the display case at Adepticon featured them out of the box), but painting is a big part of what I get out of the hobby. The ‘regular’ boxes are preassembled and primed, which is handy, although the purple on the Mythos models is less playable than the green of the Allied kits.

I didn’t stray too far from the studio paint job, however. I stretched my airbrush skills a bit with the pinks to purple to green on the tentacles and head. I tried to do a bit of beige on the belly, but that mostly got lost in other layers.

Spawn of Cthulhu (chilling)
Spawn of Cthulhu (chilling)

The pounding Cthulhu model came with a pretty cool scenic base, but not this chilling one. And it’s too big a base to just do dirt and grass. As luck would have it I had some ruined concrete wall pieces lying around which were a pretty good match. Add in some Vallejo Brown Earth texture and grass tufts and you’ve got yourself a believable desert base.

Ultramarines: Chaplain Cassius

From time to time I’ll reach into the hobby vault to feature models painted before I started this blog.

Cassius was the first character I painted in the modern era. It would have been late 2011/early 2012, when I was piecing together an Ultramarines army from the models I got back in the 90s along with some more recent purchases.

Chaplain Cassius

At the time I was super proud. I still am — this is a great sculpt and a competent paint job. Today I’d try to do a bit more shading on the armor, but the detailing still looks great.

Bushido: Prefecture of Ryu

One lesson in gamecraft is that if you want to play a particular game, it’s helpful to provide all the materials. Skirmish games make this not too painful. Since GCT was nice enough to put a Ryu model in the VIG bags at Adepticon 2017, Ryu would be the second faction.

Hiro Takashi
Hiro Takashi

Unlike the Ito starter, the Ryu starter models are wearing something approximating uniforms. That made it easy to batch paint, although it’s a bit harder to remember who is who.

Hanso
Hanso

Also unlike Ito, these models are mostly one piece and fairly blocking. The poses are a bit less dynamic, but they’re also quite sturdy. Hanso has the sword-and-scabbard thing, but without any of the fragile joints of the Ito models.

Minuro
Minuro

Minuro’s gun is the only one in my collection. But with a dragon wrapped around it, I’m not sure it really counts as a gun.

Ryu Yariman
Ryu Yariman

I’m quite happy with how the armor turned out. It reads as black, but the texture comes through quite well. It’s a simple mix of thin paint and drybrushing, but it comes together nicely.

Jin
Jin

Dragons don’t just belch bullets, sometimes they have stabby tongues.

Kenta Takashi
Kenta Takashi

Kenta Takashi was the swag bag freebie. He’s a quite different look from the rest of the set, but I kept a blue shirt to hopefully tie them together a bit.

I still haven’t played a non-demo game, but with two factions I’m running out of excuses.