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.

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.

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.