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 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

I feel for you on that Queen level. Even ignoring the long wait, that many worms, grubs, hounds and fiends will take forever to clean, assemble and paint. Did you have a project in mind when you pledged?

Tyranids. Of course, since then I've bought two of these, amongst other things.

Why not get grubs or hounds with the remainder of the cash and use them for trade fodder?

Agreed on this. "Only supposed" to trade out half went along with "supposed" to fulfil 2 years ago. I'm not torches and pitchforks towards Ed, but I'm not feeling generous, either.


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 RiTides wrote:
Yeah, this was an early Kickstarter and it's pretty clear Ed overpromised, and has had to work hard to even deliver at the pace he has. This is also why I was willing to swap for less

If a Queen, etc is going to cost him more than $200 in terms of work, materials and postage he could always offer refunds instead of the silly "buy some other guy's pledge" system. Since that hasn't happened, I'm happy to hold him to the full "value" and I'll also ask him for (and expect to be granted) as many swaps as I need to not get any of the awful sculpts and have them replaced by the decent ones.


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...and since this is yet another ProxyHammer mini range without an actual game of its own, shouldn't it be moved to Dakka Discussions like RH and others have been?

I received my rewards for this kickstarter and wanted to write a little review to share my thoughts. I will take some pictures and post them tomorrow.

My review would be an overwhelmingly positive one except for one thing: the MOTHERFETHING GLUE PROBLEM. Trollcast repels cyanoacrylate (the manufacturer's suggested adhesive) the way Reaper Bones repels water. I washed all pieces with warm water, dish soap and a toothbrush for scrubbing, then thoroughly dried them. The material still feels soapy, which seems to be its natural state. I know RITides recommended Gorilla glue, but mine didn't work (although it is pretty old). Loctite Gel Control did a little better, but required me to sit and hold each join for approximately as long as it took me to clip, clean and glue GW's Araloth clampack. Loctite plus accelerant works pretty quickly, but makes it difficult to line up the joins as finely as I would like, as well as gumming up certain surfaces. I haven't run into the problem on the Trollforged minis that the Hudson Bugs had, where the CA glue would just form a press mold of the socket and fall right out when dry...at least not yet. Does anyone have any suggestions?

On to the good stuff.

The detail is crisp and clean. To my admittedly-poor eyes, it looks just like resin. I would put it up there in detail quality with any of the resins I own. (I don't own any boutique resins, if it matters.) The casts are as clean as or cleaner than Scibor's stuff, for the most part. They have about the same numbers of bubbles as I typically find on Scibor resins, depending on the piece, not a whole lot but definitely some.

The material is tough. It has some slight give, with some sections being very bendy and others more solid. It should survive gaming mishaps pretty well. It is easy to work with in that it cuts smoothly and scrapes cleanly. Although it is tougher to cut than finecast or most resins, it is certainly easier than restic. Mold lines scrape off just like HIPS, at least in the few parts of the mini that aren't covered with texture. If it were easier to glue, I would say it is as good for conversions as Finecast or Bones.

The designs are fun and very gribbly. I love all the alien faces, and the sky hunters turned out better than I thought they would. The grubs are about what I expected. The limited edition grubs are pretty huge. The hounds are much smaller than I had expected, about the size of a Reaper Bones wolf familiar, while the Stealth Adults are quite a bit taller than genestealers. The alien hunters are all one piece and look very simply detailed, with Starlord helmets and Darth Vader pants. I like them quite a bit. Unfortunately, instead of sending me one of each sculpt, they sent me three copies each of two sculpts. I still have not received any Alien Alien Hunters or Power Armored Alien Hunters. I am looking forward to them.



@Azazelx: That's a huge number of Tyranids you got there. Looking to get rid of any spare bits?

Awesome to hear! Too bad about the glue, I can imagine that'll be quite a challenge for many players.

By the way, could you post some pictures of your models once you start painting them? :-)

I use Army Painter super glue on Trollcast and haven't had any issues. I have been caught out by the mold release I didn't get enough off and the primer cracked and flaked off the miniature so you do need to really scrub them before spraying/painting.

Is there a soap that works better than dish soap?

I use warm water with diluted Dettol (disinfectant - it strips paint if used neat) and a nail scrubbing brushing it not sure what the American equivalent is though. It's worked so far.

I think the US recommended dish soap is Cascade. Comes in a green box and is a powder, specifically the powdered soap is what was recommended to me. My box says "Cascade Complete" on it.

Alright, I've had some time to reflect some more on what I like and dislike. With more effective cleaning and the use of accelerator, I think the gluing process will become much easier. The matrial is sturdy and holds detail really well. The minis look good.

The alien hunters are one piece already, so they are the easiest to clean up and glue right onto the bases. If they are priced about the same as Bones Nova Corp or Mantic's MA Tiger Corps, I'll buy more of them to have and convert and maybe paint. They are cleanly sculpted minis with a look that takes me back to 80's or early 90's TV sci fi. I totes want to convert one with rock star hair and a blast cannon as an homage to Critters. "They was dressed like they's from Los Angeleez!"

The grubs are pretty simple to assemble, although they have mold line issues with all their folds and ridges. Love their faces.

The Stealth Adult looks pretty sweet to me as a rubber suit monster. It has a very Grey 17 is Missing vibe, which I dig. The limbs could have been a little thicker, and the crack in its bottom was a trifle unnecessary, but very effective as a monster designed with a post-Alien horror lexicon.

The hounds are great. I wish there were a few that were running or leaping, but they have all kinds of predatory charm. Wish I had bought a couple more.

The Sky Hunter is impressively large and fits together surprisingly well. (The gap on the right wing on mine is due to the accelerator hardening the glue while I was still putting the wing on.). If there were some flying ones on flying bases, I would love to buy some of those. Might get another one to convert into some kind of shooty flying creature.

I probably won't get around to the limited edition Grub, the Fiend or the other big worm guy until next week sometime. I also got a couple of Alien Brains, and they look pretty creepy, even if the sculpting is not as sophisticated as on the later aliens.

The pictures are a problem.

Mo pictures mo problems.

After this, I give up.


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 Malika2 wrote:
Awesome to hear! Too bad about the glue, I can imagine that'll be quite a challenge for many players.

By the way, could you post some pictures of your models once you start painting them? :-)

Sure, but that might take longer than you think.

RiTides, thanks for the suggestion! I will try some Cascade ASAP.

I do like those stealth swarm models more than the standard adults. Didn't realize they were so tall, too!

Very cool! Thanks for the pictures Bob. My order consists almost entirely of swarm adults, grubs, and stealth swarm adults. I'm looking forward to those grubs.

Did you get any sort of tracking or shipment notification?

Yes. I got an email from Trollforged via Stamps.com.

Edit: I am going to try one more picture...


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Hopefully the detail will show up a bit more.

I just saw some of the figs at the local FLGS. Seems Ed is doing a painting class there and the entry fee gets you 5 of his models plus you get to sit down and paint with him. They had the models on display of the human soldiers as well as a Minotaur he either made or casts, they look really nice . Too bad I work nights or I'd sign up for it.

I saw this on Ed's facebook:

That's the drone, right? The leg looks a little thin, but I really love the body and am open to it.

Also, from the KS comments Ed now recommends a dilute solution of Pine-Sol for cleaning:

Cleaning: A release agent is applied to the mold to ease separation, and will need to be cleaned off the miniature before gluing and painting. Ed recommends a dilute solution of Pine-Sol

I will try cascade first, since I have it already. Also, Pine-Sol is a very harsh chemical that gives me breathing problems.

I had good results with the Cascade, so it should work well, just wanted to update with this option

Yaaay, fun with heavy chemicals!

Update #243 Apr 24 2015

Trollcast Queen Guard, and Swarm Master

Steve sent me photos of a couple of miniatures missing from the status page. These are final production Trollcast versions of the Queen Guard and Swarm Master.



Scale shot: Queen Guard, Swarm Master, and LE Host


Queen Guard


Swarm Master

Philip
On behalf of Ed

The swarm master looks pretty good, but the queen guard just looks like a clown to me.

Depending on the eventual retail pricing, I doubt I would buy either of them. The overlord, on the other hand...

Both/either could look okay with a complete arm replacement.

 Azazelx wrote:
Both/either could look okay with a complete arm replacement.

Yeah, Replacement arms would make them and the queen much more...attractive. And the overlord, the adult warriors, the drones, etc. The swarm needs to assimilate Charles Atlas.



Anyway, the cascade worked, although I had to was the LE grub and sky Hunter wings twice. Cyanoacrylate alone still doesn't grip as quickly or strongly on Trollcast as with resin or restic, but with accelerator, it works in about a second. I'll just stick to the glue and accelerator algorithm I have going on for the foreseeable future.

The big wyrm and fiend both have some big gaps,. Fortunately, Greensstuff should work beautifully on these minis. The thin tentacles feel very fragile compared to parts of the same thickness on the grubs and alien hunters, and I already lost one. I also broke my LE host by dropping him, so I guess some Trollcast minis are as fragile as resins. Oddly, the spindly stealth adult arms survived much worse.

Anyway, here are some photos. I'll need to use many posts because m iPad apparently assigns useless file names to my pictures.

The usual suspects.

Alien braaaaaaaaaiiiins.

More pics.

Family resemblance.



In conclusion, I love the look of these aliens. I plan to buy more when more of the stretch goal sculpts become available. Now I just need to get into the mood to assemble and paint them. (I plan to shamefully steal RITides' colors and techniques, although I might use red instead of purple for that classic Christmas grub look. Or maybe I'll use black.)

Does anyone have any good recommendations for inspiring media? I'm thinking Tremors, Riddick, Critters, and maybe The Thing. For books, Stephen King's The Mist, F. Paul Wilson's Nightworld, maybe Deathstalker since that series has at least two techno-organic hive aliens and a crapton of melee, the Tour of the Merrimack? Is the War Against the Chtorr any good?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
In conclusion, I love the look of these aliens. I plan to buy more when more of the stretch goal sculpts become available. Now I just need to get into the mood to assemble and paint them. (I plan to shamefully steal RITides' colors and techniques, although I might use red instead of purple for that classic Christmas grub look. Or maybe I'll use black.)

Does anyone have any good recommendations for inspiring media? I'm thinking Tremors, Riddick, Critters, and maybe The Thing. For books, Stephen King's The Mist, F. Paul Wilson's Nightworld, maybe Deathstalker since that series has at least two techno-organic hive aliens and a crapton of melee, the Tour of the Merrimack? Is the War Against the Chtorr any good?

Nice and thanks for the pics! I think black or red could look good

I think some of the art for Xenoshyft would be great inspiration! Not as sure about fiction, it sounds like you have a lot of good ideas for that, though

The art for that game is amazing. Is there any plan for them to release an art book?


The name still comes across like an attempt to fool a word filter.