Fanticide Weekend Continues

Today I started cleaning and assembling the Fae. Most of these models are one piece of white metal, so they should go together quickly. First I laid out all f the models to get an idea of what I was dealing with.

The Fae in pieces

As I was taking them out, I noticed the paper tucked into the bag with the Brownies. Nice to see a company not take itself completely seriously!

Brownies get everywhere!

With everything sorted, I decided to knock out the leaders first. The package had a Satyr Legend and a Satyr Master. The Legend is a two piece model, the body and head are separate. The Master is a single piece. I cleaned them with my semi-round file and a pair of clippers and glued them to their bases with super glue. I glued the Legend's head on with super glue. The join between his head and body was pretty strong, so I decided not to fill the gap around his neck.

 

Satyr Master and Legend ready to go

 Next up, I decided to work on the Forest Father. This model consisted of a single piece for the Forest father himself, a sprue with a few mushrooms, and a pair of sprites. I decided to have the sprites hiding around his legs and put the mushrooms at the front of the base to dress things up a bit.

The Forest Father himself was very flat, so I decided to bend him around a bit before attaching him to his base. To keep from marring the sculpt, I wrapped the limb I was working on in a few layers of tissue. I then grabbed the limb and moved it into shape with a pair of pliers. A few times, I could feel the metal stressing a little, so I made sure to take it easy. Eventually I was able to bend and twist both arms and the fingers into a shape I like.

To add the mushrooms to the base, I drilled a few holes with my pin vice. Two of the mushrooms had stems that were easy to fit into the holes. The largest mushroom took a little filing and shaping on the bottom of the stem to fit in the hole.
 

One of the mushrooms filed to fit in the hole in the base

Once the mushrooms were glued in place, I gave the sprites a quick cleaning with the file and clippers and stuck them behind the Forest Father's legs. The whole model came out pretty well and should look especially nice with the base textured and covered with some flock and scatter.

Forest Father ready for action

Next up were the Bogies. These are all three-part models. Each has the main body and a pair of branch arms. Looking at the arms, the smaller arms that attach to the back of the models seemed to fit tightly, so I cleaned them and glued them in place without pins. The larger arms didn't seem to fit as well without shaping with a file, so I decided to pin them in place.

The first pair of models have a tapered piece that fits into the main body to form the joint. I tapered the piece a bit more with the file to make sure that it fit snugly into the cavity in the body. I also smoothed the end so that it would be easier to drill for the pin.

The joint tapered with a file

Once I was sure the arm fit snugly into the joint, I drilled a hole in the end and glued in a bit of paper clip. I like to use plastic-coated paper clips for my pins. I just strip the plastic from them and cut them to size.

Normally when I am pinning a model, I keep the paper clip long until I have glued it into one of the pieces I am pinning. That way I have a nice handle for working with the pin in the first piece. Once the glue sets on the first piece, I clip the pin to size.

Paper clips give you a nice handle for setting the pin

The pin clipped to size

One of the great things about these particular models is the pilot hole inside the shoulder joints. I don't know if it was intentional, but there was a small hole inside the shoulder of all of the Bogies!

Intentional pilot holes for pins?

I used the holes as pilots for my pin vice and drilled a deeper hole for the pin, testing the fit several times as I was drilling.

The hole for the pin drilled out

Once I was satisfied that I had a good fit and the pin was sitting into the hole in the body, I glued the arm in place.

The arm pinned and glued in place

For the other sculpt, the Bogie's arm had a bit of a ball joint on the end. My guess is that this is designed to allow you to position the arm in any way you want.

Ball joint on the Bogie's arm

Because I am going to be using my models to demonstrate the game for a lot of people, I want to pin these as well. That way I have the strongest joint possible. I'd rather have a pin, glue, and putty holding the arm in place than just glue.

Originally, the ball sat against the outer edge of the socket.

Original fit for the Bogie's arm with the ball joint

To make it fit better, I trimmed off a bit of the ball joint and tapered it to fit into the socket.

Testing the fit of the tapered arm

Once I had a fit and pose I liked, I drilled, pinned and glued the arm in place. There were still some big gaps around the arms, but even without filling, the joins are all very strong. These guys should put up with some serious play!

The reshaped arm pinned and glued in place

Once all of the bogies were assembled, I stuck a couple of sprites to two of their bases and set them aside to dry while I ran some errands.
 

Bogies glued and ready for filling

After a trip to the grocery, the game shop, and the craft store, I finally got home to work on some gap filling. Most of the joints on the Bogies have moss growing around them, so I used that to my advantage. I filled the gaps with rolled-out tubes of Kneadatite (green stuff) and sculpted them putty to look like moss with my Games Workshop sculpting tool and a straight pin.

Covering the joint with moss

On the underside of the joints, I just worked the putty into the bark pattern with the blade end of the sculpting tool.

Putty blended into the bark

For the most part, I wasn't too worried about how the sculpting came out on these. The bark is rough enough, and the undersides hidden enough, that the blending into the bark will cover well enough when the models are painted. Any problems with the moss pattern are easily covered with some foliage and flock, so no worries!

I set the models aside to dry under one of my desk lamps while I work on the rest of the Fae models.

Bogies drying to get ready for painting

So that's seven of the Fae models done. Not counting the big break for shopping, I was able to knock these out in a couple hours, including doing the pinning and filling. If you haven't had much practice pinning, it may take a little longer. Fortunately, the bark pattern hides most of the mold lines on these guys, so that can save a lot of time if you're not worried about them.

Next up are the Shootists, Stickers and Brownies. Then it's on to basing and priming!