Crimes Against Miniatures: Too Much, Too Little, Too Terrible

Today Hungry Ghosts would like to delve into an important matter that is that barely surfaces within the miniatures painting and collecting communities. We've all seen it. We all say someone else did it. Well, someone else did it, but it's still wrong. Hungry Ghosts is talking about Crimes Against Miniatures.

Gaze upon the Horror. Yes, they are crappy plastic Bloodbowl Orcs. But this shouldn't even happen to crappy plastic Orcs.

But gaze upon the Horror. This is no ordinary accidentally tragedy: Someone had to think up this color scheme - this 6-color scheme. The arms suggest that they knew that Orcs are generally considered to be green skinned. But they picked out the feet for some light blue splatter. Then they just slathered the faces in the same blue as most of the upper body.

Who paints feet special and not faces? Who?

If you have keen eyes, you may see some green upon the neck of the Orc on the right. Yup, neck painted green. Different green than the arms.

Who paints feet and necks special and not faces? Who? Who?

And green, purple, blue, light blue...what clashes with all of these colors? Orange! How about some orange spikes? Ok, could be reasonable. Now that crotch isn't getting enough eyeball time, so let's make it orange.

Who paints crotches and feet and necks special and not faces? Who? Who? Who?

It gets worse. A Dwarf. One strongly suspects that somehow these monsters were meant to be on the same team. Also with 6 colors plotted out. And the face is now picked out to be the same stupid color as the padded shirt? 

Which makes Hungry Ghosts wonder whether the Rogue Trader Space Dwarfs shopped at the same clothier as these Bloodbowl teamsters?

And the bases! But the kicker is that the green Orc skin and Dwarf boots is Elfin glitter metallic green! Glitter skin and bright orange crotches- were these Orcs moonlighting as hookers?

From the same lot of misfit minis, two more Bloodbowl Dwarfs. Now we go from a demented-impressionist-with-no-arms painting style to really-doesn't-give-a-ratlings-ass splatter.

"Mommy we need bumblebee costumes for our school play about aminals and pwants!"

"Gaarggh. Here, yer done. Stop botherin yer Mother durin her date wiv Jack Daniels."

"Is Jack Daniels our Daddy?"

"Might as well be. Sure, Jack's yer dad."

All together now.

What's that? Did someone say "But how can I help fight these Crimes Against Miniatures?"

Glad you asked. For just pennies a day, we can provide a Fire Dragon Firing Squad to melt these pathetic monstrosities into grayish goop. 

Act now! Sanity Points are being drained as we speak!

The Fire Dragons of Craftworld Uacwansu have agreed to volunteer their time to do this dirty but necessary work. They ask only that the cost of Fusion Gun Fuel be reimbursed by your charitable contributions. You won't find that kind of giving spirit just anywhere folks.

So won't you join Hungry Ghosts and these gracious Eldar in combating the scourge of these terrible horrible malicious very-bad-and-not-at-all-good Crimes Against Miniatures? 

Paint jobs so bad they make happy little puppies go blind with a single glance. 

With your help, we can continue our mission to track down and exterminate these woeful beasts wherever they may be. Whether it be paint as thick as rotten mayonnaise, as chunky as chili, inappropriate enamels, oils, or gouache we can end this menace to puppies and art together!  

 "Phallic symbol? What phallic symbol?"

"Never heard of one of those. It is some sort of magic rune?"

"We're just firing our space guns, sir. White hot blasts..."

Too learn more about phallic space guns, please consult your local David Bowie.

Chaos Squats Get a Big Red APC Soviet Army Surplus!

The Hungry Ghosts have adopted a Big Red Armored Personnel Carrier from the defunct Soviet Union. Purchased from the Red Army's Annual 1 May International Worker's Day to 8 May Victory in Europe Day Red-Tag Sale, it is a welcomed addition that has soothed Hungry Ghost's lingering sadness at never getting a Star Wars Rebel Cruiser or a GI Joe APC while a Beardling. But the first foreign nation Hungry Ghosts went to was the USSR. You can still buy a Rebel Cruiser, but you can't do that anymore.

 Here we see the Burnt Scorpions Storm Troopers charging from the rear to battle some pesky Eldar. The more observant webizens may notice that there are more Burnt Scorpions than in the past, but we'll get to that later.

 Our APC is made from a Soviet T-34/85 hull. Our T-34 was designed in the late 1930s and hit the front lines of The Great Patriotic War (aka the eastern front of World War II) in 1940. Designed by Mikhail Koshkin and Alexander Morozov, the T-34 is the tank with the 2nd largest production number of any tank (the T-54/55 is first) and is still in use by Terran armies today.

This T-34/85 was transformed for the Warhammer 40K universe as an APC by using a 1/35 scale model (compared to the roughly 1/72 scale for Warhammer). The turret was replaced with 3 smaller 1/76 Sherman Tank turrets, and the original main cannon was shortened and placed in the front. Assorted Warhammer guns and vehicle bits were added as well.

 This produced a vehicle that a bunch of Squats could plausibly fit in. Unlike certain other Bag-of-Holding 40K transports.


All of this work was done by Time DuPertuis of Armorcast, originally intended for Ork use, but we will not hold that against him.

What is nice about the T-34/85 conversion is that it has a symmetry unmatched by other military vehicles looked at by Hungry Ghosts on eBay and elsewhere. 


The length is about 2x the width, the width is about 2x the height, which is about equally divided between tracks and armor. The hull is about equally divided between the front Dakka-Dakka zone and the rear Berserker-Box zone. The angle of slope of the front and rear armor is also symmetrical. 

This 4-fold symmetry of 1:2 relationships yields the number 8, the number of arrows in the Chaos Star and the Sacred Number of Khorne. And thus we shall name our APC The Mouth of Khorne.

 So what does all this accomplish? Fulfillment of Hungry Ghost's desire to have a land-version of the Korean Turtle-Ships (Geobukseon or Kobukson) used against Japanese invasions by the legendary Admiral Yi Sun-sin in the late 16th century. They were based on 15th century Turtle-Ships, and intended for use as a close-assault vessel.

Here we see another Turtle-Ship. There is debate as to whether Geobukseon were the first ironclad vessels used, but no debate that they had lots of spikes and dragon heads attached to the front that released noxious smoke or cannon fire. Dragon heads and lots of spikes are mandatory for any armored vehicle in the Legios Moriad XIV, so the final form of The Mouth of Khorne will more closely resemble the mighty turtle.


The Hungry Ghosts will tolerate no comments about Dwarfs and Turtles sharing speed-impairments; all comparisons shall be regarding powerful armor and an ability to traverse even the roughest of terrains.

Another view of the Burnt Scorpions emerging from The Mouth of Khorne. Hungry Ghosts is still not sure what the final carrying capacity for the APC will be. But it probably won't be finished for a couple of years, so there is time to think about that. A Chaos Squat equivalent to the Imperial Crassus Armored Assault Transport may be thing to do.

One more just because.

Learn more about Geobukseon here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_ship