HP Lovecraft in 6mm : Eldritch Empires

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

As a side-project and break from primeval Abyssian, I’ve been wanting to sculpt in a differnet scale, so I’ve decided to try and fullfil my dream of an HPL set mythos wargame. No idea if itll ever happen, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to try doing some sculpts and see how things go.

I have a ton of ideas for this, assuming there will be enough interest for it but at the current I want it to be a mass-battle game between Flying Polyps and Yithians, with a Human faction (who are imbued with the power of Nodens). Theres lots of things i’d like to do such as titan-scale stuff including enourmous lovecraft monsters and gigantic floating temples and the like. This is all just a pipe dream at current though, so I guess it will depend on whether anyone is even interested in anything like this.

To start with, I decided on doing a couple of Polyp figures. The smaller one (roughly 8mm) and the larger one (roughly 13mm) would make up the bulk of a Polyp force :





I plan to try doing a yithian next.

[Morgrim]

That is very small. I compliment you on your ability to sculpt tiny things. I do think you'll need something 'recognisable' to give it a sense of scale though, which could be tricky when one is talking of eldritch abominations.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

That is very small. I compliment you on your ability to sculpt tiny things. I do think you'll need something 'recognisable' to give it a sense of scale though, which could be tricky when one is talking of eldritch abominations.

I agree, that's what i am developing a human faction for the game They will be pivotal to the backround of the game too.

[Wolfshade]

Brilliant xeno sculpts as always ax

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

Very nice - reminds me of that Epic Enslaver sprue diagram you posted up somewhere yonks ago (ran into when googling their fiction - you've got a noticeable online footprint in terms of Enslavers!).

In terms of recognizability/human factions, I'd be down to help out with a bit of 3d-printed stuff, if you'd like (a 6mm tank or car is a fairly simple 3d model, after all).

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

I seem to be getting some great responses to this on beasts of war! [url]http://www.beastsofwar.com/groups/painting/forum/topic/hp-lovecraft-6mm-mass-battle-game-eldritch-empires/[/url]

or if you can't be bothered to read the thread -

the idea I had is that at some point during the 1920′s, a worldwide detective agency and organisation unearth ancient Yithian technology and manage to reverse engineer it. They also manage to make contact with the Elder God Nodens who imbues them with power and sends them back millions of years in the past to primeval earth when the great war between the flying polyps and great race of yith occurs. They intervene and destroy them. This creates an alternate time-line, and the humans become a high-tech space-bound empire of mostly lobotomised humans that fight the alien races and the great old ones.

Ideally i’d have polyps, yithians, the human faction as well as elder things, shoggoths and chthonions as the primary factions - but I also likethe idea of them being ablt to choose a deity you can worship. So you could buy an expansion pack that is specific to say Shub Niggurath and could include her spawn and thousand young which can use to ally with your primary army.

I’d definitely want to flesh out the alien races and create various units for them too. For the polyps I want to give them a giant airship shaped polyp that is slower but much larger than the others and can drop bombs of a sort, while you have the smaller ones as seen in the photo above as the primary horde and hte medium size making up the elites - of course you have to have a few massive centrepiece models and with lovecraft you could have enourmous and horrific monsters, giant floating temples and nightmarish technological horrors alike. Yithians would have all kinds of high-tech stuff based around lightning weaponry and the like. The Chthonions I imagine to have different dynasties and a bit of an ancient civilization feel.



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Very nice - reminds me of that Epic Enslaver sprue diagram you posted up somewhere yonks ago (ran into when googling their fiction - you've got a noticeable online footprint in terms of Enslavers!).

In terms of recognizability/human factions, I'd be down to help out with a bit of 3d-printed stuff, if you'd like (a 6mm tank or car is a fairly simple 3d model, after all).

Yeah I've had a long interest to do something 6mm, but I think this is the thing I want to pursue in that scale.

Seriously? that would be pretty awesome, would you be able to give them that WW1 crossed with retro 50's look? I kind of see them having a focus on things like hovercrafts (because I shamelessly love hovercrafts), big transports and tanks. I also think they should have priests of nodels to add a religous look and a direction connection to Nodens. I think the game will probably need some CAD sculpted stuff as there are some things I just won't be able to sculpt myself. The entirity of the human faction being one of these things.

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

[URL="http://i.imgur.com/6eNtCQS.png"]This fellow's[/URL] probably my high point of 3d printing - although I haven't got the level of detail down yet to match into 40k's 28mm scale, detail like rivets and access panels wouldn't be visible at 6mm. The linked sculpt was done with a so-so resolution Makerbot, but for 6mm we'd definitely need to use a quality service like Shapeways.

In terms of adding 50s style to WWI equipment - are you thinking purely mundane stuff, like vehicle/architectural, or also including elements of raygun scifi? Glad you mentioned transports - armoured car full of Nightgaunts would be fun.

The majority of my 3d sculpting experience is in Sketchup, which was built for architectural modeling, so I'm much more at home with mechanical details than organic (prefer handsculpting for that), so not sure if I could pull off human soldiers. Then again, the requirements for sculpting a good one-piece 6mm human soldier are very different than the multipart 28-32mm humans I've experimenting with. If an army in this game might include a thousand human-sized troops, I suppose they'd need to be relatively easy to work with/paint.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

I have some very specific ideas of what I want but I need to collect my ideas together and write them down from my head first, so will get back to you on that! Will edit this with detailed descriptions later.


I have done some more polyps though.


the Polyp heavy infanty (Dominators) and airship unit (still work in progress!)


Light infantry polyps (Invaders)


These are pretty hard to take photos of for an amateur....

I kinda want to make something a lot bigger next...

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

I have some very specific ideas of what I want but I need to collect my ideas together and write them down from my head first, so will get back to you on that! Will edit this with detailed descriptions later.

Sounds good! It'll be cool to see the precise angles of a 3d printed vehicle alongside the "perfect imperfection" of an organic sculpt. Also, worth checking out stuff like the M1917 tank - lots of cool looking equipment made too late for WWI, but too early for WWII.

What sorta function does the airship polyp fill? Vomiting out Invaders, pure offensive or?

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

For the light infantry, I want them to all be wearing hazmat type suits with 50's esque weapons, I also want the same kind of infantry to ride tripods. Instead of heavy infantry they would have religious priests of nodens (with robes, staffs) then they'd have tanks and hovercrafts ect(underused vehicles imo)

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Airship is a bomber, used to soften targets up before the main swarms get there. Polyps should be a purely offensive force as they were described as aggressive invaders. They are definietly the faction I like the most so they will be getting most of my attention for now. SAying that I've started a squad of Yithians and have finished a prototype Chthonian..