Finishing the Pack - Alternative Armies EH03 Space Brains

October is a good time for horror themed projects. I painted up one of these figures last year for that very reason. Then I forgot about the rest of the pack until I was looking for a horror-themed painting project as this Halloween loomed closer. B-movie horror is still horror, so I finished the other four.

A brainy bunch. Last year's test model is in the middle.

Alternative Armies sells these floating, gun-toting brains in packs of five. They work as gray matter extracted from enormous, mutated, alien conquerors in a variety of scales. Their ability to fly could come from their cybernetic augmentations or be some psionic power from their vast, cold, and uncaring intellects. Their cybernetic enhancements otherwise seem to be limited to weapons and the sensors needed to navigate and find targets. Each figure in the pack is a distinct sculpt with its own configuration of cybernetics and arms.

Close up of the different robotic appendages.

I used the test model from last year as a guide. The improvised flight stands are the same. The paint job is almost the same – there were two exceptions because I couldn't resist tinkering. The squishy thinking bits got a layer of highlighting using a mix of white and the Reaper 09281 Brains Pink that I used as a base color in those areas. The cerebral areas also got additional coats of wash. It gives those areas a raw and bloody look. I kept the dark look of the cybernetics - they remind me of Borg implants and add to the menacing appearance.

Last image from some remote outpost or a bunch of cybernetically enhanced brains dropping an album?

Now I need to consider when these will hit the table. Five Parsecs From Home? Or do I send them after the crew of USS Phoenix in our Star Trek Adventures campaign first?

Alternative Armies EH03 Space Brain

Took a break from terrain making to paint up one of these little horrors. Besides, the month of Halloween seems like a good time for this B movie escapee. I had to improvise a stand for it, but I think it'll do.

Space Brain on patrol.

Alternative Armies offers these in packs of five and as suitable for a range of scales. They are very large for human brains in 28mm. However, they should work fine as big floating cyborg brains extracted from a dying species of mutated alien overlords even in 15mm. I acquired my set as a freebie with an order I placed in June 2021.

Stand
I had no flight stands on hand that would work with this figure, so I ended up cobbling together one from a paper clip, some air drying clay, and a 25mm slotted base. The assembly was spray painted with Krylon ColorMaster Paint + Primer Flat Black and textured with a mix of sand, PVA glue, and brown craft paint. The small hole sculpted into the bottom didn't seem quite deep enough, so I drilled it out a little more to be sure. The miniature is secured to the stand using Gorilla Super Glue.

Zombies hunting for a feast. I better get to work on the rest of the set - it looks like this Space Brain could use some reinforcements!

Primer Coat
Krylon ColorMaster Paint + Primer Flat White. In retrospect, a neutral color might have been better for painting gray matter.

Brains - First Coat
Reaper 092881 Brains Pink. A bottle of this stuff has been knocking around my paint collection since I got it as a backer reward from the first Reaper Bones Kickstarter. With a name like that, I couldn't resist using it for this project.

Brains - Wash Coat
Citadel Washes Baal Red. The pink turned out a little too pale and the details weren't coming through. A red wash shaded the overall color and settled nicely into the recesses.

Cybernetic Bits - First Coat
A mix of Reaper 09038 Rainy Grey and Reaper 09037 Pure Black. This mix produces a very dark gray that I used as the base color for the mechanical elements.

Cybernetic Bits - Second Coat
Reaper 09038 Rainy Grey. This medium gray was used to highlight the upper and raised surfaces of the mechanical elements.

Cybernetic Bits - Wash Coat
Reaper 09255 Black Wash. Some of the gray ended up in the recesses, obscuring those details. I used a black wash to reverse the effect.

Rosie sneaking up to perform percussive maintenance on this Space Brain's cybernetics.

This figure was a welcome break from terrain making and a reminder that I need to paint some sci-fi miniatures as well. Of course, a set of these could work as weird aliens for a Five Parsecs From Home game. Maybe as proxies for Converted or Abductors?