Mutated Throwing Mastiffs

One of the things I wanted to do was to compare the Dungeon Saga 'boardgame' plastic miniatures to their hard plastic or metal Kings of War equivalents.  I was very excited to finally receive my huge wave 2 box.  Character v rank and file models is a bit hard to honestly compare, as any character should have more detail and be more dynamic than a generic soldier of the same race.  And while I could do this with some of the undead (at least the skeletons and zombies) it is also not quite fair to compare painted v unpainted models (and I don't have any unpainted skeletons and zombies currently).  In addition, all my undead are multi-based - also making it difficult to do one to one comparisons.

This however is NOT an issue with the Forces of the Abyss, as they are all brand new, none are painted yet, and I can even take the opportunity to duplicate (as much as possible) the board game model's pose with the multi-piece plastic model.  I got my box on Monday, which is the night we play games down at our FLGS, so planned to assemble and review these after work the next day.

Well, if you follow my facebook posts, you will know that the best laid plans etc.

Devo (10 months old) and Tip (2 years, 4 months)
(Unit Size 1  Sp 120  Me 2+  Ra -  De 6+  Att 50   Ne 18/20  Pts 1000, Crushing Strength(4), Nimble)

To back up a little I really need to mention a little bit of something other than games.  This past summer we had to help my old (14 years) dog Scout cross the rainbow bridge once his cancer turned necrotic and he started suffering (if you actually want to see my other blog (where I find I am usually just complaining) that is not about games, I wrote about it here).

He had only been gone for a couple of weeks when my wife gets a call from a local dog rescue (Paw Patrol Dayton) outfit that she volunteers and helps do transport runs for.  They had just found a puppy that was severely dehydrated and had parvovirus, so could not be around other dogs.  They knew we currently did not have a dog, so would we foster this pup?  He was so sick when we picked him up that he didn't even move on the ride home.  Well we were a foster fail - meaning that we did not just take care of him until he was adopted, we kept him.   We named him Devo (because we saw his long thin tail and I said that when he got better and started wagging that think it would really whip around - at which both my wife and I had the same thought of the song "Whip it" from the 80's and turned to each other and simultaneously said "Devo".  He is a very sweet puppy, and like most puppies, loves to find and chew on just about everything.

Well once he was fully recovered, fixed and cleared to be around other dogs, we took him to the dog park to help to socialize him with other dogs.  Of course we get there and there are no other dogs in the park.  We let him run and heard a noise - and there was another dog with his front paws up on my car, looking in the window, wanting a ride.  No collar and no microchip, but he was clean (even his nails were trimmed), in general good health and not even hungry.  We tried to find the owners, but no one claimed him, so we like to say he found and adopted us.  We named him Tip because of the white tip on his tail.  We have since found out that he has heartworm (which might be why he was abandoned, we will never know) and are treating him for that.

We quickly found out (the day after he found us) that he was a runner - he loves to jump the fence and go exploring the neighborhood.  Not only that, but he is an escape artist as well.  We bought him a large crate because he was showing some anxiety when we would leave him at home (i.e he kept pooping and peeing inside when we were gone, though he was perfectly housebroken when we were home), but he easily managed to get out of it.  We have even found him out of the crate but Devo still in it with the door closed!  We have found a couple of strategically placed carabiners keep him from opening the cage.

Carabiners one one door doesn't help when you forget about the other one!

Except we forgot there are two doors on the cage, and he found the second one.  Less than 24 hours after getting my wave 2 box in, which I had sitting in the bags on top of a couple of bins next to my desk.   Suffice to say, when my wife got home she found both dogs out of the crate, and this

on the floor

as well as this

on the stairs

There was actually more further up the stairs as well, plus I was to find even more under the dining room table.  Yeah, I wasn't a happy camper.  And of course Devo still wanted his nightly walk (Tip can't go until all his heartworms are cleared up - he is not happy about that) when I got home.

I was angry - but I did understand it was toys we were talking about here, and in the overall scheme of things not a big deal.  Also with the kickstarter deal it wasn't all that expensive either.  I did check what was left of the original bag, and luckily they did NOT get into any of the metal components (had they swallowed some of those then we would have had to top this off with a trip to the vet).

So instead of putting together a couple of lower abyssals, a flamebearer, a succubi, efreet and Moloch and getting some pictures - I had the joy of sorting through 100 models to see how much was destroyed or missing (they left one bag of succibi untouched)

starting to sort through them

I found the second bag of succubi only partially opened, with a few bits broken off but all still in the bag.  There was one sprue of lower abyssals that was completely intact - so I used that to match up the other pieces.  I ended up with seven very close to intact sprues, several more half or so that I matched up account for all the pieces, and finally five that were not able to be 'reconstructed' to the sprue, so what was left was clipped off and checked against the parts.

Now I don't tend to keep my spare bits on the sprues, I clip them and put them into divided craft boxes for later conversions.  I had not planned on doing that before assembling anything however.

Nine sprues of Lower Abyssals

I thought I had a good count of missing items, but then found one more bit of sprue with about eight its on it, and about six more on the floor under the dining room table when I thought I dropped a standard.  Very few are missing - of that I'm sure.
Damage - some of the thinner pieces broken such as a standard (several more are bent but intact), the two handed ax and the flail.  In addition one body - the only piece that actually has any teeth marks it.

The casualties

the only real 'damaged' part - definite teeth marks

at least I have 79 more!

Now to (finally) start putting a few together!

Because it is all fun and games . . .