Feeling a little thuulish now

Last week I finally got in my Trident Realms of Neritica mega-army.  I was hoping to get this in time to paint it up to use at Gencon, to be able to show off more of the range than just the naiads, but that didn't happen.  I still plan on painting up the thuuls and gigas to put in that demo army for next year.

When I bought the army box, I was rushing to get it ready, and realized that I didn't get any pictures of the raw miniatures - so I've decided to correct that now.

Of course, the core of any Neritican army are the Naiads - whether you take them as ensnarers or heartpiercers.  I actually got those sprues with my kickstarter nature army quite some time ago.

Naiad Sprue

Ensnarers

Heart Piercers

Of course I'm including the Wyrm Riders as Naiads in this - but I've talked enough about them here and here.

There is also a centurion/envoy kit - to allow you to take a fighting or inspiring hero.

arms

body and head options

and painted for the demo army

Not technically naiads, the single war engine for the Trident Realms is the Leviathan's Bane, which is crewed by them.  This is a resin war engine with metal crew.  Mine has a lot of flash on it, though this would be easy to cut off - it does look to be a beautiful harpoon launcher though.  (It took me several weeks while playtesting these to realize it was a harpoon launcher and not some type of cannon :-) )

There is a LOT of cool detail under all that flash and sprue

It looks like it is made from one of the wyrm skulls - a nice detail

 However there are also other (and in my opinion cooler) models in this army.  The riverguard are frogs with spears - they have the fly rule (though only speed 6) to represent them jumping where they need to be.  A very interesting concept, as I tend to think of the army as being ocean based, and these would, of course, be freshwater (from both the name and concept), spreading out the army all around the globe.

There are 5 different bodies for these

as well as 6 styles of heads - 5 'standard' ones, and one that could be used to represent a champion or standard bearer in the unit (along with a banner pole).

The unit comes with sheilds.  I find it interesting that some are attached to their arms, and others are not (intending, I believe, to go on the back of the model). They also have six quivers of javelins.

The Riverguard are equipped with throwing weapons - thus the javelins - but also they have some arms that have small throwing stars instead - and those equipped with these have to have their shields on their backs as they are using both arms.  The nice thing is there is quite a variety to model here (and especially since the arms connect with a flat join to the the bodies - which means any arm can go on any body at any (reasonable) angle - so there is a HUGE variety available - essentially you will never have to have two identical models in your army (ok, if you took ALL riverguard you might :-) ).

6 Javelin arms - 6 javelin quivers, 6 shields with arms

leaving 4 with throwing weapons in each hand

or you can mix them up as you want.

I painted up a troop for my demo army

 The riverguard also have a hero, with a big double back banner.

Of course, whether fresh or salty, you couldn't really have a water based army without the water elementals.  Heavy (as they are metal) - they each come with a base that is the water splashing around them.  There are some very nice details on these.  I love the fish (and an octopus) that are caught up in the water, and the whole wave profile.

The octopus and fish in the water really make these models

one of them as a couple of arms

I painted up a regiment though they went in my nature army.

Then there are the models that don't come with the small army box.  The gigas have the big shield rule, and from the initial pictures I saw of them, I thought they were basically big, triangular shaped crabs.

It just wasn't initially clear to me that they basically have these huge shells on their heads, but their bodies are not covered by it.  It really fits the "big shield" rule well though.

two piece bodies - which are more shrimp like than crab

The two piece heads which give the big shield

and crab claws and mandibles

Just hope your opponent doesn't have any butter!

Last, but not least are the thuuls.  These have to be my favorite unit (or close, I do love the wyrm riders (if only the unit was resin instead of metal) just because they look so creepy and cool.   A combination of octopus and halfling and obviously named in tribute to H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulu,

Just like the riverguard, there are five bodies and five different heads.  No hand or weapon options, though all but one of the bodies has a separate leg.  So this can give you pretty much 25 different little nightmares (and with Me 3+ and Att 15 / 20 (for troop / regiment) I can see lots of these on the field.

a hand broke off one of the model (first picture, bottom right), though it should be easy enough to fix.

The hero to thuuls is interesting - as it is a spellcaster who has no default spells, but can fight.  He is even creepier on the sprue because of all the vents looking like more tentacles.  I also find it interesting that the back of the head almost looks like a face (with a huge nose), while the face itself is so nightmarish (those teeth!) as to be almost unrecognizable.  At least those in the unit have most of their tentacles hanging down, not spreading out reading to give you a zenomorph face hug!

 I bought and painted one up for the demo army (I wanted something other than just naiads after all).  I'm looking forward to adding the whole troop as well.

I also like that these are small models - being part halfling - they come in more than a head shorter than the standard Naiad.  It isn't something you would notice so much by themselves (and I never had when painting these up), but just a nice detail.

nice detail there.

So a little past when the army initially came out (hey, I live in Ohio - it is a little more difficult to get fresh seafood this far from the coast :-) ), but some cool models anyway.  I do expect to see more of these start to hit the table, and I think the quality is fantastic with them.

Because it is all fun and games . . .