5 of my Favourite Miniatures from Crystal Brush 2013

This weekend is the big weekend of wargaming conventions. In London, Salute 2013 saw Mantic Games pull the veil of their Warpath Deadzone offerings, which will hit Kickstarter on Friday. In Chicago, Adepticon is in full swing, and with it CoolMiniOrNot’s Crystal Brush painting competition.

I was not able to attend either. Hopefully next year.

For those of us who had to stay at home, CoolMiniOrNot’s Crystal Brush competition offers a specials treat: 50% of the voting on who wins that competition is done online.

If you fancy being painting judge, head over to CMON and cast a vote.

Admittedly, I am neither much of a painter, nor much of a paint-job judge. Still, here’re 5 Crystal Brush entries I thought were awesome (not necessarily due to their paint-job alone).

Have a look!

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#1 – The Final Charge – 54mm

This has more advanced techniques on it than I could master in a 1000 years.

It’s not the detail (as awesome as it is), however, that I find so inspiring with this one. It’s the fact that it comes together as a whole in a really, really, really (!) nice “mini-diorama” (though it’s not in the diorama category). Great fantasy vibes, and I absolutely love the flowery base!

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#2 – Wissenheim Rock Badgers – Fantasy Squad

I love those guys.

There might be better-painted miniatures in the competition, but these guys rock a lot of style.

Some classic, “golden-age” Games Workshop miniatures, lots of fun detail to discover the more you look at it and an awesome theme, executed nicely. Oh.. and I wish I could paint faces like that!

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#3 – Soul Drinkers – Sci-Fi Squad

While Crystal Brush is not a Games Workshop competition, there’re still plenty of Space Marines to go round. This small command group of Soul Drinker Marines is my personal favourite.

The Soul Drinker Books are pretty good (for the most part), so I might be biased.

Still, they really exude grimdark Space Marine splendor from every detail. An awesome unit!

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#4 – The Game of Life – 54 mm

Another entry from the 54mm category (lots of awesome entries).

Again, this is a perfect storm of wicked details creating a highly thematic, “narrative” little mini-diorama. I just love those things, and this is one of the coolest I’ve seen in a long time.

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#5 – Steamed Piper of Neo-Hamelin – Diorama

I already confessed how I enjoy competition miniatures set up with a narrative twist. No surprise than, that many of my all-time favourites are from “diorama” or “duell” categories. Crystal Brush 2013 doesn’t disappoint there. Take a look at this re-imagining of the Piper of Hamelin.

Words cannot even begin to describe how awesome this piece is!

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Obviously, there’re lots of other cool miniatures. This post would be a mile long, if I show every single one that is cool.

I highly recommend you have a look – and a vote while it is still going.

Let me know which one is your favourite!

Z.