The Wereshark is just one example of an amazing fantasy miniature from Reapermini.com
I have been stumbling across quite a few alternative fantasy miniatures recently so I've been saving the links and thought I'd start to share them with you.This post is actually about quite an old miniature which will be very familiar to anyone who's been following my other blog - The Nautican Army Project (an unofficial Warhammer Army) (Special Unit)
I'm posting this miniature to kick off my new "Weird & Wonderful Fantasy Miniatures" series because I promised my Hammering friend Pascal (Battle Reporter forum member: Dims), who painted the model, that I'd post it in this blog - where it will be in very good company indeed :)
The Wereshark is in my top 5 of all time favourite miniatures (amongst the others are a couple of Jes Goodwin's old Ogres, a 1980's human Berserker staring upwards in a very manic way and Archaon, The Everchosen - who doesn't love him ?!)
Anyway, the Wereshark is the only miniature that qualifies in the Weird and Wonderful category so maybe I'll discuss the others above in a future post.
The sculpting is good and the model is very well formed (with the modeler and painter in mind). There are deep "sockets" in the torso and a large "head" in the connecting arm and tail so they fit very snugly together in the default position like lock and key and there's no need for pinning.
The model comes in 3 parts, the torso (which includes the head and right arm), 1 left arm and a large tail. It is a cinch to fit together which is nice because there's nothing more irritating than models that you can't glue ! (I actually consider it a design fault and it's put me off buying some metal miniatures when I can use a plastic substitute - which is a shame really).
For all the dimensions and more details :- Nautican Army Design Notes (Wereshark)
The thing which really sets this miniature apart is it's pose - imposing, aggressive and ready for action (he also looks like he's been in a few scraps before !) If you look closely you'll see a small Octopus in the Wereshark's right hand; to me the pose suggests that the Wereshark was just about to munch on his snack when someone (probably a pesky Dark Elf Corsair with a handbow) caught his attention with a foolishly aimed bolt.
It's nice that there is enough "give" in the arm socket to allow for some arm variation both vertically and to the sides. This allowed me to model the Weresharks with slightly different postures. Check the unit photo (click for a big close-up) and you'll see that one of them even has his hand raised as if gesturing to his own unit, those behind or indeed the enemy.
Not only does the miniature have stacks of character it also paints up very well (as you can see in the slideshow below) and is nice and heavy which gives it a rock solid feel when you use it in battle (which suits their rock solid performance in Nautican play testing !)
The model below was painted by Dims (pascalrooze@hotmail.com) who's available for commission work for anyone interested. Check out the bucket and spade - I love it ! :)
BTW, I almost forgot to say... thanks very much to Pascal for painting this miniature for me to help out with my Nautican army project. He's truly done a top quality job and I'm very thankful. Cheers Pascal.
