Inquisitor Grunvald
1/6th scale cold cast resin kit from Forgeworld
Painted in 2003
Yes, yet another offering from Gee Dubya, and yes, I got hold of one to paint. This is in the form of a half figure, rather than a true bust, and runs
along the lines of more commonly accepted military models with its size. It's
about 1/7th scale; maybe 1/8th, but certainly no smaller than that.
It's similarity with the military models stops just about there, as this
is cast in one piece, no arms or hands to glue on, no separate head. Even the
desk is an integral part of the main casting.
But...
It's a bit of a curate's egg.
Why ?
Well Gee Dubya's guys and gals have excelled themselves with all the details, and the moulding is good but perhaps not as good as it has been on some of the other offerings in this range.
My example had a mould line under the right arm, and on the side of the body, which due to the material used in the moulding process - cold cast porcelain - is a bit of a sod to remove.
There's also a couple of small mould lines on the cuffs of the gloves too, although these are a lot easier to get at and deal with. I also feel that the head would have been a lot better had it been moulded as a separate part, the hair at the back is hard to get at with a brush. In fact that stiff collar makes painting almost all the areas of the head a right old paint in the posterior !
I think what I’ve tried to get at so far is that, whilst this is still comparatively a very good model, it should really have been split up into a three or four part kit.
But apart from that, it's well up to standard.
It's the details that certainly get to you after having a close look. There's a tiny set of dividers on the desk, and also a stamp for marking wax seals. The zip detail on the jacket, and the wires and pipes on the battle suit are all faithfully rendered. No air bubbles, no faults.
And at seventy-five quid, well, you'd not really want to find any. Would
you ?
Painting this, as previously mentioned, is a bit of a sod. Depending on how you go about it, and how colourful you choose to be. I wanted a sombre, muted, dark, almost gothic feel to my model, and so chose blacks and dark browns in the main. The art department from Gee Dubya went for a much more bright, and dare I say it, "gay" look to the painted example on the box artwork. I wanted mine to look dark and forbidding, a guy who'd kill you as soon as look at you. Not a fella who'd do you in with floral wallpaper!
The small amount of colour that I did decide to add was in the form of picking out details with small amounts of silver and red.
Painting was my usual method of oil paint over acrylic undercoats, and
I'll not bore you rigid with the details of it all ( Was that Jules cheering
in the background ? ).
Needless to say, there's a whole host of detail that appears as you begin painting, and bringing out the best of it will take time and effort. I haven't seen one of these kits in this range yet that could be completed in a weekend, there's just too much detail, and it'd be a shame not to make the most of it.
Just a few notes ( to upset Jules ) to highlight some of the stuff I did :-
The marble desk was done with an undercoat of white acrylic, painting this with a mix of Payne's Grey and Mars Black, and then wiping off the excess paint with a soft cloth. To dampen down the harsh effect of the shadows left by this process, I went over the whole area then with an old brush. This was just an old Prolene synthetic brush on which the tip was completely knackered. Blow me if it didn't start putting a pattern into the paint. In fact it looked quite effective, so much so that I added some Titanium White with the same brush, and the resulting pattern is what you see. It looks similar to the marble floor I've seen in some modern buildings ( Blackburn Cathedral is one such ), having an almost black marble with what look to be small white fossils in it. Cool !
The icon-like motif on the centre of his chest is done with gradual washes of oil paint. This took some time to dry, adding a couple of washes to different areas each night, but the effect gained for the effort is worth it.
The candle flame, which is an addition is an idea I got from those dreaded aircraft modellers. The plane builders add small clear bits of plastic to wingtips for lights, drilling into them before gluing in place and adding paint to the hole to look like the bulb. This was basically the same idea, in that I stretched a piece of clear sprue, trimming it off to a point once cool, and then drilled a small hole into the thick end and adding a spot of black paint and then some wire. The other end of the wire was trimmed so that it stuck out of the clear sprue a couple of millimetres, and this tip of wire was glued into a corresponding hole in the top of the candle. The candle then looked like it had a clear flame, which was then coated with a mix of Tamiya clear colours ( yellow and orange ) to make it look a bit better. Hey presto , one candle flame.ey presto, one candle flame.
Once finished though, it certainly looks dark and brooding, and I'm pretty pleased with the results. Of all the Gee Dubya models in the Forge World range that I've had the chance to look at so far, this is the one that caught my attention the most when the photos of the masters were released.
However, I think that although the casting is a wonder to behold when you first get it out of the box, this is the only model so far that hasn't stood up to close scrutiny.
Maybe I got the runt of the litter, I don't know; but I'm certainly waxing less lyrical about this one than I have about all the others..
Even so, it's still a model that will leave most other companies releases in the shade, and the moulding faults on this piece would probably seem ( almost ) acceptable on stuff from a different company. Again, making comparisons, the Orc on the boar, the two space marines, and even the troll can all be set along side each other, and the price - if deemed acceptable for one piece, transfers across to make a reasonable comparison to the others.
Seems like gibberish. Well, what I mean is that if you look at the large
space marine "Abaddon" and accept that "Yes, this is worth a hundred and fifty notes." Then you can draw a decent comparison for the pricing of the other pieces like the boar rider, the smaller space marine and the troll.
This mode of comparison, I feel, falls down when confronted with Grunvald.
It's a small piece - about the same height as the troll, and although well detailed, doesn't - to me at least - justify the twenty-seven pounds difference.
Maybe I'm labouring a point. Maybe I'll get an irate letter from Gee Dubya's legal department.
Who cares, I'm allowed an opinion !
I like this model, but I don't think it's as good value as the others I've done.
Only recommended for the completist
