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At last, the latest model for the Hive faction of the Swarm for Full Spectrum Dominance is complete, with the Breeder, the second Boss.
If you don't know what Swarm Mode is, you can check out this post - the TL;DR is that the solo mode for Full Spectrum Dominance is almost a game on its own: the player takes control to the enemy swarm, and makes decisions to try to win against it - basically picking the lesser evil at every turn, while managing the Activation Dice of both sides.
It sounds complicated - it's not, but it's quite challenging. And the sense of agency is entirely on the player's side - there is no "bad luck card" that makes you lose.
Concept
Anyways, back to the Breeder. The original concept art is from Al Voss (it's A-L, not A-I. It's an unfortunate series of letter to read with sans-serif fonts in this age! :D ), after a few drafting experiments we came up with this kind of slender design - compared to the larger Brute design of a while ago.
Being skilled with Blender as well, Al and I went back and fro with the general volumes before I got to work on the finer details.
Sculpt
The sculpt has been done entirely in Blender. I must say I'm happy that Blender 4.5 came out a couple of weeks ago: the new Vulkan implementation made working with high-poly sculpts a lot smoother.
Nothing too fancy in this step - sculpting monsters is so much easier than sculpting humans, or hard surface. No hard-science limits, no uncanny valley.
Renders
And here we are, with a couple of renders.
Two poses - just like for the Brutes, because 2 models are needed for the faction while playing.
The Breeder is slightly smaller than a Brute, but both are meant to fit a 40mm base.
In Hand
So, here we are. The last piece of the puzzle is completed, and I can now (in fact I must) start painting this little army.
