The Broken Toad Bust Set - Skin Deep, Paradise Lost and The Wicken King - An Unboxing.

It's a familiar story with me. Company releases shiny things, I try and resist until another shiny thing is released and in the end I break down and buy more shiny things than I intended - the Broken Toad Bust Bundle. 

In this case, I started out just wanting Paradise Lost, but held off. Then it was mentioned to me that I'd really like the next release they had coming out - Skin Deep - and indeed I did like Skin Deep. I went looking at the Broken Toad webstore and decided that while £75 for the two busts I really wanted as alright, £90 for 3 busts sounded a lot better, so I went for the bundle including The Wicken King as well. 

All three come in nice card boxes, with Paradise Lost and Skin Deep both having wraps around them as well. I'll start with The Wicken King and then move on to Paradise Lost and Skin Deep.

Initially, I wasn't sure about The Wicken King. Most of the models I buy tend to be what I could describe as clean, or orderly. Things like Guild Ball and Kabuki, Grey Knights or Hasslefree. I don't really 'do' Chaos. Even my large undead force is all made up of Skeletons and wights, with very few ghouls or any other form of monster in there. With this in mind, The Wicken King feels like a large deviation for me.

Inside the box, as with the other two, you'll find a top layer of foam, a sticker (which has made it's way on to my painting lamp), the bust, and then a final layer of foam.

The Wicken King consists of three parts - the main piece and two shoulder pads. I got a little click happy with the camera, so I'll let the pictures do the talking.

There is some really incredible detail there, but in breaking down the components, I think it's the face, or lack of one, that really makes it feel off to me. However, I'm going to look at it as a challenge. So far it's a pretty unique piece in my collection and if I enjoy painting him, it could open up a wider passage into more creepy and chaotic models.

Next up is my favourite of the three - Paradise Lost. She comes in four parts - Main body, two wings and a shoulder pad.

At this point I'll point out that all three of the models are a hard resin, slightly more brittle than others I've added to my collection. In most parts of the kits, this isn't a problem as the pieces are quite chunky and solid. 

It's another story with the wings of Paradise lost though. They're noticeably thinner than other parts of other kits and while incredibly detailed, feel rather brittle so I was quite wary when even moving them around to get photos of them.

I think that the main part of this miniature that catches my eye is the different levels of texture that offers. The face, hair, clothing, metalwork, wings... it all looks great and when put together, fantastic.

Finally, we have the most recent release - Skin Deep. A fairly depressed looking court jester, there is so much scope within the face for detail work it's fantastic. There are also a lot more pieces to this kit - main body, arm, mask, two mask straps, four large jester hat strands, 4 tiny metal wires and 4 little balls to go on the ends of the metal wires to complete the hat.

Following on from Paradise Lost, there is amazing detail on the fabrics, such as the piping on the shirt sleeve.

Above is the worst mold line I found on all of the three kits, which goes to show how much care has been put in to casting them. 

The little balls to go on the metal wires. The mold strands they're stuck on to partly cover little holes in them so once they're cleaned up, there isn't any need to drill more holes for the wire.

The metal wire - something I should have been expecting after looking at the detail on the pictures, but was completely surprised by when it turned up - it's so thin!

Overall, all three are lovely kits, three of the most detailed busts I've picked up so far. Any of the three will provide a fun challenge to paint and I'm looking forward to doing just that.

On a side note, What do people think of the black and white pictures I've been using for my last few unboxings? It was mentioned that the style I was using for taking pictures of metal minis made the details difficult to see so I've switched to black and white for the majority of the shots to help show off the detail and depth etc. Admittedly everything I've taken shots of since starting this have been resin not metal, but I'd like to know what people think.