Critter kingdom

I was looking through the massive backlog of draft posts to see what was in there and it seems I got half way through posting quite a few things from the painting challenge last year... so here they are as some filler ;)

These rats and bats are from Mantic's dungeon Saga. These are probably the nicest things to have come out of it, besides the furniture!

 

At the other end of the spectrum we have the Goliath from Shadows of Brimstone. Like most of the other monsters from the SoB boxes so far, the detail is soft and it needed a lot of filling and resculpting... but he looks pretty imposing now he's finished. That base he's on? That's 70mm... he's one biiiiig critter. Sven once again provides a scale reference.

This week has been catching up a bit on the core Dungeon Saga figures in order to try and finish that off in order to get one side challenge out of the way. One of the most interesting things about the Dungeon Saga figures were the undead dwarf warriors... I'm not sure I've seen skeleton dwarves before. They, along with the three undead Basilean knights, can also be used as Armoured undead in Frostgrave. I just noticed that I forgot to do the flowing eyes... I'll have to go back and do those at some point!

After finishing those 6 skeletons, I figured it was about time for a few heroes and henchmen, so I started on some of the sneaky or different characters. First up is the assassin character from the Dungeon Saga KS. This is a once piece resin figure; nicely sculpted, but I think painting it with black armour was possibly a bad idea as you can't really see the detail in the photo. He'll also make a good thief henchman for Frostgrave.

Sticking to the thief theme for a second, I made one up for a cultist/necromancer style warband using the Frostgrave Cultist and Henchmen sets. These two plastic sets are great fun to play with and offer plenty of scope for swapping parts.

After the darker side of the henchmen list, I decided to go for some brighter souls. The smaller of the two is a halfling warrior from the Dungeon Saga kickstarter who is, I guess, supposed to be Tyrion Lannister.  He will make an interesting Templar. Next to him we have the warrior nun character from Zombicide: Black Plague. I tried to do some eyes on her, but failed... failed so badly. Unfortunately the face is quite open, so it really needed eyes as there wasn't enough depth for shadows to suffice. She will also be a templar option, or potentially one of the new Captains.

Finally is a massive flock of crows for Zombicide and Black Plague. They are a bit like Flock of Seagulls, but more goth. The plus side of finishing these off is that they can also be used as Blood Crows in Frostgrave. Technically the rules are for one crow, but it makes more sense for it to be a flock. One stand (in the photo somewhere) is converted as I stole one crow to make a Crow Master (which is in the painting queue). Painting these was a pain as crows are black with black and a bit more black...

This is 9 28mm figures, 1 halfling and 20 flocks of crows. The flocks are about the size of a 28mm figure, but I will leave it up to Tamsin to decide how to score them

Forces of Nature strike back

With the thawing of Frostgrave, spring starts to return to the city surroundings and with it come the forces of nature. These druids use the power of life to try and restore balance to the city ruins and find news of their elders who were in the city prior to the fall.

These models are part of the Dungeon Saga campaign. The smaller model is the regular version of Groot Kapoka, a dryad shapeshifter who comes with one of the expansion sets (I forget which one). The larger figure is a Legendary, resin version of the character to use when he has levelled up a bit. Unfortunately one of the issues with DS is the odd scaling of the plastic characters that makes them really small compared to the monsters. The resin versions are larger and fit well with other fantasy ranges.

Wizards

While I was planning the vikings form the last update, I realised that (other than the warlord base) they would be perfect to add to the options for Frostgrave, so I went in search of some wizards that fitted the same theme. Red Box Games came to the rescue with two really nice figures. I may have to find some use for their other figures if they have the same level of detail as these two.

Although they are from two different factions, they seem to fit together nicely now they are painted up.

And here they are with all of the vikings, ready to raid Frostgrave (minus the Warlord, who isn't useful here)

They will also all work really nicely for Dungeon Saga as Vikings are one of the factions listed in Mantic's mass battle game set in the same universe. I need to have a think and come up with some stats for those.

While on the Dungeon Saga theme, these are the three demonic hounds.

More monsters

This entry for the Analogue Challenge is a mixed bag of models. Some for Dungeon Saga/Frostgrave and some for Shadows of Brimstone.

First up we have the banshee from DS, which leaves one of the core set villains left to paint and 6 armoured undead. The banshee is quite a nice sculpt, with the exception of blobby hands and will see a lot of use in various games.

As a change, I decided to try some of the Dungeon Saga demons. These guys are the same size as the undead trolls and act as their equivalent in the demonic campaign. Again, very nice models to paint, though some of the seams are tricky to clean off as the plastic is slightly bendy. If the Kings of War ones are as nicely sculpted, they should be great models... not that I need any more of them. They will also be nice large size demons for Frostgrave. These guys suffered from a partial varnish fail. You can see the white marbling on the back of the middle demon; though in this case it adds to the texture rather than obscuring detail; so not so much a fail as an unexpected detailing!

Last and definitely least are two of the ghosts from Shadows of Brimstone. These figures are some of the worst I've had the misfortune to work with. The detail is shockingly soft, which makes them ugly lumps... so a quick ghost paintjob was done at the same time as the DS banshee to get them out of the way. Scale wise they are only useful in Shadows of Brimstone as they are 1/48 (ish), which makes them really tall when compared to any other Old West figures that I have, even Black Scorpion.

Because it was asked in the Challenge comments, here is the recipe for the ghosts:

1. White undercoat
2. HEAVY wash of GW's Coelia Greenshade. Add some black wash to the deepest, darkest areas if you want to get it really dark
3. Wipe of excess with fingertip
4. Lightly drybrush white. Make absolutely sure the wash is dry first, otherwise you get weird green marbling instead (which actually works sometimes)

As there is the Frostgrave side challenge currently running, it is about time that I started to put together some warbands as well as all the random monsters, so we will start with some necromancers.  On the right we have Mortibris, the necromancer from Dungeon Saga. As a model he's a bit bland and lacks a lot of crisp detail, so some exaggerated highlighting and shadows were needed in some places. Accompanying him is the necromancer from Zombicide: Black Plague (hereafter called Lord Black). Lord Black and his apprentice, Mortibris, will lead one of the Frostgrave warbands.

You can see from the scale here that Zombicide characters are a bit bigger than normal, but this is exaggerated by Mortibris, like all the heroes in DS, being tiny. Just wait until I get to the halfling character... he looks like a 15mm figure!

One of Mortibris' lead henchmen is this undead troll shaman. Model wise it has loads of detail that paints up really easily. I did, however, make the mistake of going for green robes along with the putrescent flesh colour, so it isn't as clear. I can't think of anything currently listed in Frostgrave for this one sadly.

Lastly we have some tormented spirits. I decided to do these as dark, glowing shapes rather than white ghosts to show their trapped, tormented and evil nature. These can be wraiths or spectres in Frostgrave.

The dead just keep on coming...

Following on from the skeletons and zombies earlier in the week, this time around we have some armoured warriors, some archers and the nastiest undead trolls. The Mantic undead trolls are massive beasts (those bases are 40mm) caught in a constant state of regeneration and death by necromantic magics. You don't want to mess with these... the level of detail on the models is fantastic. Much better than anything else I've seen Mantic do before.

The skeleton horde grows further with three swordsmen. The one good thing about the plastic is that a bit of hot water will allow for some tweaks to pose. For these three I just adjusted the arm position so they vary a bit.

Finally are three archers. Possibly my least favourite models in the Dungeon Saga undead range. Despite being reposed a few times, they keep on bending back into slightly wonky poses, but I suppose they are gangly skeletons... so it works. the Deadeye walkers from Zombicide: Black Plague will replace these ones eventually as they are much better archer undead.

No painting for a few days as we're off to do the Christmas rounds

Fantasy dead rising

With the Painting Challenge now under way I got the chance to have a crack at some of the Dungeon Saga figures. As I'm trying to work my way through each set in order, the first batch are all undead from the core DS adventures along with the extras from the KS campaign.

The skeletons are nigh on identical in pose to the classic Heroquest skeletons... though they do thankfully have the clown feet and ham-fists missing . You would, theoretically, be able to fit one of these inside the barbarian character. I'll do a side-by-side comparison when the heroes get painted. 

Next to GW's Vampire Counts skellies, these guys are pretty fragile, but they don't look too bad next to each other.

Then we have some classic style zombie peasants. I wasn't too impressed with these ones when they first arrived, but now they are painted they look pretty good. 

And some more feral looking zombies that look far more like Mantic's ghouls... so I can see them changing role once the Zombicide: Black Plague zombies start to be painted up.

The dungeons have a delivery

With another week until the painting competition starts I've been trying not to start work on any new figures... so some more furniture has been finished for Dungeon Saga. The next three photos do include the last set of stonework furniture as well, so that they show the complete group of each type for the DS project page. The originals are slightly darker. I must have used a different grey as the base... but variation is good.

 

And now we move onto the wooden items. There are still plenty of barrels and chests left to do.

Last time around I was asked for the brown recipe. I can't remember how I did the tables and bookshelves, but for these I used the following steps:

1) Undercoat in black
2) Heavy drybrush of Citadel Rhinox Hide
3) Drybrush the top half with Citadel Skavenblight Dinge
4) Drybrush the top quarter with Vallejo Neutral Grey
5) Paint on the metalwork using Citadel Boltgun Metal
6) Wash all over with Citadel Agrax Earthshade
7) Targetted second wash to the lower quarter with another layer of Agrax Earthshade
8) Rust spots added with ModelMates Rust effect.

The new Wargames Illustrated painting special  contains some really good step by step guides to different types of wood as well as a plethora of other interesting articles on painting covering things like faces, horses, fabrics, basing techniques and shields. It is well written with some nice, clear photos to show the steps. Highly recommended.

Dungeon Saga furniture

With the painting challenge fast approaching, lots of time is being spent prepping models, sorting spreadsheets with active projects and laying down a Dungeon Saga challenge to anyone who wants to partake, the only limitation is that you must already be in the painting challenge.

The Dungeon Saga challenge is to paint up all of the heroes and monsters in the Dungeon Saga core set. The winner is the first person to complete the models in the below image. The prize is bragging rights and one model from each of the other participants (the losers choose what fantasy model they send the winner). If you want to join in, just add your name to the thread on the Challenge blog.

Anyway... as I'm aiming to get the DS models all painted up over the next few months, I decided I should probably sort out the furniture while I'm waiting. There are still all the barrels, chests, doors and some of the stonework pieces left to do, but it's a good start to the set

While I was taking these photos, I also took some nicer ones of the various pieces of scatter terrain and added them to the terrain project page.