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

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

It's dead, but not quite

So, one of the updates this week was a batch of 16 skeletons of varying types for use in Warhammer Quest, Dungeon Saga and the various 7TV games. The first 13 are standard builds from the Vampire Count skeleton kit. They are very nice models, but rather bulky when compared to the other human models. There is no way one of these would fit inside the Empire state trooper models though.

The last three were built a couple of years back after a trip to GW HQ for a sculpting masterclass, but I never got around to painting them for one reason or another, so thanks to Curt for running the challenge to hep clear the backlog! The figures use parts from the Vampire skeleton kit, some Empire Greatsword bits and some greenstuff. These three will be higher level skeletons... be it sergeants, wights or something... else.

The Sculpting masterclass was run by some real legends... Aly Morrison, Trish Carden and Aragorn Marks. Aly and Trish are GW mainstays and should be familiar to many, Aragorn's name might not be so well known, but some of his models should be. Before joining GW he worked for Rackham, sculpting their Dirz line as well as freelancing for the likes of Sodapop and Privateer Press. It was a very entertaining day that taught us some useful skills. I really fail though as I've not really tried sculpting anything since. One day...

On the day we were given a built skeleton built in a similar manner to the ones I did above. We were then taught how to do cloth, fur, chainmail, scalemail and chains

The year before we'd done a masterclass with the 'Eavy Metal team. This is my model from that day. In both cases I can't bring myself to do anything else to the models for fear of messing them up. Plus they are good memories in their own right