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 Paradigm wrote:
Love that orc!

When it comes to fantasy Orcs, anything but green and the less bulky the better, as far as I'm concerned. With the LotR orcs being 10/10 stylistically for me, and WFB Greenskins at 1, that guy is a solid 8 or 9, and would work perfectly in LotR as a Black Guard, Feral Uruk or even Half Troll.

Where's he from?

He's a D&D Orc Basher/Orc Mauler. Unpainted in the Wrath of Ashardalon Boxed Game or also available as a relatively cheap prepaint.

I'm quite happy with how both types came out. Small numbers of odd and different things provide a nice break from blander large-scale projects of many figures.


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The moment I saw this model in the Bones II list, I knew I wanted to buy it. Marouda likes Bulls, as she's a Taurus (not into astrology, but likes the animal and imagery). As I've written before, the Brass/Bronze Bull is a thing with a strong Ancient Greek heritage. As much as I like the Foundry Model, this one is a good bit bigger, and as such, more impressive. Incidentally, this model is a Bob Olley sculpt, and a nice one at that. I started this a little over a month ago, after starting a brief survey on how to base it.


Reaper's Brass Bull. You can sort of see the glowing eyes I gave this one.

Now, I know that most Reaper Miniatures are essentially "counts-as" models for various Dungeons and Dragons beasties. What was interesting to me was when one of my friends was over for Friday Night Zombicide, and saw the part-painted model on my paint desk, and remarked that he recognised it as a "Gorgon" and talked about it turning enemies to stone (ok) via a breath attack (huh?) Now, as I've mentioned before, I'm not a huge D&D guy, and to me "Gorgon" always meant a snake-woman of Medusa's Ilk. Medusa being the name of a specific Gorgon, rather than the name of the snake-haired woman's race. Because, you know, that's what they are.


This shot shows off the freehand Hoplon shield. I'm quite proud of it.

So I did a bit of Googling the next day. I found that, yes indeedy, a Brass (or Bronze) Bull is a proper D&D Monster that petrifies its foes via a breath attack. Huh. Still, it required a bit more reading to figure out. Eventually, I found this blog post by F.Wesley Schneider (of D&D and Pathfinder fame) who explains it all in a way that makes it all make sense. It'll still never make it a Gorgon to me, but I can absolutely understand and respect the reasoning behind it, as well as the many years of legacy to those who play and are familiar with D&D. It's much the same kind of acceptance as my own to bright green Orcs, which was not something I'd ever considered or pictured before my introduction to and immersion into Warhammer in my early teens, but now after several decades is a thing I automatically default to.


Showing the discarded Kopis sword.

A couple of flank shots. When I saw the photographs of these I noticed a small amount of wear (already!) on some of the scales. I've gone back to retouch those bits and will be giving them a bloody decent shot of varnish tonight and tomorrow.


Finally, a size comparison shot. We have Stabby McStab, the Chronopia model, the Reaper Bull and finally, the foundry bull. While the basing does make a difference, the Wargames Foundry bull is significantly smaller. I'll still manage to work out a use for both in the eventual Mythical Greek Army. I've got some ideas, and both bulls would remain very nasty opponents. I might add some flower tufts to the base of the Reaper model, though. I like the contrasting effect that flowers have with such a terrifying monster of Brass and Steel!

Really nice work!


Edit: Damn it, Az, you've got me looking at these D&D games now! This might get expensive...

ooohhhh -that bull is looking awesome! lovely work there

Looks ded stompy! Nice work as always Azazel

Yep, like the bull. I've probably seen 5-6 of these painted now, he seems to be a popular bones 2 mini on the facebook group, though I think your execution is top notch. I'd have to paint mine like the rulebook and go with a blue steel kind of look.

But brass definitely fits your army better

The bull is fantastic, looks very impressive.

The bull is indeed gorgeous, the base is excellent as well. Job's a good one!

Since you have it, and I can't find it online, would you mind giving me a quick rundown of the minis in Wrath of Ashaldaron, either here or via PM if you don't want to clog up the thread?

Thanks!

I have a copy too (I bought mine because of a mention from Azazelx in a past thread actually).

Good thread here: http://community.wizards.com/content/forum-topic/2993901

The minis are quite good, really, and on my list of things to paint at some point...

Cheers for that! Looks like it's time to buy that set!

Amazing Bull, I love the story possibilities that the shield suggests. Has a Hoplon Soldier seen the bull and ran away (the sensible option) or has the soldier been crushed underfoot? You are right to be proud of the freehand, that must have taken a fair few coats of thinned down white.

Thanks guys. Rebasing the bull really paid off well, I think. I liked the ambiguous nature of the discarded sword and shield, as well as the simple colour it brings to what would have otherwise been quite a plain base. As you said, It could be a Hoplite who has been crushed, or fled from the bull, or even the gear from a friendly that has been killed while the Bull moves up the battlefield. The shield was a bit tricky, but the best part about it was seeing that I can actually do a Greek Key pattern in that scale. The worst part is now I'll have to do it again. And again, and again...

Para - I saw your thread and added my thoughts, and a few worthwhile links to rules and figures. Enjoy!

As others have said the Bull (or should I say Gorgon as a D&D lover?) looks absolutely amazing. But that shield? Your free hand work is exceptional and if you plan on an entire unit equipped with them that is quite an undertaking.

I'm thinking that the front row of several units might get freehand shields. Or a mix of freehand designs along with transfers that look exceptionally nice combined with the more elaborate kind of freehand rims like this one. Rear ranks will be much more transfer-friendly with less complex rims.

Love the freehand shield azazelx. Thanks for the link explaining why its called a gorgon. I always thought it was odd. And I have to admit when reading Lotr I always imagined the orks to come in many colours, including but not limited to green. Someone aound here painted their orks yellow through to red and I thought it worked quite well.

Thanks. I'd never even heard of a metal bull being called a Gorgon, so I was very much thinking WTF when my friends called it that.

Another couple of the Dungeons and Dragons Boardgame models today. The Zombie Dragon and the Werewolf. Both are decent sculpts, though nothing outstanding by my standards.



The Zombie Dragon is a reasonable beast, though details are a little soft in places. It's also undersized to my eye, for a dragon at least. Dragonling perhaps, but not a full fledged dragon, undead or otherwise. A zombie dragon is, apparently a distinct thing from a Dracolich. I guess that's a Dragon who is a Lich, rather than a Dragon who is a Zombie. I guess perhaps Dracoliches can be the ones who animate Zombie Dragons. I've still got to finish painting the Dracolich that came with Ravenloft, so enough about that for now.

Since this thing is (or used to be) a Dragon(ling), and also a Zombie, I went for a kind of traditional green palette, knowing I could stay dark on the carapace while highlighting the majority of the skin to a really pallid, desaturated green, so the carapace and wing membranes would provide a harmonious contrast. Of course, the other contrast that I wanted to have nice and strong was that of the blood, gore, viscera, exposed muscle and so on.



The beast doesn't look like it's been dead for all that long, as there's not a huge amount of decomposition on the model so far. I mean, the details are pretty soft, so it's easy enough to go other way, but I thought the head looked a little sallow as opposed to being made up of exposed bone. This is why I painted the eyes as hollowed-out but bloodied sockets. As though the crows and carrion-eaters had picked them out of the skull, before reanimation had occurred.The midsection and exposed ribs were again a bit soft, so I used some tube-putty to create some intestines hanging out of the chest/midsection cavity, along with a relatively fresh trail of viscera and blood being left in its stride. All of the exposed wounds were finished with Tamiya Clear Red, and the trail of dripping gore was made up of the same Clear Red along with some Water Effects.



The Werewolf also, is a simple figure. Again on a par with an average Bones model. Very much a 5/10 sculpt and model, in my opinion. I went for grey rather than brown, since grey rather than brown wolves and werewolves fit the pseudo-gothic-horror aesthetic of something like Castle Ravenloft for me. The incredibly awkward pose and posture doesn't do a whole lot for me, either. Interestingly, this werewolf is female. Though she only has two breasts, that are completely covered in fur, rather than six-to-ten teats. Not something I'd thought about much before.



We all know that there are actually painters out there that really can make a silk purse from a sow's ear. I'm not sure if I consider myself one of them, but I know that I could have made this model look better than it is. The question, as always is whether it would be worth the time invested. In this case, I did a little with facial markings and called it good enough.



In the end, these two are simply used as Bossed for the Ravenloft box. In theory, both could have a place in a Kings of War Undead army, though I've got better (Confrontation) Werewolves that I use for that game, and better ones from Citadel, Reaper, and even Mantic that I can use for everything else. The Zombie Dragon would need proxy-stats for a creature much less nasty than a proper Dragon to be of use. Obsidian Golem stats of some kind, perhaps?

They look really nicely painted, the werewolf is in a bit of a strange pose though but I love how you did the fur.

I have to admit- I'm not a fan of that Werewolf. The paint job is awesome, just that pose looks like he's doing one of those goofy dances you'd see an embarrassing dad doing lol.

Yeah, the werewolf pose always me think of that Warner Brothers Frog. And not in an especially good way...

As part of my continuing push to clear off my painting desk via actually finishing off models, I gathered together these three Goblin Fanatics a couple of weekends ago. I got them either from eBay, or WAU, or something like that at least a couple of years ago. I can't even remember, to tell the truth. It was certainly before we bought this house and moved in. They had been assembled, sprayed black, had their bases painted goblin green, and parts of their skin had also been painted goblin green. Unless that last part was me. Anyway, they'd just kind of floated around since I got here, and had been separated, and one of them had suffered a fall from the shelf due to Leonard the Cat going "fishing" from the top of the bookshelf - snapping the chain, which was hanging by a thin thread of plastic.



So anyway. I saw a couple of them taking up space and decided to finish them as a quick weekend project. The plan was to get them entirely done in the one weekend. It ended up taking two, but close enough. Glued the chain back together and off I went. It took a bit to decide what to do with their clothing. I feel that while Night Goblins can be dark as you like, it's nice to make their "special" models pop in some way. I also hate checked patterns on goblinoids, so I went with flames. Initially using an off-white, I decided they'd look better with a bit more colour, so I went with the brighter flames.



Yes, I know that the base of the flames "should be" yellow as it's the hottest part, and the red at the edges. These flames, of course, are made of paint representing a pattern on cloth rather than actual flames, so I'm fine with the red being adjacent to the green of their faces, and the yellow against the black of their hoods. It's all about contrast and "pop" here, but without over highlighting black cloth or green skin up to white, which always bothers me a little. I also experimented a little with the balls and chains. I wanted them to look like worn and rusted metal.

While they took a little longer than I'd planned, I'm quite happy with the final outcome. Now, on to the next models.

Nice work! The flame patterns are a great addition!

They look really cool. I like the flames that way and the balls and chains look nice and rusty like they have been swung round quite a lot.

The contrast between flames, skin and robes works really effectively to bring a lot of interest to the models. I think they are really worth putting a bit of extra time in. Your results certainly show what can be accomplished.

Yeah, those are nice fanatics. Splat!

Definitely one of GW's classic models. Always liked Fanatics.

Thanks everyone. I enjoyed doing them enough that I've just dug out a bunch of other, similarly neglected old classic goblin models to get finished as well.

The Goblins look really good Azazel those flames really makes them pop!

Great metal balls! Very authentic rust, how'd you do it?

I think the dance move the werewolf is trying to do is the Locomotion.

The rusted balls took several steps. It probably took longer since I was experimenting, but hey, it was still easy. Painted what I think is Army Painter chainmail (it came with a Mantic KS and has no label), then washed with AP Dark Tone, then AP Strong Tone. Lightly drybrushed with the chainmail again, then some stippling with VMA Rust (you could use Tin Bitz/Tinny Tin/etc), then stippled with Citadel Ryza Rust (you could use any orange paint for this), then light, sparing stippling with the chainmail one last time. Done!

Now, some more photos. More Dungeons and Dragons Boardgame models today. The Wraiths and Blazing Skeletons. Both of these sculpts come in transparent blue plastic, so painting them is a little different.


You really don't want to be undercoating these if you want to retain the semi-transparent look. I gave both of them a bit of a wash with dark blue ink in order to deepen the shadows, which has worked in one way and not been so great in another, as they have lost a certain amount of their transparency by doing so. The Blazing Skeletons are pretty nice models, actually - the only really "difficult" part being how the fireball is indistinct from the rest of the flames happening on the model.


The Wraiths aren't bad models either. A little ham-handed perhaps, but that's hardly a new thing to miniatures. Simple enough, but overall quite effective.


Obviously, the place for these figures to get more use would be in the Undead Army. What to use them for on the other hand is a little trickier. The wraiths would obviously see most approrriate use as Wraiths, but that role is more than competently taken care of both by the reams of Army of the Dead models from LotR as well as the old Citadel Spirit Host (Ghost Swarm) models that I repainted last year. Smaller numbers have any number of very nice models in LotR Barrow-Wights, Otherworld Miniatures' Wights and the like. Perhaps if the AotD get split off into a separate Army of the Necromancer or something. I dunno. Suggestions on near-term use for those models would always be welcome.

The Blazing Skeletons have a similar problem - what to use them for? If I were really lazy or creative, I could try suggesting that they're stand-ins for War Machines. What with the huge blue fireballs they're about to Ha-dou-ken at their enemies. Thing is of course, that I already have some Undead Warmachines (and two more Skull Chuckers to sort out, and a TK Screaming Skull on the radar.)

So, I dunno. Smush them in with Undead Archers since they're all ranged? Seems a bit ill-fitting somehow. Use them as Undead Characters/casters? While that could work ont he surface, these models don't look like interesting characters, and Undead Characters seems to be one of the most heavily-populated subgenres of miniatures available - both from older metal collections like my Citadel stuff as well as endless newer models from Reaper, Bones, etc.

How many of each kind do you have? If you have enough blazing skeletons use them a unit unto themselves, still skeleton archers in stats... but visually different. Not sure about the wraiths.