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Yes! That's its mouth and face. Except the rancor has a slightly bigger mouth. Great paintjob Marouda.

Hopefully we'll get some replies from her tomorrow, but for now...

I've been waiting ages to use that awful pun. I just had to finish the last of the six Zombicide dogs first.



Moog and Gapard, the American Bulldogs
The American Bulldogs were the first dogs I got finished. I attempted to pretty much match the dogs up to their appropriate artwork, but also did their collars and leads in slightly different colours so that players could have a secondary colour thing to latch into visually. Also, six black collars and leads would have been boring.



Martens and Bismuth, the German Shepherds
After finishing the Bulldogs, the others sat on my desk for literally months until I managed to force myself to paint the German Shepherds. Martens is easily my favourite paintjob of the bunch.



Lucien and Cherry, the Blue Heelers
And finally, I finished the last of the Blue Heelers. I didn't mind doing Cherry, the ginger-brown one, but Lucian was annoying as all hell to do.



Despite the fact that they all came up pretty decently, I really didn't enjoy painting the dogs. I'm not sure why, but I kinda just lost interest in them after the Bulldogs were done, and at that point they became a chore. It might have been the smaller size, or perhaps trying to match the colours closely to the figures' cards. I'm really not sure.

I've seen people clip the stands off the dog models and glue them directly to their bases, but my group tends to play Zombicide a lot, and as a result, all of the models get a lot of handling. This means they need to be and stay especially robust - no flimsy models wanted here, and if I did the clipping I'd be concerned that their leaping poses with few contact points simply wouldn't hold up to the amount of play that we do.

They provide a very powerful buff in the game. Our group no longer really bothers to give the Dogs much in the way of commands or orders except for occasionally early on in the game if someone lacks a decent melee weapon. We also use them for the extra search action, but mostly we use them for the bonus dice to melee attacks. We're about to finish the Season 2 campaign done vanilla-style, excepting the addition of a few extra survivors so the 4 of us can play with 2 characters each, but once that's done, we'll be combining everything together and there'll be some really nasty melee-centric characters. 2x Claw Hammers with 2x American Pitbulls and the Gas Mask? 14 dice melee per action that can take out any number of Vanilla, Toxic or Berserker Walkers, Runners or Zombie Dogs and the Pitbulls' damage of 2 as backup for Fatty duties? Ouch!

Huh, didn't know the dogs had those stands, it's not really an elegant solution for those minis.

They do look lovely though!

I love random miniatures, and dogs.
Miniature cats would be better.

I was going to pick those dogs up for Frostgrave, didn't realise they hand weird stands either.

Any chance of a scale shot next to a Space/Plague Marine?

Nice dogs, quite believable. Sounds like it would be useful to obtain a set for the game, someday, when I actually have the game

I'd probably rush mine more but I really like the way your fur coats flow.

The blue troll is striking. Sorry to hear about your work wearing you down.

 angelofvengeance wrote:

 Archer wrote:
I have always liked the stone trolls and much preferred the metal swamp trolls to the new plastics. Almost made me get Throgg and do an all troll army. Almost.

Screw Throgg... THIS is a Troll King lol.

That "Troll King" looks like my dad trying to get up after picking something off the floor. I can almost hear the "Agh. oof. hah. agh."

Dating from 1986 (Ghoul) and somewhere between then and 1988 (Golem), these two models originally hailed from Citadel's Night Horrors range that started off as a kind of Gothic Horror/Hammer Horror/Cthulhu-esque range that covered everything from Ghosts, Ghouls, Vampires, Witches, Werewolves, Mummies, Headless Spectres, Wights, Devils, Demons (no æ!) and everything in between. Most of that stuff got rolled into the V̶a̶m̶p̶i̶r̶e̶ ̶C̶o̶u̶n̶t̶s̶ Undead army and as such was replaced fully in the early-mid 1990's with official models wearing big hats, but despite some rough sculpts in the Night Horror range, others still hold up very well today.



These two models are in the upper-mid tier of those models in my opinion. They're still decent models today, though nothing amazing. They're not embarrassingly bad either, though. Which is always a bonus. The ghoul was probably the first non-skeleton undead model I ever painted, and served as a bit of a template for models through to this day. Using Citadel's "Rotting Flesh" paint, shaded with purple for an unnatural and horrible effect. I'm sure I got the idea from an old 'eavy Metal article (remember when Blanche and co used to write about their painting techniques?) or at the very least, some pictures in 'eavy Metal. The ghoul is pretty much as I painted him back in the 1990's, with some touching up and maybe some updated blending.



The Golem is a much more recent one. Well, started a year or two ago and finished this year a couple of months ago. I followed the same palette as the Ghoul and decided to paint the "stitches" as staples, because it just seems a bit nastier. I may have been planning to use the Golem as a Blood Bowl player at one point, but clearly never got around to it. No great loss!

These two will be rolled into Undead Army units at some stage, but they also sit happily in reserve for any kind of Fantasy Roleplaying or D&D-style boardgames.

Whoa! I have no memory of those models. The golem holding his own head is great.

Love the golem. What a great sculpt. I really like your skin tone. Very effective without being that cartoony undead that the older ghouls used to get.

Thought I'd replied to some of this yesterday, huh.

Brook - The stands on the dogs isn't perhaps ideal, but it works fine for Zombicide, and they're not as intrusive visually in hand as they seem in the pictures. it also lets them hold those poses, given the boardgame PVC material they're made of. I guess you just focus on the bright doggies and ignore the dark stands. Kinda like flight stands on 40k models. You could replace them with clear acrylic, but that's more work than I'm willing to put in.

Weety - Cats would be awesome, but I'm not sure how much use they'd be in Zombicide.

Giraffe - Here's some scale pics for you, as requested!







L-R: Dog, Fireforge Templar, Dog, Plastic Marine, Dog, Zombicide Survivor, Dog, Chronopia Guy.
As you can see, the base sizes will make a difference when mixing in with other models. It'd be simple to glue the dog base to a round renedra base or two for some extra height, though. They're realistically big dogs - head up to your waist on a standing model.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JoshInJapan wrote:
Whoa! I have no memory of those models. The golem holding his own head is great.

There's quite the old range of these guys. It seems I have a few of them floating around still, too.

http://www.solegends.com/citWDAds/citwd1986/images/WD838611p1819Various-01_04.htm
http://www.solegends.com/citcat89/c891304nighthorrors-02.htm
http://www.solegends.com/citcat89/c891305nighthorrors-02.htm

Archer - thanks! It works for me. I've varied it slightly for larger batches of Zombie-types with a greenish, bluish and reddish shade instead of purple. All give an unnaturally unhealthy look.

Looking at those SOL pages, I recognize four or five minis I've had kicking around for a while, but I've never seen those two. The staples really make that golem look wicked.

There's quite the variety of those Night Horror figures. I'm sure some made it into other ranges as well at different times, particularly the Undead. I initially did them as stitching, but they just blended in and got lost - too dark. Going for metal staples made them stand out a lot more.

Replies from Marouda to people who commented:

Archer
Thanks I'll have to find the entwife model, I remember I got as far as putting a base coat on the model. Good comparison to the rancor, in the ugliness features, although he's a mini rancor

Giraffe X
Thanks, I thought painting the skin would never end I think that's Azazel's plan to get me motivated to paint more.

Grimdork
Thank you, his expression looks intimidating and he means business.

Warboss Waaazag
Glad it turned out as scary looking as it did and that you like it.

Weetyskemian
Thank you for your comments. I appreciate it.

Love those ghouls, great stuff!

Thanks for the comparison shot, those dogs would fit in quite nicely with most miniature ranges.

Dogs look great , maybe you could paint the black stands as fire hydrants

I just gave my brother in law a ton of ancient citadel, marauder and old GW undead. Your painting makes me wish I hadn't.

Haha, actually... did Mantic have Fire Hydrant included with the Mars Attacks scenery bits? that would be some potentially nice little bits of scatter terrain. Perhaps you should have a ...little chat with your brother and work out which models you'd like to paint and which ones he'd like to?

And now another pair of the old Night Horrors from the 1986-88 time period for today. These two are a little further down the scale of interesting than yesterday's undead-themed models, and I really think they both only ever got painted because fur is easy.



The apeman's fur was pretty much all the same shade, so when I rebased him recently I decided to touch him up a little and add some colour variation to his fur. Most readily seen on his back, which is darker along the spine. Ape-Man is pretty much as he always was, but I drilled into the neck of his victim and stuck a little bit of wire in there to act as a bit of neck/spine. FATALITY!



I'm not sure why I gave the Ape Man blonde locks. I guess he's just that bit more fashion-conscious than the other Apes, but not so much as to actually start wearing clothes. Wheras yesterday's pair will be rolled into the Undead army, these two fit in much more nicely with the Old-School mixed-style Beastmen of Chaos, along with the other weirdos like the Talisman Troll and the various Realm of Chaos-Era Beastmen.

I've got a few more Night Horrors floating around. There's a Medusa on my painting desk, and I know I have a werewolf or two completely unpainted somewhere. Sadly I don't have any of the really cool undead figures from this range, but c'est la vie...

Those are funky and weird and once again I have never seen them. I would love to get together someday and compare all of our weird OOP minis from the Elder Days. Maybe you could relocate to Japan?

Great trip down memory lane again Az! I really enjoy seeing these older mini's done so well, things I haven't seen before and they seem to all have so much personality! your collection is an amazing thing.......just needs more LoTR? :-)

No can do, Josh. But perhaps you can join the list of Dakkaites that it would be great to have move to Melbourne?

Thanks Damo - I'll be getting back to you on that one today. Just need to ask/confirm some stuff with Marouda, who I'm trying to not-so-subtly encourage to pick up a brush again....


Continuing the late 1980's/early 1990's thing I've had going for awhile here are a trio of Chaos Space Marines from the rather famous Space Crusade boardgame - part of the cooperation between Games Workshop and Milton Bradley from that era along with HeroQuest and Battle Masters. I had owned both HeroQuest and Advanced HeroQuest in the day, and managed to pick up replacement secondhand copies of both in the past few years to re-complete them. I also owned Battle Masters and Space Crusade, but sadly both of those got scattered to the winds over time through my own fault and poor choices, so there's not that much left of either now.

Anyway, these three got painted back in the day and updated a month or two ago.



As noted in earlier posts, back in the 90's I was't able to afford all of the models I wanted (how some things never change, eh?) and so my solution was to paint what I had differently or uniquely to make up for it. Sadly, these are still the only World Eaters/Khornemarines and Thousand Sons/Tzeentchmarines I actually have painted to this day! I thought it'd be a good idea to give the Nurgle guy a cut-down "hoof" style foot, and then damage his horn. For some reason, I then thought it's be a good idea to damage the Khorne guy's horn in exactly the same place and way. /facepalm.



The Nurgle guy got a visit from a red-hot paperclip from the stove and a bit of putty to create the disfigurement and damage to his armour. The iconography on the other two is freehanded, and was done 20-odd years ago with no need to touch it up recently. The main things I did to touch these guys up was to remove the green elements of armour from the Khorne and Tzeentch guys, as well as the removal of a bit of purple from Tzeentch-dude. As I've said, the early 90's were a bit garish if you followed GW for inspiration too closely. They look much nicer now, muted down a little to their "proper" colours.



The Red-and-Green of the Nurgle Marine isn't what I'd choose today, but was actually a common scheme for Nurgle Marines and Chaos Renegades from the Slaves to Darkness book, and was a bit part of the "original soul" of this painted guy, so I left it. I also rebased all three on the new 32mm round bases, which they fill out nicely and really fit with these models much better than the 25mm ones they lived on for so long.

This blog really has been filled with old models lately - it's not intentionally retro, it's just that a lot of what I've painted, am repainting and am finally finishing is from that era, and I'm trying to document everything I finish these days. I'm keen as hell to get onto some newer models and some Forge World and so forth, but I'm making myself hold off, with the exception of "work minis" that have simple techniques that I can do at work (and bore me to do at home!)

Ooo dem's some old school Chaos Marines

Great stuff lately

No fire hydrants in the MA scenery. Mailboxes, trash cans, park benches, stop signs, there's a lot of stuff on which a dog might pee, but none of them are fire hydrants (wasted opportunity).

I'm pretty sure there is at least one fire hydrant in one of the resin scenery sets.

Those are some very nice Chaos Marines. I can't imagine painting a whole army of them to that standard, though.

Oh yeah, the resin sets, forgot about those. I think there was a hot dog cart and so on? I don't think those have ever been offered at retail though.

Yeah, the one with the hot dog cart. I picked up that set to have crap to hide behind. I bet it's on eBay.

Thanks Josh - that's the difficulty I have. Between wanting to have armies painted and wanting to paint them to a specific standard (that changes depending on the models, to be fair). So despite being able to field some almost-totally painted battles, the result is I have no completely finished armies.

The resin scenery looked really nice, but just too rich for a game like MA. Even though they can be used elsewhere, boutique-priced resin scenery is always a hard sell to me.

I like the chaos dudes!

Nice and bright chaos.

Good stuff! I've always wondered just how good those classic board game Marines painted up, now I know!

They look really good, I like how bright the Tzeentch marine is with all the yellow.