Pallette Cleanser 9 - Reaper Bones Thund Bloodwrack 77199

My latest Palette Cleanser is this barbarian.  As with a lot of these minis I had previously started him, but only as far as painting the metal bits in black.

The first job was to remove the broccoli base and glue wire into the feet, both for attaching to its base when done, and to make it easier to hold while painting.

I thought of this chap as quite an elderly warrior, possibly because of his bald head.  There's nothing particularly new about how I painted him.  The three Bones barbarians I finished off here already had their flesh tones painted with Reaper paints, this time I started from scratch with a base coat of Vallejo Game Color Dwarf Flesh with relevant highlights, but I have his skin a VGC Grey Wash to make him look more grizzled.  I'm very pleased with how his cloak looks, a bearskin I think.  This was a basecoat of VGC Scorched Brown with drybrushed highlights of Vallejo Model Color Burnt Umber then VGC Beasty Brown.

His sword has a lot of cracks in it, clearly not a great weapon to use (unless its enchanted) so I kept the metal colours muted. 

Another mini I'm pleased with, and its good to get on with some more Bones.  He will make a good addition to the three I painted earlier, a Fistful of Lead warband in the making?  Now all I need is an archer and/or a wizard/shaman.

Painted HeroQuest Undead

Well I've been busy decorating and sorting things out with my collection of 'stuff', and not just gaming related stuff.  So hobby has taken a bit of a back seat recently, although I am still managing to run an online D&D campaign weekly.  I have managed some hobby stuff though, and you might have seen my replacement tomb for HeroQuest.  Now I've finished painting all the Undead minis from the HeroQuest base game. Actually, I started painting these at least twenty years ago, with the intention of having a fully painted set, but never got them finished.

Back then I removed the integral bases and glued them on Citadel 25mm round bases, but these work out just a bit too big for the grid on the board. 

I've taken the opportunity to rebase onto 20mm square bases, I managed to find some with rounded corners, which look good. 

There's nothing particularly fancy about the paint scheme. The mummies and skeletons already had an off white/bone/tan base coat so I washed it with Army Painter Strong Tone wash, then drybrushed with either Vallejo Game Color Bonewhite for the skellies or VGC Stonewall Grey for the mummies. They were then all given a final drybrush of VGC Off White, with the teeth picked out to add extra interest.

I hadn't really paid attention to the patches of mummified flesh before painting, but I think they really lift the mummies, giving a nice contrast to the pale bandages. 

The zombies were pretty standard. The flesh was a base coat of Vallejo Extra Opaque Heavy Grey, then highlights of VGC Dead Flesh, before a wash of AP Strong Tone.

Extra details and bits were painted as I felt like at the time. All the undead got a dot of VGC Livery Green in the eye sockets.

I'm pleased with these, they are certainly an improvement on the earlier paint job and they will do fine as boadgame pieces. The new bases work well too.  They are small enough to fit in the squares on the board, and being clear, the nice artwork on the board can still be seen.

I wish I'd thought a bit more about positioning on the bases though.  The mummies and zombies are fine, but the skeletons could have been put at a bit more of an angle, so that big scythe doesn't get in the way as much.  Still, they are no worse than the original rectangular bases.  I could have made the metal ore rusty too, the small patches are OK, but I might go back and make them look older and more decayed.

I'll paint the 'greenskins' soon, six goblins, eight orcs and three fimir.  As with the undead, I have many of these part painted, but I'll use my current method of orc painting, as seen in the Kings of War orcs I did last year, which you can see starting here.  

Once I've got the HeroQuest base game painted*, I suppose I should finish it's spiritual successor, Dungeon Saga.  Seeing how well the clear bases work for HeroQuest, I'll definitely be using the technique on them.

* Apart from the base game, HeroQuest had several expansions, most of which I have (somewhere in the 'loft of shame').  Return of the Witchlord included two more sets of undead, identical to the ones in the base game, which allowed the story to focus more on the undead nature of the final enemy.  Similarly Kellar' Keep contained a couple of extra sets of the greenskins.  There were later expansions that included ogres (which now look small compared to current day minis), four different evil wizards and henchmen.  A couple of US only expansions introduced female heroes and more monsters, sadly I don't have any of those.