Dark Souls: Executioner Smough, Winged Knight, and Boreal Outrider Knight

This wraps up the painting of the core set of Dark Souls the Board Game. 

Executioner Smough is part of the Boss Pair with Dragon Slayer Ornstein.  Ornstein was covered in a previous post so I'll not say much about him.  Executioner Smough however....

This is the model that convinced me to join the Kickstarter even though I wasn't a huge fan of the video game.  The Bell Hammer is just awesome! 

 I didn't look at any reference material for this project.  Mostly it was because I always thought I'd farm the minis out for other purposes but keep them together so I could play the game if it turned out to be good.  We're going to give the game a few more tries before we make a call on it.

Since I didn't know what my final use would be for the figures I just played around and experimented.  They look like they'd make great Daemon Princes for Warhammer Chaos or exotic giant types for an RPG.  When I setle on a regular use for them I'll add some heraldic details and possibly some themed patterning.

The big experiment here was the primer.  I used a metallic bronze primer and am pretty comfortable with the way it worked out for the armor.  It has a kind of hammered look before you do anything to it so I was able to do some shading and highlighting with thin glazes and retain most of the hammered look.  Some sepia glazes actually enhanced the hammered appearance which was an unexpected, but pleasant, surprise.

There is a lot of fiddling with shades of green and yellow in the big Jade-esque areas as well as on the legs.  These were dry brushed in and softened with a Green wash from Secret Weapon.

This guy is massive seen with both Dragon Slayer Ornstein... a pretty large fellow in his own right... and the Warrior player character... that hammer bell thing is gonna really hurt!


















The Boreal Outrider Knight and the Winged Knight are Mini Bosses.  They are less massive than the Main Bosses but are still large models.















The ancient bronze metal look worked out really well on these and really sped up the painting process.  These two have significantly more shading and highlighting on the bronze than Executioner Smough does.  I did that with the Boreal Outrider Knight because the model is almost entirely armor and I wanted it to be visually engaging even if its a bit monochrome.

Shown here with the player character Assassin the Boreal Outrider Knight looks a bit weedy and almost insectoid.  That lanky look is shared with the Dancer of the Boreal Forest.


















The winged Knight has more color, being largely covered by a tabard, I worked up the tabard with Reaper Bone triad and some touches of the P3 Menoth White set.  The tabard is left free of heraldic designs so I can update it when I find a regular use for it.

The two Mini Bosses together.

I *think* the next thing I'll do is finish up the Star Saga core set... but other stuff mmmaaaaayyy insert itself into that process.

Looks like the queue currently is:

Star Saga
Twisted Dickensians
Lust Elves
The Ynnari Triumvirate
Necromunda Bounty Hunter
Undertown Street lights and Barrier walls
Brugelburg Street people

Back to the desk!

Build Day WiPs Kingdom Death

Even though the current projects on the painting desk need work I spend a bit of time building the next thing in the line.  Today its Kingdom Death.

The first Kingdom Death model I've ever built is this Kingsman.  The model is very cool but I just chose it at random from the Kingdom Death Monster 1.5 core set.

After working on it a bit I dug out the rules and started reading them....

We are definitely gonna play this game!

With that in mind its time to start working on a set of player characters.

The rules direct you to build the first group of four survivors and the White Lion to play the introduction so I rooted around in the box for a bit and came up with a sprue labelled "Prologue"  Brilliant!

Being an old metal mini guy I was reluctant to move into plastics.  I had worked a lot with resin and, while that had some advantages in terms of conversion and weight, they tended to be brittle, fussy when it came to taking paint and I wasn't sold on them as durable in the long term.  I then encountered Wyrd and the Death Marshals of Malifeux and was immediately sold on plastic!  There are just things you can do in plastic that are impossible in either resin or metal.

Now that I've worked with plastic for a bit I am able to appreciate the quality control that has gone into the Kingdom death line.The material is great with the right proportion of strength and hardness while being sufficiently flexible to take a ding during regular handling. The model cuts, sprue attachment points, and mold lines are well thought out and are often hidden on interior surfaces.  the external mold lines are very fine and easy to clean up.  There are some places, of course, where its just not possible to have the cut or mold line be invisible that will require some greenstuff but these are the exception rather than the rule.

Its easy to see why this line enjoys such support among painters.  Its got edgy topics but a lot of humor as well... its well sculpted and has high production values.  It takes advantage of the abilities that plastic has to create great depth in the sculpt and to be gravity defiant but remain solidly usable.

The game looks like its gonna be great as well.  More on that as we dig into it.

Keshryii and her Centaur Troopers (SF ver)

 Keshryii from Raging Heroes is an amazing model.

 Her retinue, modeled in her own extreme image, is an example of powerful a personality she must be. 

Lust Elves are shape shifters.  the more powerful personalities among them determine the shapes of their followers... in the case of Keshryii, whose form is one of the more extreme, that personality must be powerful indeed!

 I've painted this batch as proxies for the Grotesques of my Dark Eldar Blood Rain Kabal.  These models really illustrate the feeling of horror that the flesh shapers of the Drukhari must evoke.  A horror made all the more terrible by the fact that the grotesques choose this existence and pay the Haemunculi dearly for the procedures that remake a normal Dark Eldar into such a fearsome visage.

I've continued refining the red process in particular and made some progress with cool highlights and lowlights.

Flesh also got a lot of attention being a wash of Sunny Flesh (Vallejo) over the base coat of Krylon Camouflage Khaki which had been dry-brushed with Apple Barrel Sandstone. A Flesh Wash from Secret Weapon was then applied followed by layering Sunny Flesh and Fairy Flesh (Vallejo).

 I love blue hair... probably the Anime geek in me but I do like it a lot!

Hair was Nightmare Black (Reaper) a heavy dry-brush of Void-Shield Blue (Warpaints), a Sapphire Wash (Secret Weapon) and a very light dry-brush of Void-Shield blue and top dusting of pure white.

Because the centaurs model themselves after Keshryii they all tend toward similar colors and were worked up using the same process.

 When started working on the model I kept seeing the cover of the old Chrome 2 supplement for Cyberpunk... and one of the old Gamma World covers.  I didn't look at them for reference or anything but I wanted to convey the metal augmentations.  Keshryii isn't just a shapeshifter... shes got ecstatic minions actually grafted into her form and the joins are very chrome!

A size comparison with the centaurs and Canoness Veridyan (GW).

As you can see the centaurs are massive!

 A couple of views of the assembled troop.

 they are even more frightening as a group than as individuals.

A final comparison with Centaur Trooper, Canoness Veridyan, and a Void Elf Hunter.


There is also a set of these in Fantasy Version.  But I may try to knock out the rest of my Lust Elf Sci-Fi stock first...

Choices, choices!

Dark Souls the Board Game Boss: Dancer of the Boreal Valley

The Dancer of the Boreal Valley is the third Boss from the core game  painted.  Leaving only three figures to complete the core game paint project.

There is a lot of experimentation on this model.

The Armor was sprayed Krylon Bronze the details were relatively shallow so the armor was black lined to add depth then highlighted with Citadel Shining Gold (a very pale metallic gold)  and washed with Seraphim Sepia.

 The Cloak was an experiment in red.  I'm still refining it but the result was an interesting enough surface in its own right before adding the freehand about halfway through the red build up.

I'm torn between calling this "The Babble Cloak" or the "Cape of Incoherence"  The free hand started out as some patterns that resemble, but are not actually, a  script. Then some larger characters, and some that are not quite actual characters but could almost be several characters. Basically its nonsense... which is kind of what I felt about some of the game rules at the time!

Adding the freehand midway through the red build up resulted in some partially buried lines which was a desired effect.

The freehand was an experiment with cool highlights and warm highlights.  The characters are lines with a bright orange in warmer zones and with a pink in cooler zones or shadows.  The goal was to make the freehand mildly 3D in the top (warm) zones and to get it to stand out legibly in the shadowed (cool) regions.

I'm getting interested in shadowed highlights, and it needs a lot more work, but I learned a lot and I'll refine it as I go.









The white areas were Graveyard Earth (Reaper) over the Krylon Bronze, layered with Splintered Bone (Reaper) shaded with a very dilute (50-50 Shader and Glaze Medium (Vallejo)) Military Shader (Army Painter).



For size the Herald faces off against the Dancer... this may not end well..

Next up are the Centaurs!

I'm continuing to work on warm and cool highlights with them which is giving a some really interesting Light and Darkness interactions.

Star Saga Rangers, Hi-Tech Bio-Convergence, and an Afterglow traveling salesman.

 I made a push to clear the desk of a few WiPs so I'd have room to start on the Raging Heroes Centaurs (SF) group.

Star Saga is making great progress with the finish up of these Corporation Rangers.  This unit is a lower tier elite group and will go by the moniker "Hostile Takeover".

The six figures, but only two sculpts, painted up fast and I like the crimson and grey combo.  The detail is mixed but I really liked the plate in the back of the heads.  I used it as an ID plate but used letters in place of names as a nod to the high turn over rate in corp forces.

 Next up is a traveling salesman from Afterglow. 

My primary use for him will be as an RPG NPC with a secondary use as an objective marker for the Jailbirds... who have a chronic supply problem and few people willing to trade with them.

The resin for this is a bit on the brittle side.  That seems to be a trend in the miniatures that come out of Poland.  Its very dry and takes paint very well.

 It also comes with an automatic shotgun on a sling but it looked so awkward on the mini that I decided against using it. Its a nice sculpt though and it'll make a good addition to the bits box.

Size comparison time.  Canoness Veridyan (GW) and a Void Elf Hunter (Raging Heroes) for scale.

 Hi-Tech Miniatures Bio-Convergence.  Even though they are tracked their size and weapon load out made me think of them as servitor proxies fro ADMech or even for RPG use.

The weapons are magnetized so I can vary up the loads later if I end up using them often.  The weapon loads are not precisely correct for ADMech but might be ok for Inquisitor retinue or a Dark Millennium/Rogue Trader game.

 I haven't really started work on ADMech and haven't gelled on a marking scheme and Iconography so I'll save that for later.  The paint scheme could go a couple of different ways so options remain.

Size comp with the ever present Veridyan.  I like the size of these for servitors... not too massive.

Building Keshyrii: Lust Elf Centaur Champion (SF) step by step.

Keshyrii is a great model and a fabulous leader for the Centaur group!

 After building the Centaur Unit... sans the command section which I've forgotten to get... or didn't make the Kickstarter stretch goal... I thought I'd do an assembly post with actual pictures of the process. 













This model was produced during a brief period where Raging Heroes (RH) was doing "Pizza Slice Frames"




These frames really protect the model prior to construction but has a much stronger sprue join to break and consumed a  tremendous amount of resin.

I ran these through an ultrasonic cleaner twice with a weak Simple Green solution, rinsed them in warm water... scrubbing them with an old toothbrush and then pat drying them with paper towels to prevent any residue from drying in the crevices.





Start by locating all the frames with "Point of Contact" parts.  Unlike the Centaur troopers the parts do not have an alphabet matching system.  Each frame contains a matched torso sub assembly: torso, head, arms and you must figure out where they should be placed on the main body so dry fitting is extra important here.



Remove the torso from the sprue and clean it. 

These parts will be hard to reach once installed so its best to do as much cleaning before assembly as possible.

Here you see the rib cage and abs which mark this as the front of the torso.

Working from the same sprue the torso came from remove the head.

Clean the head and glue it to the torso facing the front of the torso.  Each head is matched to its torso and when properly aligned will sit flush at the required angle.  This might look a bit strange at first but once you get into the flow of the model the importance of these angles will become clear.

 Remove the arms that have the large point of contact pin from the same sprue that you have been working from.

Clean these and glue them into place taking care to have the join be as perfect and seamless as possible.  This will result in the arms being in the correct alignment for attaching the model to a base.

Here its worth foot-stomping that you should always assemble these sub assemblies before attaching them to the main body and always assemble them in the order of:

Head to Torso
Arms to Torso

Adding the head after the arms is difficult... and adding the head after the arms while the torso is already attached to the main body is an actual nightmare... the unfortunate voice of experience!  Make of it what you will.

 Keshryii has three points of contact.  This makes the model very stable once constructed but does require some finesse to make sure that the mounting surfaces will all sit flush with the base.

Here you can see that I've got a slight mismatch in regards to the alignment of the perpendicular surfaces.  Thats OK its close enough. I'll just sort the difference with greenstuff.

 Now I apply a generous dot of paint to each of the contact points and orient the model to the base. Once in position press down gently and the base is marked for drilling.















The base shown here is not the base included with the model. RH supplies a nice plain plastic base.  This base is from Table-top Art from the same 8 pack I used to base the rest of the unit.

These are very nice bases and will be great for unifying the theme.

Model glued to the base.

There is a bit of a gap between the main body and one of the legs due to my minor misalignment of the torsos.  I'll fill this when I do the greenstuff around the points of contact.

 Next assemble the remaining two torsos.

As always... construct each sub assembly from a single sprue.   

These are not nearly as demanding in terms of required precision as they will be hanging free. 

Just line the arms up the way you prefer.

 Attach the remaining sub assemblies to the body and fill any gaps at this time.

Once dry do any filing or sanding of the putty before moving on.

 The arms are pretty cool.  This one shows the nested claw.  There are also two spikes that attach to the front of the torso forming tusks for the breastplate of the main body.  These are a great addition and make the main body a fearsome weapon in close combat!

Assemble the claw.  Attach the claw, the breastplate spikes, and the gun arm.

Because this model is also a game piece I wanted to reduce places where it could fracture due to handling.  One of these measures was to rest the gun on the top of one of the torso join pads making the gun firmly glued at both the shoulder and the gun itself.

 The head is in two parts and the fit is superb. There are little cut outs around the ears!

 The assembled head showing the ear area join and the immense mane of hair.

 This huge hair would be a major stress point if it were free standing but there is a small notch... not noticeable if you choose not to use it... that fits very nicely against the top of one of the rear torso joints giving a solid, well supported main of hair that still appears to be flying free.

The final piece is the tail.  This is a great looping thing that runs between the torso/legs and I've left it off to paint separately.  I'll add it as the last thing I do before sealing the model just to make everything a little easier to reach and paint.

Keshyrii ordering an assault from the midst of her troop of primed and ready to be painted centaurs!

Antenociti's Workshop: Spicy Pupniks Food Cart (SF)

 I've been on an "atmospherics" jag for a while now.  Our miniature worlds have been getting richer and more colorful at an accelerated rate for a couple of years.

Continuing in this vein I've expanded the Fast Panda franchise with a Spicy Pupniks Food Cart! 

The kit is typical of the offerings from Antenociti's Workshop offering superior designs, clean casts, and matchless quality control.

Originally offered as part of the Undertown Kickstarter Spicy Pupniks is now available individually from their webshop.

The cart is shown here with some of the other elements from Undertown like the dumpsters and Vending machines.  All of these are now available in the webshop.

Undertown is a "Made for Infinity" set and, of course, scales very nicely with Corvus Belli's models.

Models for scale are GW's Canoness Veridyan and a Void Elf Hunter from Raging Heroes.

The cart does not come with a decal set but I had some left over from the Fast Panda Food Truck.

The model is painted over Krylon Camoflage  Khaki self priming paint a heavy drybrush of our old friend Scrofulous Brown (Vallejo) lined with Sepia liner (Reaper).

The windows are solid and were based Sky Blue (Vallejo) streaked with Voidshield Blue (Warpaints) and glazed several times darkenening towards the edges with Blue Wash (Secret Weapon) mixed with a drop of Glaze Medium (Vallejo).

Natural Gas cylinders are Dragon Blue (Reaper) weathered with Brown Rust and Engine Metal (Secret Weapon) with touches of yeallow and some very thin washes of Soft Body Black (Secret Weapon).

All of this while waiting for accelerator to dry between construction steps of the Lust Elf Centaurs!

Next up... I think!...

Keshyrii Lust Elf Centaur Champion (SF)

Paint, Paint, Paint!