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!

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.

Dark Souls the Board Game Gargoyle, Dragon Slayer Ornstein and Sentinel. Star Saga Security Guards.

 The Gargoyle is a large Boss model that could easily see service as some kind of critter for many different systems.  Part of what attracted me to the Dark Souls project was this sort of generic usefulness.

Shown here with the Herald for size comparison I went the malefic flesh route.  I haven't paid any attention to the actual look of these in the video game and just painted them for flexible use... although the experiment with "Good" and "Evil" floors make these guys stand out from my other collections.

The color scheme is low contrast which always makes getting good visual definition at the 3ft range interesting.

The skin base is Malefic Flesh (Vallejo) over a Krylon Camoflage Khaki base. Wings are Sunny Flesh (V) and Fairy Flesh (V) over the Khaki base. Washed with a very thinned Military Shader from Army Painter.  That has proved to be a useful product that I just started experimenting with for the Dark Souls project.

The metals are a gold NMM style which helped get good definition at range.  Regular metallics would have worked as well but would have required more serious lining.

 The Sentinels.  More of the "construct" series.  What is up with those crazy tiny heads!

Painted over a bronze base coat these used lots of regular metallic paint.  Flesh Wash (Secret Weapon) and Seraphim Sepia (GW) for shading.

 Dragon Slayer Ornstein is one half of a Boss Mob Duo.  His partner should wrap up this week as well.  I'm down to 4 remaining Boss models, in various states of paint, to finish the Kickstarter Core Set.

Like the other Constructs, and many of the models from this set in general, the color scheme is low contrast.  After an initially foray at a yellow mane I decided the whole model was way too warm and redid the mane in blue.  I also changed some green gem style details to blue gem to bring some continuity

 The spear has this crazy twist to it.  I thought about trying to straighten it but then decided I Kinda liked it the way it was... especially since there is another Boss with a really wavy sword that is obviously intended to be wavy.

The Blue mane really stands out here.

 Having initially misidentified this Boss as a Mini Boss I thought it was associated with the Sentinels in some kind of group.  It turned out not to be the case but they do make a good group for use in other games!

A for scale view of today's Dark Souls set.

 Star Saga!

Rent-a-cops.... er... I mean Security Guards... really in the Mantic Warpath Universe there isn't a significant difference.

I initially wanted to do Law Enforcement Blue with Black kit... this, predictably, turned out to be mostly just black blobs at three ft... so I did a wash of Sapphire (Secret Weapon), which is really Law Enforcement Blue if you use enough of it, amended with Glaze Medium (V).  One the right is the first coat, on the left is the second.

 The Black details could still use some picking out with some gray edge highlights but I'm happy with them as they stand for now.

 A view of the Security Guards and some techies facing some Plague Victim payback!

The Security Guards and the Techies are easy to tell apart even though they were painted using similar techniques.

The three different poses for the Security Guards.  There are three sets of these figures in the core game and I've given them squad ID badges just because... a squad of different figures is better than a squad of identical ones.

On the painting table at the moment:

The 4 remaining Bosses from Dark Souls.
Some Bio Convergence (Faux ADMech) from Hi-Tech.
A peddler from Afterglow.
Spicy Pupniks.

On the build table:

Sci-Fi Centaurs from Raging Heroes.

Build it!
Paint it!
Play it!

Dark Souls minor enemies and Star Saga Plague

 This wrap up the trash mobs and lesser minions for Dark Souls the Board Game core set.  There still remain 4 Bosses, 1 mini boss, and 2 elites.

Shown with the PC Assassin for scale and to show the difference between the "Good Guy" and "Bad Guy" bases.

The Archers and Knights are the trash mobs for the second half of the basic game and are taller than the PC models and the undead style minions that were the adversaries in the first half of the core game.

 These are done in a brassy style and I think of them as "constructs" or animated armor type opponents.

The biggest complaint I have about these models is the lack of variety.  Each type of adversary has a single model that is replicated to get the required number of adversaries.  This makes the enemy easy to identify but has a very "board gamey" feel.  Options to add additional miniatures, when available, are usually just more copies of the same single pose.








 In future I will probably not be as excited to get involved with Kickstarter projects that emphasize the figures as a selling point but fail to provide more than one pose for large numbers of models... especially since a lot of the actual games are not great games but are selling miniatures to  paint and use for other purposes/games/proxies.

The undead minions are similar in size to the PCs.  Each section has two types of adversary... a missile troop (archer/crossbow) and a melee troop (sword and shield)  Each type also has one elite unit (I haven't finished the construct one yet) which is a large melee type.








 The restless dead.

3 sword and shield
3 Crossbow
2 elite axe

The Assassin faces off against a big undead Axe wielder.

Star Saga!

I like Star Saga,  Its a bit quirky but covers a lot of ground.

I'm still sketchy on the details of the Plague but in the core game they appear to be humans intentionally subjected to the plague in an attempt to weaponize it.  This seem to have gone predictably wrong....






I've painted some temporary bases until I decide what to do with the minis in the long term... but they came out well enough that I may just use this theme with the rest of the box set and leave the minis with the actual game instead of cannibalizing them for Deadzone/Warpath!...how novel!

I went with prisoner basic orange with bits of diagnostics gear and control items attached.


For fun I decided to go with green-ish hair and glowing green, monochrome, eyes.  Kind of like teeny, tiny hulk!

Void Elf Hunters, Boss Monsters, and Bad Guy Floors

 A bunch of things painted and a lot learned.

We got in our first game of Star Saga.  The game looks like it will play well once we have a few run throughs. 

On the down side: The rules are a bit haphazardly organized and required a lot of looking around to sort out questions.  Some of the examples don't seem to agree with the written rules etc...

 On the plus side:  Its a really ambitious game for the format and allows for a large number of different kinds of action while not adding tons of extra rules.  Its a fun stand alone but looks like it really shines in the campaign mode.

I painted up the Plague Aberration (the far left model in the picture above) mostly just to test the material for paint interactions and didn't spend any time cleaning it up, or washing it, in advance of painting.  It took paint really well and was a lot of fun too! I'm going to have to dig the plague out the Deadzone and Warpath boxes and churn a pile out.  Of course I didn't back the Plague faction very hard... good thing Mantic remains affordable even when not in Kickstarter mode!

 The Titanite Demon from Dark Souls the Board Game.

This is a large model as you can see from the picture of it intimidating the Herald player character...

Also fun to paint using mostly washes and dry-brush... even played with osl a little on it.

The base is a test run of the "Bad Guy Floor" and you can see the Herald on the "Good Guy Floor"

 The massive blue sparky Horns are a mix of dry brush and wash as will as some top layer stippling.

The main body is a heavy Sunny Flesh drybrush over the Khaki base coat then a coupl of washes of P3 flesh.  The P3 flesh is a purplish shader which I'll use a lot for the undead and malefic flesh tones. 

 The Aberration was, again, dry brush Sunny Skin Tone over the Khaki base coat and then wash with Secret Weapon Ruby for the softer areas and Army Sepia ink thinned with Vallejo Glaze Medium for the bony bits.

The skin was brushed back up with a thin Brains Pink and the carapace with Graveyard Earth and Splintered Bone (Reaper)

The eye glow is old Scaly Green (Citadel) which is at least two generations of GW paints old... its a great paint for lenses as well... I'm gonna miss that when its gone!

 The Aberration with Canoness Veridyan.  The Star Saga version came sans base so it loses a little height in comparison.. the good news is it doesn't force me to come up with a basing scheme yet!

As much as I like doing scenic bases I've been thinking about going with clear bases for the Mantic family of games.  Mostly its just so I don't have to look at trench warfare bases on a map representing a star-ship or a high tech base in a jungle... its just a thought at the moment and might be already sabotaged by Mantic's habit of including integrated bases on their minis... which would have to be removed to replace them with clear bases... 

 Void Elves!

These are beautiful kits from Raging Heroes which I want to use as Ynnari faction Eldar.. kind of Elfy Death Cultists... Bone Brown is the new Black and tiel and blue fancy bits because... elfs!  I mean... even a morbid death fixated elf has to have some style!

I use the giant pony tails as unit colors so I can keep the models organized on the tabletop.  Blue, red, green,,, etc... this first squad is blue.

I'm really excited about these models for a couple of reasons but the main one is the sharpness of the detail.

 Raging Heroes has always made really beautiful models with great designs and a lot of character but for many years the details were soft edged.  The soft edge meant that speed painting techniques, and dry-brush in particular, were harder to use, required more touch up and a steadier hand.  Lines that could be made to pop by dragging a dry brush across them had to be painted manually if you wanted that very fine sharp line.  Basically you had to be a better painter to make an RH model look good than you had to be to make a GW (or similar)  model look good... and it just took longer.

 The Void Elf Hunters have very crisp details and painted up really rapidly! I have two more squads of them to paint and I'm assembling them now.  I'm hoping this is a trend throughout the TGG model line as it will really help at the "I'm generating a cool looking army here not painting a masterpiece for a contest " level. 

Veridyan and the Hunter... Veridyan is on a 32mm base so I really ought to dig a GW model out that is on a 25mm round to use for these size comparisons... I'll eventually unpack one!

 Veridyan the Aberration and the Hunter.

The main lesson from this week... if I'm gonna bother to paint it I really ought to clean it up! Even models from board games! I ended up liking these models and thinking about using them beyond the occasional session of the game they came with...

The Aberration is a great model and, though it took the paint well, it has some really prominent mould lines. 

Similarly the Titanite Demon would make a great proxy model and has some casting lines and the joins (the model comes pre-assembled) are not obscured and could have used a spot of the green stuff.

Final thought...

The Hunters! front and back... these helmets are so awesome... they remind me of Predator... which is, of course, a great theme for the "Hunters"

Back to building and painting...

Void Elf Hunters WiP and Dark Souls the Board Game WiP

Happy New Year!

I'm looking forward to working on loads of new projects this year and I hope you are too!

First up, from Dark Souls the Board Game we have the assembled cast of Player Characters.

The players can select The Knight, The Warrior, The Herald, or The Assassin.                               The sculpts themselves are technically good although none of them really excited me.         Part of that might be that there are only four of them and, except for The Assassin, they are all very similar in appearance.





I thought it was an odd composition to have a warrior and a knight but no pure caster... but its true to the video game.

I elected to go with a cool color mix for the player group and decided on the color scheme for the "Good Guy Floor"

The floor was painted as a large square patter of blue and rust.

The blue quarters were painted Deep Sky Blue, washed with Secret weapon Sapphire, stippled with Sky Blue and re-stippled with pure white.                                                           

 The rust quarters were the base Krylon bronze primer paint combo brush spattered with Secret Weapon Copper Fitting, and dry brushed with Gamescience Rustungs Farbe.

The Bosses, Mini-Bosses, and Elites of what I think of as the "constructs" group are coming along in their Red and Brass kind of way although the guy with the big bell-hammer is looking a little seasonal  >.> 

There is also the "Fleshy and Decayed" group and they are making progress as well.  They still have a lot of red but will replace most of the brass with bone whites.

 For the "big trash and little trash" group I started down a rotten road with purplish fleshy bits... this might be tricky given the low contrast with the red clothing bits so I'll have to work on bringing up the separation a bit.  Rotten greens might have been a better choice... certainly an easier one... but I was feeling that I wanted the trash group to be a little less green, red, and brass to underscore the difference between them and the more elite types.






The Void Elves are making progress.  The first group was primed with the Krylon Khaki Camouflage paint and dry-brushed white.  The pain seems to be adhering well and I'm hoping this is a quick and viable Ynnari theme... I can even retain the Void Elf nomenclature for the Ynnari faction.  I've got two more groups of five of these being constructed.

Finally the first mini getting prepped for Mantic's Star Saga!

Star Saga looks like it falls into the Action RPG light category more than into the Dungeon crawler boardgame category.  Lots of detail and fiddly bits. Templates, multiple action lots of character descriptions.  If it had a character creation system it would be on its way to being an actual RPG... I might have to work on that...  The Warpath Universe is looking pretty interesting these days and the first novel I read in the setting didn't disappoint.

We are looking forward to knocking out our first game of it this week.

Back to the brushes!