Under the Statue's Gaze

There were four not long ago, but she fell in the panic that followed waking the horde. Three had fled through the deeps to this ruined statue where they were forced to make their stand. Now the dwarf readied his flail, the man held a blade low with the blunderbuss set in his hip, and the magus was unmoved by the growing tide of unquiet dead surging their way. Behind their hastily set perimeter the ancient stone ghost cackled at the futility of it all: if it could not stop this fate then how could the three hope to?

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    This post features two miniatures from Cadwallon: City of Thieves and one Reaper Bones Dwarf that had sat in my project drawer for at least four years. These guys are far from the only miniatures I've painted recently but the others were mostly Zombies from Zombicide: Black Plague so I wanted to take a picture that could feature both sets of models as well as cool piece of terrain I had made a while ago.

    The man mentioned in the fluff above is the miniature named Dorak from Cadwallon. In my head though he's an unnamed ex-knight of the Dûcatú de Méllècú; though he still wears his heraldry on his shield, he gets much more use out of his blunderbuss nowadays. I loved converting the crossbow on the base miniature into a blunderbuss, it came out exactly how I wanted it to!

    The magus is Valdur from Cadwallon but in my world he is an agent of the shadow wizards of Mirgrade, pursuing his own agenda mixed in amongst the ex-knight and Dwarven templar. His paint scheme was inspired by the black mage from the final fantasy series. This miniature gave me a lot of headache due to the sword kept behind its back. That blade simply will not stay straight! I tried my usual hot water then cold water method and it always reset to being bent out of shape. Oh well, better to have the model painted then to never see the light of day.

    Finally we come to our flail wielding Dwarf: a Reaper Bones miniature I had neglected for years. His terribly bendy great sword was cut away in favor of a patched together flail from some GW bits (the ball and chain held by the Khorne Slaughter priest and part of a Black Guard of Naggarond halberd I believe). He is a mountain Dwarf templar devoted deeply to the father of all Dwarfkind: Grungni. I tried to use contrast paints to tint his gold armor orange, as I don't have any miniatures where orange is the focal point and I thought metallic orange would be cool, but it didn't go well so I figured he could be a beacon of shining gold for his allies to look to.

    One thing I like about all these miniatures is the beveled Privateer Press bases that they're set on. Sure, it puts them a bit shorter than their brethren based on the plinth-like GW bases but variety is the spice of life. I think I also did a really good job tying all their bases to the same environment. In fact, looking at them set up fending off an innumerable zombie horde got me to thinking...

   I could make similarly based miniatures, terrain, and monsters along with a scenario to introduce new players to tabletop roleplaying with miniatures. I initially thought it'd be cool to pre-generate character sheets and everything so choosing characters could be sort of a "CHOOSE YOUR HERO" feel but then I realized I hate pre-generated characters. Anyway, I thought it was a cool idea, maybe I'll expand upon it and even put it into practice!

   Currently I'm painting Zombicide: Black Plague as well as painting the last five of fifteen Picts from the Conan board game by Monolith that I pict up from EBay almost two years ago. Also, though my old tabletop campaign has been untouched for a few months, some friends from work expressed some interest in starting up a new campaign! Due to various commitments we'd probably start in May but nevertheless I am excited.

   Until next time!