Greetings Terrans & happy (slightly belated) Samhain. What an auspicious time to launch a new project to complete the latest Warhammer Quest boxed game – the Cursed City!! (cue spooky backround noises). For those not in the know, WQ:CC was released back in April, and it takes a party of adventurers to the titular Cursed City of Ulfenkarn, which is being ravaged by a big-bad vampire called ‘Radukar the Wolf’. The game is basically a dungeon-crawl where you need to compete missions & fight hordes of undead in order to reach & kill Radukar, and hopefully lift the curse on Ulfenkarn!

This release caused a bit of a stir in ‘the community’ – the minis are very nice indeed & the game format is now well established & very successful, but the game controversially sold out in just 2 hours… The webstore buckled under the pressure & I actually didn’t even know that I had managed to bag a copy until it turned up at my house, so yeah, frustrating release. To make matters worse, GW have implied that the game is not going to be re-released or expanded upon… ever… (cue much gnashing of fanboy teeth & the salivation of a hundred ebay scalpers!). Whether this really will be a one-off release or not I don’t know, but it makes no odds to me – I’m painting my set & you guys are along for the ride, so let’s get into it!

The box contains all the bits needed to play the game, including 60 brand new miniatures, (8 Heroes; 5 ‘Overlords’ (evil boss monsters); 37 generic baddies; 10 object markers). All the components are really high quality, and the minis look pretty darn fine. I’ll follow the same forma as I did with the Conan set – weekly(ish) posts with a few minis and a bit of a write-up. Sound good? Ok, here we go!

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First up, and because Halloween, I wanted to tackle the big fella himself – Radukar the Wolf:

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According to the fluff, Radukar was an ambitious warlord who wanted to become a vampire – as you do. He raided some vamp’s tomb, killed a two-headed wolf, nicked a barrow-blade from inside & this blade turned him into a vampire… He then liberated a city called Mournhold from Chaos, and became the ruler of the city – apparently, he was doing a decent job of it, but then an in-world event called the ‘Necroquake’ happened… Unfortunately for the citizens of Mournhold, the Necroquake amped up Radukar’s powers & made him lose his shit, so now the city is his hunting ground & has become known as Ulfenkarn… I find all this fluff quite tedious tbh, but the key points are Vampire, Ruler, Batshit Crazy.

Radukar is an interesting model to paint – he’s technically a very good mini, but the face gets lost in all that fur from his two-headed wolf pelt & furry hat… As such, the model lacks a clear focal point in my opinion, (though I found that giving him an orange beard helped to frame the face a little). Still, it is what it is, and I painted him up as best I could with Contrast paints & washes, drybrushing where I could get away with it, (and blending and highlighting where I couldn’t). I experimented with very faint crosshatch lines on the trousers & belt to show wear, and I also used a fair amount of corrosion where I felt it appropriate. I really used Radukar to set the tone for the whole box, and I want things to look worn and tired… The suggestion is that the curse over the city affects everything, even metals leather and cloth.

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Next, I went for a big boi – the ‘Vargskyr Vampire’:

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Vargskyr are bestial manifestations of the ‘Vyrkos’ strain of the Soulblight curse… I have no idea what any of that means, but I think that they are basically vampires that have been overcome by bloodlust and have devolved into bestial wolf-like creatures… Whatever it is, it’s a big mini – easily the biggest and most imposing mini in the set. It went together ok – a few minor issues with gapping here and there but nothing terrible, and painting was great fun. I really went for it with the wet blending on all the skin, pushing the highlighting & getting a very pale complexion, and then really working to get some texture in there. The fur was just really simple drybrushing, so nothing fancy… This beasty didn’t take long at all & was very satisfying to complete.

Well, that’s it for this week – I hope you enjoyed the post & the minis! Rest assured, there is more to follow next week 😊