Greetings Terrans, and Happy Arbitrary Commencement of a New Planetary Orbit of Sol! I hope you are all happy & healthy, and that you had a good break & relaxation time. I certainly did – probably ate too much, but certainly no regrets 😊

I did manage to get through the remainder of the Cursed City minis in fairly short order, but I’m going to drip-feed you the pics because I’m anticipating a busy time & a corresponding lack of blog material in the coming weeks… I’m deliberately keeping my powder dry so to speak, and no big end of year recap from me either this year – I’m just too damn busy!

So, without further waffle, let’s get stuck into the Heroes of the set. They all fall in to classic RPG tropes, so for no particular reason, let’s get started with the Clericy/Wizardy-types.

First up, it’s ‘Cleona Zeitengale’:

Cleona’s a funny old model – having both arms outstretched makes her a bugger to photograph, and that strange doofy on the back is just weird and awkward… So awkward in fact that I, (unusually for me), actually painted her in sub-assemblies just so I could do a tidy job of it. Also, annoyingly, one of the dangly doo-dabs on her headdress broke off during the build, and was soooo fiddly that it couldn’t be fixed… I just trimmed the other one off to match.

I followed the studio scheme fairly closely, albeit with different colours, and I’m pretty pleased with how she came out. I didn’t bother with the runes on the back-ribbons, but I did have some fun with the orb on the staff, and with a spot of magic glow on her left hand. All in all, a nice mini to paint, even if she is a bit awkward.

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Next up, it’s ‘Octren Glimscry’:

Octren is another strange mini – the long swooshy beard is just a bit OTT for my taste, to the point where I really toyed with the idea of trimming it! In the end I stuck with the model as-is, though I’m not sure how durable that impressive facial hair will be, overhanging the base as it does!

Again, I kinda stuck with the studio paint scheme, but went a darker, grittier feel. The main departure from the ‘official’ scheme was to use gold to make it very obvious that the ‘face’ is actually a mask, and the use of a darker tone of skin, (the closeness of skin tone & mask colour really bothers me on the studio version, so I was keen to not make the same ‘mistake’). A bit of fancy painting for the orb on the end of the staff finishes the look for a very enjoyable paint job… I liked painting this guy so much that I’m keen to do a 40k version of Octren… Replacing that beard with some cabling, and making the staff a bit more techy would make for a superb Administratum character I reckon.

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Anyway, that’s your lot for today – bugger off but do swing by next week and I’ll have another couple of heroes to share 😊

Stay safe, Happy New Year, and catch you all soon.

Greetings Terrans, how goes it? This is likely my last post before Christmas, but I think it’s a good ‘un 😊

First up, someone who clearly has issues forming meaningful relationships within his own species – it’s Torgillius the Chamberlain:

I liked painting this guy far more than I thought I would to be honest – I thought the model was a bit over the top when I first saw it, but having it in hand really changed my mind! Out of all of the villains, this one is the most human, so the skin tone, while pale, is at least recognisably human. I stayed away from the ‘official’ colour scheme & went with something more in line with how I’d painted the rest of the baddies, and I had a bit of fun with some OSL on that crow… I couldn’t resist adding a bit of birdie doo-doo under the crow’s perch… yeah, that’s a painting first for me :-D

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Next, I gave him some pets to play with:

So that’s 2×3 unique bases each of bats and rats to give 6 total for each creature type. Notice that there are 2 bases of each that contains a bigger-than-usual specimen – I think these are ‘alpha’ bases (for lack of a better term). Really not much to say here – black contrast paint and neat drybrushing did 90% of the work for me!

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The time saved on these suckers allowed me to paint these three reprobates – the Vyrkos Bloodborne:

I reckon these are some of the nicest minis in the box, and I was really looking forward to painting ‘em. The posing is really nicely done – it could easily have easily looked a bit odd having them all up in the air, but the designers absolutely nailed it in my humble opinion. I replicated the white flesh that I used on the big Vargskyr Vampire, but I also used the black-to-orange hair that I used for Radukar. I don’t have a group shot, but in hand it works nicely to unify the set, and is a nice way to conclude the evil side of the box!

That’s all for now guys & gals, have a happy & safe Christmas, and I’ll catch you all after the festivities.

Greetings Terrans, just a very quick post today – it doesn’t feel like it warrants a big fuss, but I did some more things for the Cursed City:

As with the zombies and skeletons, the hanged skellies can be built in two ways so you end up with a spare of each top/front piece. I liked them so much that I decided to embellish the tombstone markers with the spare pieces. Incredibly, these are the only conversions I have made so far!

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As I was doing markers, I thought I’d crank out the other four while I was at it:

All very straight forward stuff – I painted the imps as gargoyles and so copied the same approach for stone & masonry that I’ve been using for a while.

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Finally, as I was doing odds and sods, I thought I might as well paint up the two zombie-cats:

These were fun – the paler one is meant to be Siamese & is an homage to my own dearly departed pet cat… The kids pulled a face when I showed them but it amuses me, and I suspect that the cat wouldn’t be offended 😊

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Anyway, that’s the last of my quarantine output, back to normal as of midnight!!