Draconis does…. Kings of War Vanguard

20th August 2023

First things first I had to face the restic…….

Over the past few days I have managed to get in a couple of pretty short sessions, but have managed to clean up (as much as I could face anyway) the restic minis and get them glued together.

The Phantoms need a 25mm base according to the card, but the box only came with 20mm. Luckily I have a lot of old bases stored in a case, so 25mm they got.

So, next it will be the plastic scarecrow dudes, and possibly some gap filling on the restic chaps.

24th August 2023

With the restic minis built it was on to the hard plastic scarecrows.

Just one sprue of 5 to assemble.

5 lower bodies, 5 torsos and a variety of arms and heads.

The sprue comes with a few tentacle arms, but I decided to make them as humanoid as possible (some tentacle parts could not be avoided).

This also gave me some tentacles for my bits box….

I also went for the pumpkin head, and the ones with the scarecrow style hats.

And with those done, the Nightstalkers warband was assembled.

25th August 2023

Onto basing.   I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do here – and when in doubt I default to a standard sand and gravel coverage. Pretty generic, but as such it can work with a lot of different gaming mats etc.

The Butchers (the big guys) both had gaps around the arm joins which were a little too big for me to leave.

So, out with the milliput, rolling out the sausage shapes to drape over the joints, then smoothing them out to hopefully match up with each edge (I’ll see when it comes to painting).

As I always do I mixed up too much milliput.

So I rolled out the last of it to make some (relatively crude) tentacles to add to my pool of potential conversion bits.

28th August 2023

Over the past few days I have started to get some paint down on the minis.

I started off giving them a black undercoat, with a grey zenithal spray and a white drybrush.

My plan with these was to just get them done, so out comes the contrast paint again.

Using this over the zenithal spray should hopefully give a good base result for these minis.

I chose a dark blue/purple, a pink and a blue grey.

Using these in combination,  and mixing, I got the core flesh tones down on the  butchers, phantoms, reapers and the dog things.

Whilst planning this out and going through the cards I realised that the tentacle arms I didn’t use on the scarecrows were actually for making them into ‘spectres’ with ranged attacks…. in hindsight I should perhaps have checked first.

But, it is what it is.

I can either go with ‘counts as’, or try picking up some more of the scarecrows at some point to make as spectres.

28th August 2023

For the reapers the pink contrast over the zenithal undercoat gave them quite a nice effect.

I wanted to add the black ends of the limbs and claws – so to facilitate a reasonable blend I started by painting contrast medium over the areas for blend.

Next up I used neat black contrast on the ends of the limbs, running into the medium to ‘feather’ it out into the existing pink.

I was happy enough with the result, so went onto some detailing touches.

The claws and limb ends were given a small highlight, then all the claws were given a gloss varnish.

Their tongues were painted in a vibrant blue, followed by a wash. I used blue to be a nice pop of colour against the pinks.

Then I picked out the teeth to some extent, and they were pretty much done.

28th August 2023

Also over the weekend I worked on the phantoms.

As I was laying down some of the colours I realised that I had forgotten to add the lower jaws on the phantoms!

Added the jaws, and painted them purple to match the flesh tone I had chosen.

The robes were drybrushed with a pale blue.

Skulls in the robes were picked out in ivory, then given a wash of thinned blue contrast to give them an otherworldly feel.

Tongues were painted a vibrant blue, teeth were picked out, and the claws were painted in a silver.

I gave the flesh a dark purple wash and toned the silver claws down with nuln oil.

Not great, but they are done.

They look OK at tabletop distance, have reasonable presence, and will work for playing games.

2nd September 2023

Making headway over the last few days, with small but pretty regular amounts of work on the minis.

The Shadow hounds already had their base colour down over the zenithal spray and drybrush, giving them some pretty good definition.

I added more dry brush work over the heads and over the ‘skulls’ pushing through the skin on their backs.

Then I added some glow effect to the eye sockets on their back skulls.

After that it was pretty much just a case of adding some detail to the mouth. Firstly by painting the gums and tongue (blue again for the tongue, since they are known for eating blue lollies ? ), then picking out the teeth and claws, and a final gloss varnish on the tongue to make it look unpleasantly moist.

2nd Sept 2023

I also managed to get these ape like chaps finished.

The skin tone was contrast grey with some highlights, and the fur areas were painted black with some grey highlights.

The main features on these two minis, to me at least, are the gaping maws and the ‘magical flames’ that wreath them.

Following the artwork colours I went with purple for the flames. These were washed and highlighted, but still felt just a little flat.

So I added some sporadic white highlights to the flame areas to give it a little more depth, or feeling of ‘activity’ to the flames. Which seemed to help.

The mouths got the usual blue lollipop tongues ? and the teeth picked out.

These chaps are also the only ones so far to actually have eyes – so I painted these white them gave them a thin coat of a bright green to try to give them a glow effect.

And with that they were done (except for some grass/tufts to be added at the end).

3rd September 2023

Like the other restic minis, the Butchers had their base flesh tone already laid down. I had added some of the pink contrast over the tentacle areas to give it some different tonality.

Then it was a relatively basic process of detailing the mouth, picking out the blue tongue and painting in the teeth. And also painting their fur underpants in a black with grey highlights.

Next it was onto the weapons. I gave them a silver base coat, then applied a rust look by overpainting them in a thinned mix of orange and brown. This was folloed with a drybrush of silver, and some highlights and scratch marks in a brighter silver.

Finishing touches were painting the claws in black, with a follow up gloss varnish. And painting in the weapon handles that I missed on the earlier stages.

The gap filling was a mixed end result. Some parts covered really well, and others I clearly didn’t add quite enough filler, or smooth it well enough.

Forgot to post this up at the weekend….

10^th September 2023

Its been a bit of a while.  I haven’t been able to get very much hobby in over the past week or so due to work, and being on standby, and various other sundry blockers – including the very heavy weather.

However, I did manage a couple of short sessions in the week.

In the first I decided to make one of the scarecrows into the ranged version grunt.  By taking off the weapon arm and using one of the tentacle arms.  Then I also did a bit of gap filling around the head with milliput.

Next short session was enough to lay down some basic skin tones on the minions. Went with the pink contrast again, to have a common theme with the rest of the warband. Where they had tentacles I painted these in a blue contrast, and tried wet blending the two together with the aid of contrast medium again. Worked relatively well I think.

16th September 2023

Next up for these chaps was getting down some colour on their clothing.

I went for greens greys and browns overall, with ivory for some of the bandage type sections.

I also gave some of the clothes a light drybrush with the ivory to make them look worn.

Then I finished them off by picking out weapon hafts and handles, painting the blades (adding a small amount of orange brown wash to age them), and doing their faces.  The standard blue tongues, and picking out the teeth so they stand out.

So, the warband is pretty much done.

Just need to do some work on the basing, and for that I have some new tufts on the way (from OnTabletop store).

I also may have to pick up some more scarecrows….

22^nd September 2023

Since the last update I cracked open the Northern Alliance box, and began work on the minis.

Starting with the restic minis again (I like to get the restic ones cleaned first, as they are harder work).  I cleaned and prepped them as best as my patience and eyesight would allow.

Apparently Chuck Norris once cleaned all the mould lines from a restic mini…. Once…..

22nd September 2023

This week my new tufts arrived, so between other bits I added them to the nightstalkers.

I give you the group photoshoot of the gribbly fellows

22^nd September 2023

After the restic it was on to the plastics this past week.  I was looking forward to these after the clean up on the restic, but there was actually a fair amount of clean up required here too.

These are an older kit, so the details at the sides go a little ‘soft’. They are crisp at the front, but suffer from the older plastic casting, that mantic seem to have gotten past now by changing their manufacturers.

There are ten bodies, in five designs, and the same applies to the rest. Ten spears, five designs and ten hand weapons in five designs. I decided to go for five with spear and five with hand weapon, so that each could have a different weapon sculpt.

Ten shields in five designs as well, meaning that models had to have duplicated shields – so I made sure that I didn’t have the same shield on the same body, just to maintain variety.

There are also four female heads out of the ten, and with the heavily clothed bodies they can work on any of them – which is good.

So, here they are assembled. (Two backpacks to add)

I think they look pretty nice all together ?

23rd September 2023

When I first picked up my KoW Vanguard stuff I did actually build and paint one of the warbands. The forces of the Abyss are the warband that I first purchased, and the first things that I tried out red contrast on ?

I just thought that I would share some pictures of this warband here in my Vanguard project.

1st October 2023

With a short break away, and other things, I have had limited progress.

But, I have done some of my basic sand and gravel basing on the Northern Alliance. Then sealed them with a thinned down coat of pva.

And given them an undercoat and zenithal spray of black to white.

These were worked on as part of my TerrainFest 2023 project through October, but I have decided to post up a picture here as they were initially a part of this project.

For more pictures please head over to my TerrainFest project here:

Draconis does…. TerrainFest 2023 (Deadzone, KoW Vanguard and Mordheim)

23rd November 2023

Well, its been almost three weeks since I have done any hobby, following on from my TerrainFest work.

As often happens, other things took up my time and motivation waned somewhat.

So, last night while on a call with some friends I just laid down some basic colours onto my primed Northern Alliance Clanspeeps.

Its not great work, and is still definitely at the stage where it all looks rubbish….. but it is some movement at least, and hopefully will lead onto further progress over the next few days.

Just some basic clothing colours in shades of brown and grey really (with a touch of green)

27th November 2023

Got in a couple of short sessions since last update, and made a bit of progress. They still look a bit pants to me, but I’m hoping it will turn around at the end.

I worked on the straps, belts, wrist wraps and boots.

Then I started adding some hair colour to most of them (still some blond and grey to work on), weapon hafts, a bit of work on shields, and some skin tones.

Overall a bit piecemeal still, and I think that working on ten at the same time perhaps isn’t the right way for me at the moment. Luckily for the rest they are in twos, so hopefully that should help.

I also think that not having a coherent approach to them from the start has hindered me a little too. Hopefully I can finish them this week, then get into the restic ones perhaps. Busy time of year, but if I can get some good sessions in I may have them finished before Christmas…. And maybe even have time for a quick battle before the end of the year.

1st December 2023

Last night I finished off the spear armed grunts.

I decided the split the grunts into their two groups, spear armed and hand weapon armed, to split the workload. Still have to sort some snow flock/basing for them yet.

There were lots of little bits left to do on them – many more straps, animal bones and teeth, bone parts of the weapons, shield details, the hair on the blonde and grey haired peeps etc.

But here are the spear armed ones…