144artist Loves Kings of War

When the Dwarf army gets fresh troops my Undead army should grow as well.  Otherwise there would be an unbalance in military strength within my collection.  I would love to be that organized and planned out but the truth is that this is the first model I pulled out of the Reaper Bones 5 Kickstart rewards, excited to paint right away.  Then he sat on my desk for over a year waiting to be glued to a Titan base while I was unable to decide what color dead dragon he should be.  In the end, the idea of a rotting green dragon lurking in some overgrown ruin really caught my imagination.  I had as much fun with the undergrowth as I did with painting the figure.  I used mostly Scale75’s Instant Colors to see what I could do with them.

From my youth and earliest days of gaming there was a slightly older guy named Dave Kush who was at every game convention selling minis old and new.  Thomas, Necron_99, and I have always collected dwarfs and whenever Dave saw us ambling around the Dealers’ Room he would pull a box out from under the table saying,” I found some stuff you guys might like…”.  Invariably he would produce some rare and wondrous dwarf minis that we would go crazy over. He was always one of the highlights of conventions for me, a fun gamer and a great guy.  When he passed away last year his collection of Pre-Slotta dwarfs were divided up between Thomas, Necron_99, and myself.  For my part I saw here were enough for a solid Regiment in Kings of War and dubbed them the Kushian Dwarfs, or allies from the Kush Valley.  Here are the pictures of both the Work In Progress as well as the finished unit.  I used an old Warhammer unit tray as the base.

This fellow arrived as part of the second Stonehaven Dwarves Kickstart campaign and knocked around the unpainted box for quite some time before I realized that he would make a very nice Steel Juggernaut for my Dwarf army.  While I am neither fond of nor own Mantic’s version I did have a great Scibor base I had been waiting to use and this was a perfect opportunity.  Now I just have to wait to see how he will perform in combat once there is face to face gaming again.

Two Troops of Soul Reavers, or one Regiment, are ready to slay all before them.  I used a couple of Skull and Crown’s interlocking bases as they fit together to make a regiment. As usual, the gallery is work in progress pictures while the individuals are the finished pieces.

Another great sculpt from Kev White of Hasslefree Miniatures (https://www.hfminis.co.uk/).  She painted up so quickly, just over an hour) I didn’t get any Work In Progress shots.  I did, however, paint her “Skyclad” or nude version first which I included in the gallery.

After converting and painting up the dwarf mini that would be carrying the flag as well as the first side of said flag all my progress stopped.  Other things became priorities, I couldn’t decide what I wanted to paint there, and being but a slip of paper on a binder clip it got covered up with other stuff.  Eventually I work my way back to most of my incomplete pieces, my ADD really keeps me moving from one project to another, and this one was no different.  One of my goals with this enforced isolation time is to finish off a number of these “half-dones” before starting new ones.  This brave little fellow was high on that list.

I decided on a list of deeds or battles the army has fought in.  Using the dwarf runes from their first Warhammer armybook the two big ones mean Battle and Luck.  The embroidered writing on the other side is too fine to use any recognizable forms but I tried to keep the illuminated ones in color looking blocky or rune like.

The Blood Dragon hero figure that has been sitting on my desk, assembled, based, and primed, is finally complete.  I had thought about adding him to a unit base for my Kings of War Undead but decided to keep him an inidivdual.  Besides, I have enough individually based vampires to make a Troop of Soul Reavers.  I hit a bit of a speed bump once the black line was applied and couldn’t decide how I wanted to proceed.  The gamemaster of our weekly 1st edition Dungeons and Dragons campaign (played via Discord as we live all over the US) suggested a pale green for details which lead to my turning it into a zombie dragon.  He also convinced me to add a second hue over the edge details which really made it look like thick embroidery.  In the end, the 20mm square base just looked too small and I opted for a MicroArts Graveyard round.  He will still fit on a movement tray and could even be an individual hero now.  Bonus is what a great RPG villain he will make.

I finished painting ten Mantic armored vampires (Soul Reavers) some time ago.  They are some of their older sculpts so are only adequate.  I also have a number of Reaper Bones vampires that should help fill up the ranks as well as a metal one. My plan is to construct either a Regiment or two Troops as these are expensive to field and with unit basing, flexible thinking can pay off.  Some well placed gravestones will help either way.

I’ve finished painting the soldiers and base for my great weapon wielding Iron Guard.  While the base came from Mantic’s online store the figures are by The Assault Group (https://theassaultgroup.co.uk/) and were rewards from a Kickstart campaign ages ago. I like the brazier included with the base as it is perfect for holding the d20 I track damage with.

I’m hoping this regiment hits hard and has staying power.

Visiting Thomas at Skull and Crown Games I was able to grab some of his prototype Triumph of Death (http://www.skullncrown.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=85) miniatures to add to my growing undead horde (just some crossbows, gotta wait for those sweet, sweet pike).  My goal is to have an entire Kings of War force (1500ish points) assembled from his wonderful miniatures and these crossbows bring me a little closer to said goal. As I have a Regiment and Troop of javelin armed undead I use as bowmen already, these guys will be the unit I buy Piercing or longer range for. Either way, I’ve got to get another regiment of these guys as they look so good and are surprisingly effective on the battlefield.

While I have two Regiments of Mantic Brock Riders painted I have been using my Svery Egilax figure as a standard Berserker Lord on Brock.  While dramatic looking he is based as a Large Cavalry model not Cavalry.  Fielding badger mounted lords on actual Cavalry bases has been on my to do list for some time (right after number 47: learn Portuguese) so off I went to my massive vault of unpainted miniatures looking for a couple of Games Workshop giant slayer models with wide stances I could mount on Brocks. The badgers were no problem as it turns out I have a fair number of those in the unpainted collection as well.