Draconis does….. The Silver Bayonet

May be a bit quiet here for a while.

I will be making some terrain for The Silver Bayonet,  but it will be on a separate project for TerrainFest.

https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/1902164

5th November 2024

Quick turnaround on these.

Continuing to try to use minis I already own, these two are representing Vrykolakas, which are feral vampires. In the lore they have wings instead of arms though, so these aren’t quite right tbh.

The left one is an old GW Chaos Fury I found while looking for the troll, and the right one is from Westwind, ‘Dracula in bat form’. They were given the standard attempt at a zenithal prime.

Then I rolled out the contrast paints. The fury was painted with a mix of flesh, purple and medium, and the Drac was painted with flesh, with a touch of purple added in places.

For the fury I picked out the fur with a mix of brown black and purple, added more flesh tone to the head, some pink to the snout, and added red talons with Khorne red up to evil sunz.

For Drac I added some brown for the fur areas, picked out eyes and teeth then added Tamiya Clear Red (TCR) to the face and hands. Job done 😊

….I’ll get on with some terrain at some point…..

4th November 2024

A troll is required in the third scenario. I knew I had several old trolls, and went looking for my old C20 Hill Troll in particular (1987).

Well, I couldn’t find that, but I did find a couple of 1984 C20 Trolls, and an ADD59 Troll as well.

The friend, that I will be playing SB with initially, said he preferred the look of ADD59, so I went with that.

First out I had to strip it back to bare metal, and then find a round base (50mm) for it. I have gone with round because it is a skirmish game and round seems to work best for this.

After adding some sand/gravel basing material I then sprayed it black. This was followed by several stages of drybrushing (and highlighting in places the drybrush wouldn’t fit). I went from a Bronze Green (AK, that I used on my tanks), through two other greens (GW Warpstone Glow and Moot green) that I had used on the gobbos, and finally finished with yellow just on the upper arms, upper back and face.

The claws were picked out in dark Prussian blue, then highlighted up a couple of stages. I painted the teeth with a yellow brown (leather), highlighted up a couple of stages by adding ivory. Mouth and tongue were Khorne Red/Black mix, highlighted up. For the eyes I went from Khorne red, through Mephiston and Evil Sunz, then painted an orange pupil. I perhaps shouldn’t have used so many reds, as the pupil doesn’t stand out as well as it would have done against Khorne red I feel. I gave the troll a gloss varnish coat all over – this was to make it look as if it was wet. (Doesn’t photograph as well though).

So, with this finished I now have all the bad guys needed for the core book’s four cooperative scenarios (and some for later scenarios).

Now I will need to look at doing some terrain……

1st November 2024

I found these goblins while I was looking for the giant rats, and as I said previously I am trying where possible to make use of minis I already own rather than buying new. They were primed with the other Reaper bones minis.

I decided that I wanted to try to give them quite bright skin, so opted to take the skin tone up from a darkish green through to yellow in several stages. At this point I also decided to go with a dark pink for the inside of the ears. As such, I tested it out on one of the gobbos 😊

Happy enough with that, I began the process of rolling it out onto the other 7 minis. The clothing I decided to paint with various shades of brown, mostly contrast, so that the skin would remain the main focus.

Once that was done it was the usual stages of picking out details, weapons, bandage wraps on the arms and legs (in hindsight I should have just washed these rather than painting in over black), eyes and teeth.

For the ones with torches I thought I would try to do a bit of object source lighting on them. Its nothing something I have tried often (but I was quite happy with what I did on Darth Maul in one of my Star Wars projects), but just wanted to try to push myself a little. Started out by thinning down some yellow contrast and putting it down in a reasonably large area that would be hit by the light of the torch. Then I added progressively smaller areas, building up strength in the yellow highlight area. I also added a small area of lighting to each of the bases.

I think it worked reasonably well, but would probably have been better if I hadn’t already highlighted the skin tones up to yellow.

Here they are all ready to go for their one scenario.

26th October 2024

I worked on these two at the same time as the rats. They were painted with a very similar philosophy 😊

The bats were painted over with Black Templar contrast, as was the Black Dog.

The Black Dog was quite simple. I gave it a very light drybrush of grey, then picked out the bone spikes and teeth etc. Then painted up the tongue and inner mouth, washed and highlighted the bone spikes, suitable red eyes and done.

The Bat Swarm had a bit heavier drybrush on the bats themselves. The gravestone was washed and had a few (too subtle) edge highlights. Some details were picked out on the base, and it too was done.

But I realise I have two base rim colours going on with all the minis for this.

Obviously it doesn’t stress me out….. Obviously

25th October 2024

The giant rats, like many other enemy types, are only used in one scenario. As such they will receive a reasonable, but speedy, paintjob.

To start with they were given a coat of either Wyldwood or Black Templar contrast over all the fur areas.

Then I picked out the tails, inner ears, paws and some snouts in a flesh pink. Adding this stage really helped to give some definition.

This was followed by an agrax wash all over, including the stone platform they sit on.

Then just some finishing touches of teeth, eyes, some very minor fur highlights and basic basing – and they are ready for play. They won’t win any beauty contests, but they will do the job.

25th October 2024

Earlier this week, in the spirit of using models that I already own where possible, I dug out my old reaper Bones minis to see what creatures could be usable.

I found minis that would work for the Goblins, the Giant rats, the Black Dog, and one Bat swarm (to add to the two I have painted from before). Also some potential swarms, ghosts and mummies, but I will come back to those

They were given a quick clean up, all washed in soapy water, glued to bases, bit of gap filling to cover slots and base warp and given a zenithal prime (although the grey seems to have gone on a little too heavy on some of them).

21st October 2024

Well, these chaps have jumped the queue a little, as they aren’t needed until the second book. But since a friend had printed them and given them to me with the wolves, they got primed the same time.

Pretty basic paint job on these. I chose two contrast paints, Wyldwood and Basilicanum grey. The five minis were then painted using these or a mix of them.

They were still looking a little plain, so I painted in the ‘vines’ with an earthy green followed by a brighter green (Warpstone glow) to make them a bit more interesting. Then the eyes were painted in white, followed by a bright green wash.

And here they are all finished.

The greens aren’t as bright in real life though.

18th October 2024

With the building stage complete it was on to the painting. I had the four French I had built, plus two 3D prints a friend did – one French and one Prussian. So, Lots of blue.

I tried out a few different blues, and plumped for Macragge blue for the French (except the guard, who’s greatcoat I did in Leviadon Blue) and Deep Prussian Blue for the Prussian 😊

I found the French equally as frustrating regarding the straps, pouches, piping and suchlike – in part due to my less than excellent eyesight, and in part due to my brushes. But, I pushed on through with it. I decided to give the French red collars and cuffs, and painted their straps etc in shades of white, Ivory, beige and browns.

The blue jackets, backpacks and pouches were given an Aggrax wash. The white trousers and shirts were given a diluted wash of Aggrax. For the skin tones I started with a skeleton horde contrast, followed by thinned purple and green contrast. This was then highlighted with ivory for some of the faces. The eyes were painted white then given a coat of yellow fluo paint.

Some final details, buttons, touching up straps and piping etc and they are done.

I’m not overly happy with how things came out overall (although I do like the guard) – but I remind myself that they are bad guy minis, and from play distance they do look acceptable, and fill the role.

13th October 2024

Now that my sprues had arrived, and the wolves were done, it was time to build some French revenants to go alongside the brits.

I used the same process as for the brits, combining Victrix sprues, mantic sprues and some posing.

The French guard in fact uses all Victrix parts. I picked a head that had a shouting expression, to be used for a running body, and put it on a very static body. Tilting it to one side enhanced the look.

Where I used the zombie arm I had to cut it down, as it was far longer than the other arm. I then had to use modelling putty and sculpt on (I’m not very good) a rough torn shoulder part of the sleeve.

Now I just need to decide on which blue to use……

11th October 2024

There are some werewolves needed for the very first scenario. I had two primed, and managed to find a third old one I already had (the grey one) that I just needed to touch up and re-base.

Process was the same as all the other things really 😊 For these two I went with similar colour as those used on the wolves. Brownish for one and greyish for the other. For the one with clothes on I went for clothing colours to match the bandits that I painted. This one also had flesh areas that looked slightly less wolfy, so I painted those in a human flesh colour.

Then it was some highlighting, bring various areas of the brown one up a few stages to lighten it, highlighting the shirt and trousers on the other and such. Basing, a matt varnish and here they are:

19th October 2024

Quite thematic with Halloween approaching….

A large number of dark wolves are potentially needed. I already had two old gobbo wolf rider wolves, and two metal wolves from West Wind’s EotD Lycan Brotherhood. On Sunday a good friend of mine passed on ten wolves that he had 3d printed for me (he had STL’s for Rangers of Shadowdeep I believe).

I dug out matching bases, filled the slots, Based and primed them.

While they were drying I did a quick simple test paintjob on one of the metal wolves. Using contrast grey and brown, some very light drybrushing, then picking out eyes and teeth. Result worked overall, so decided that I would go with this for the rest.

For the remaining 13 wolves I used a variety different contrast colours with greys, browns and black, and mixes thereof.

However, I felt that I wanted to go an extra step with some of them. As such I decided to paint lighter markings on a number of them. These were of varying sizes from full face, chest and front of legs to as little as some wolfy eyeliner 😊

5th October 2024

One of the enemy types needed for the solo / co-op scenarios is bandits. I already had 4 painted minis that I felt were suitable (from Empire of the Dead), so rummaged through my unpainted minis to find some others to fit in. They were Transylvanian Mobs, from West Wind’s vampire Wars range (plus one mini from the EotD Lycan brotherhood). These were primed alongside the other bad guys earlier.

I then just began laying down a limited palette of colours across the minis, to give them some moderate cohesion, and also to tie them in with those I already had painted.

Very basic process, using contrast in for some of the browns and green, and regular painting with highlights for the red and white areas, plus the ‘rawhide’ used for a jacket and trousers. All except the white areas were then given an Agrax wash, followed by a small amount of tidy up and then an overall spray with Anti-shine Matt varnish.

To be fair, they are painted to a ‘that will do’ level, as they are only used for one scenario 😊

5th October 202

To help me work out what bad guys I would need, how many, how often, and when, I knocked up a basic spreadsheet. The numbers involved are just my estimations, since in the scenarios there is a random element each turn as to what may come out.

For example, in one scenario it starts with 8 Dark Wolves, one of which is replaced with a werewolf at the start. Then each turn you could get 0, 1 or 2 additional Dark Wolves…..

From this I knew that I had to work on Bandits, a Black Dog, Dark Wolves, Goblins, Revenants, a Troll, Vampires and Werewolves in order to play the scenarios from the core book.

29th September 2024

After a bit of an hiatus I am back at it, to some extent.

So, here are the four revenants that I have been working on…..

The build process was covered in previous posts. The basic painting of them followed the same process as for the living Brits. The main exception was regarding the skin tones. For these I used more of a leathery colour, then added some thinned washes of purple and green in places.

Then they had a dirty wash, followed by some minor highlights, addition of blood/gore, glowing eyes and suchlike.

To finish them off I stippled on some Agrellan Earth to represent dried mud and dirt, to hopefully better represent their ‘Revenant’ status.

16th September 2024

So, turns out that you need quite a few, and quite a variety of, minis for the bad guys in the scenarios 😊

To this end this past week I also cleaned and prepped some minis for Bandits, werewolves and some of the dark wolves needed for the core book scenarios.

Plenty more needed yet….

One of my old wolves was missing a leg – the leg that would have had the base tab.

I thought I would have a go at replacing it. I started out by drilling into the body and gluing in a paper clip.

I then bent it roughly to shape and poked some putty around until it sort of worked.

Then I used the rest of the paper clip to bend into supportive loops which could be covered in milliput later.

16th September 2024

I decided that I wanted to convert a mini for a sapper. He obviously needed to have an axe, and an apron. However, amongst my many, many, many minis I just could not find an axe that was appropriate.

So, I went ahead and tried to knock one together. Think I may revisit it at some point in the future and modify the haft though.

I took a rifle holding arm and snipped out the rifle. Both hands were on the rifle piece, so I had to snip one hand free then fix it to the other arm. I didn’t have a drill bit small enough to go through the hands, so I instead heated up a pin (being held in small pliers) and applied it to the plastic. A couple of goes and I had made a neat small hole. Then I could put the paper clip handle and try fitting it.

I also tried to make a rough leather apron using some (too old) milliput.

Put the rest of him together, sprayed it up and got on with painting. He was painted in the same way as the other redcoats.

Adding some final highlights, and some ‘mystic symbols’ on to the apron, and he is done.

8th September 2024

I also squeezed in enough time to put together two more revenants – again using the Victrix Brits and Mantic Zombies

Just basic again, didn’t do shakos on these, but did snip one arm in half for one of them.

I used a craft knife to ‘drill’ a couple of holes into one of the undead, to represent wounds.

8th September 2024

Another disrupted period, but I did manage to finish four riflemen today. I had built more, but have just been working on four of them for now.

I went with the Bronze green for the jackets, but went for a mix of colours on the trousers (after checking pictures of Sharpe’s Chosen men).

These chaps still had quite a few straps, pouches etc for me to work on, hurrah 😊

As often is the case, I just wasn’t ‘feeling’ them for quite some time. So I added some flock and grass to the base, and that lifted their colour a bit.

Then lots of little finishing bits, piping around collars, epaulettes, rough highlights on pouches and such, and four more chaps were done….

2nd September 2024

Very little time for hobby this past week, won’t go into the reasons.

But at the start of the week I did have a go at making some revenants from Victrix British and mantic zombies.

The zombie parts are ‘heroic’, so will have to use sparingly.

I will possibly drill some more indentation to represent bullet holes.