Conan Kickstarter’s Black Dragons
A few more models from the Conan Kickstarter today. Black Dragons. These figures come as a set of 5. I just got the one set, but I could see the value in other people picking up two or four sets to use them as units in wargames or as villainous mooks in their own custom scenarios. I’ve painted them in a scheme influenced by the box art, but with a few more spot colours and metal shades added in, as they looked a bit too plain in all-iron. Huh, it seems like the little nodule that I thought was a forehead-gem is supposed to be a spike.
“Then a medley of voices reached his ears, and the room was thronged with the finally roused people of the court–knights, peers, ladies, men-at-arms, councillors–all babbling and shouting and getting in one another’s way. The Black Dragons were on hand, wild with rage, swearing and ruffling, with their hands on their hilts and foreign oaths in their teeth.”
Robert E. Howard – The Phoenix on the Sword
So it turns out that the Black Dragons are Conan’s bodyguards, and that their Captain, Pallantides is a stretch goal that I’m sure I’ll find inside the big box eventually.
I picked these guys out a couple of months ago as they looked like they’d be an easy win – what with mostly being covered in armour. As it happened, they weren’t super hard to paint, but they also weren’t fun at all, either – so they took a bit longer. The small size, combined with loss of detail, ill-defined details and messiness in their lines due to the PVC made them pretty shitty models to be quite honest. They basically got finished due to this month’s challenge theme being enough to motivate me to get them done and out of the way. Hopefully Captain Palindrome will be a nicer, or more fun model to paint. 
Here’s a shot of them alongside their Conan-Kickstarter brethren that I’ve painted. Ok, so I skipped the scatter-terrain barrels and only put out two of the Wolves. At this rate I’ll end up getting all of the add-on boxed models done before I crack open the core game and paint a Conan figure!
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
They look good to me mate but I know from my own experience that some figures turn out to be anything but fun to paint.
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Yeah, these fall very solidly into the category of figures that look fine once they’re completed, but are no fun at all to paint.
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Really nice figures! Would never have believed they’d been so tricky to paint!
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It’s one of those things that can happen, used to sometimes with old lead but nowadays more of a PVC issue when there’s lots of fiddly details but parts of it get miscast and others blur into one another.
Like, see those metal reinforcements on the pteruges? The one directly on his right (our left) of the crotch-scale is completely missing the metal bit on all of them due to miscasts, so I had to paint it in for each figure. You don’t notice it in the photos, and probably wouldn’t while casually handling it, but when painting it, things like that are annoying. The helmet crest area was a bit messed up on a couple of them, there’s odd (mould?) lines across the body of one of them… you get the idea.
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I know what you mean and it is annoying to say the least! My biggest dislike is either a lot of flash or a misaligned casting that leaves a scar right round a tank turret or hull! It either needs filling or removing with a Dremel and is a nightmare if there are rivets present!
Anyway, enough said! Despite the niggles, you’ve done a great job on these guys and I really like them!
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Yeah, luckily with these being soft PVC it’s a hell of a lot easier to cover than a miscast resin tank.:)
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They look great – I’d certainly be one of those who’d be happier with two sets to use… but by the sounds of it I’d have hated painting them all.
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Yeah, it didn’t actually occur to me until I was googling them and found someone that had painted 20 of them. No huge deal, there’s still many, many other figures still to paint!
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Well you’ve done a fine job on them, I wouldn’t have known you didn’t enjoy them. That should be the aim of the exercise though, to paint something well enough that no-one who looks at the finished article sees all the blood, sweat and tears that went into it!
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Yeah, the finished articles look solid, they’re ready to game with, and more importantly, I never have to paint them again!
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Well done for getting them done if you didn’t find it fun. I wouldn’t bother if I didn’t have fun haha. They look good but that Tiger is still my favourite 👍🏼
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For me at least, sometimes you’ve got to tough it out for a worthwhile end result. These aren’t the first figures I’ve painted that sucked to work on but I’m ok with once they’re finished.
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Well done for toughing it out mate – it sucks being stuck painting a shitty model, never mind five of the buggers… Totally worth the effort though I’d say, they look pretty good to me!
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Yeah, now they’re finished I don’t need to worry about them ever again! Except in gameplay!
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Nice looking bunch! Have all the Conan minis been like that, or these guys are just more problematic than the others?
Also, totally random…don’t know if you are a Conan fan, but have you played Conan Exiles? A friend of mine just started chatting about it last night, and has me intrigued with the open world, survival, crafting bits.
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These would be the worst of the ones I’ve painted so far. Truthfully though, most of them are still sealed in box. I think these will be pretty far on the side of worst of them to paint. I haven’t played Conan Exiles, though I read a little about it recently. Getting through videogames is almost the same kind of grind to get through all of these models. Only slower!
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Yea, video games can take a long time. I find it’s kind of like eating cake though. Tastes sweet at the time, but in the end the only thing you have to show for it is a big tummy. With minis I can have a big tummy and some little painted peoples!
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I figure as long as I’m getting a decent amount of painting done, it’s all good. After all, I get to “game” with the consoles much, MUCH more frequently than with the toy soldier collection these days.
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For me, it’s pretty much one or the other. Full time toddler. I really have to teach her how to paint minis someday soon.
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Eventually, you can train up your own paint apprentice to slap on basecoats and washes!
I barely get to play anything on the tabletop these days, so videogames fill that role. Otherwise I’d barely get to do any gaming of any kind at all!
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If I had an apprentice, they would have the joy of painting all leather straps and belts. 😜
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For me, the sculpts on these Conan models have been a bit hit-and-miss so far (with the balance tipping towards miss, actually), but I really like those heavily armoured guys — like a cool missing link between classic chaos warriors and LotR Easterlings 😉 I can definitely see why they wouldn’t exactly be a painter’s dream, though 😉
On a partially related note, the paintjob on that tiger still kinda blows me away! 🙂
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Yeah, I like the visual design of them, and the Easterling connection is very much there as well. It’s more the casting/material of these ones that lets them down. They seem to suffer a fair bit from the typical PVC issue, of not capturing small, fine details (like human faces) well and instead being incredibly soft.
I’m going to have to start a tiger army – or something with a bunch of tigers and other big cats in it – that mini still gets a lot of love, even now!
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I get your frustration on bad models and having to fill in details or repair. I gotta say that to me that’s what separates a good modeler from a great one. I could not see the stuff you described, which is a testament to how well you dealt with the issues, so hats off on that. In a way, I guess I both find situations like that frustrating yet rewarding to overcome. As you know, I have had to deal with issues like that on my castings. Of course, if they are too bad, they just go back in the crucible – yet many defects miss my initial inspection. Your corrections are our visual gains Azazel!
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Honestly Mark, these ones were much more annoying frustrations than severe model defects, and fixed to “close enough” standard easily enough, and the rest hidden “close enough” with paint.
Of course, casting your own is a lot more work, but as you say – bad castings can always be reborn again. 🙂
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These look great. It’s really refreshing to hear about your negative experience with the faintness in the sculpting and the quality of the detailing – most people won’t admit to not enjoying a model as (I guess) they see it as a reflection on their inability to paint. You’ve done a top job on these, and the dark scheme really brings their menace to life.
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Yeah, you’d be surprised (or possibly not) at the number of figures I don’t especially enjoy the act of painting. Luckily they tend to feel worthwhile once they’re done, which combined with the sense of pride and accomplishment that I get from getting stuff off the painting desk works out to be a “good enough” reward.
Thanks for the compliments as well. I’m glad to have done this well on them. Not as nice as Martin’s pro-painted one(s?) out there, but then I didn’t get paid to paint these! 😉
(And that nice one was probably a resin master, to boot!)
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