Today it’s a combined post of a few different small scenic items I’ve finished this month.
First up are a pair of dragon statues. These are actually from one of those Vietnamese “Variety Stores” (aka Junk shops) that are common in my area. They sell a wide variety of things, from cutlery to tat to tools and other random stuff, usually very cheaply, and pretty much all imported from China. I imagine that many places around the world have something similar in heavily multicultural areas. My mum actually got these for me a few years ago, since to a woman her age, this stuff all looks pretty much the same, whether it’s a GW model or an expensive Sideshow statue, or something that cost two bucks from a Vietnamese shop.
At the time I gritted my teeth and thanked her, and then stuffed them into a plastic tub to maybe turn into scenery one day down the line. I found them a few weeks ago while looking for Ork artillery, and remembered them, and so got them out and painted them in her memory. Nothing too special, just a bit of highlighting, shading and weathering. I left them just a little dirtied up, and more importantly unbased so they’d maintain a generic enough look to work inside a dungeon, in a temple, or outdoors and exposed to the environment. I’m glad I got them painted, and the table will have a little bit of her on it whenever they’re in use. 🙂
Next is a bit of the Mines of Moria boxed set put out by Games Workshop back in 2005. This was the third update of the SBG rules after the Return of the King set had run its course. I’ve gotten all of the other bits painted over the years, but this one still had a tiny bit left to do in it, so it was basically overlooked rather than ignored. I did rebase it onto a 60mm round, and added some flagstones made from thin card in order to make the piece a little better looking and more useful on the table.
Finally, we have a few more bits of my Mantic Terrain Crate Kickstarter pledge. Basically six little rubble piles. These had been sitting around for months and bloody months, primed black and slightly tacky. I found them next to my light box the other day and brought them inside to knock out. I think I’d planned to strip them back and start again, but I only remembered that after I’d completed them. Just simple drybrush jobs here, though the broken wood was done with Contrast Wyldwood over painted-on Wraithbone. All finished – as with everything elsein this post – with a little bit of weathering powder. I’ve varnished them with Reaper’s paint-on sealer and let that dry and cure for a day before going over it with AK Interactive’s Matt Brush-On, and they’re not tacky again yet. Let’s hope that stay that way!
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Good stuff mate – I reckon those dragons make perfect terrain pieces.
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Cheers, Alex. I’ll have to see what else those places have. But first I need to find the boxes of Aquarium stuff I bought that then somehow teleported away…
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Very nice! I have the dragon on the right. Never thought of using it for scenery… now I’m thinking of blowing off the dust and painting it!
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It was pretty easy to get it to this point, too. Literally just used the way it came as the base coat before drybrushing the next layer…
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Those dragons look cracking as terrain! Great work on all of these 🙂
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Cheers, mate!
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All the scenery looks great mate, the back story on the dragons make them extra special
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Thanks Dave. Yeah, they’ve kinda gone from ugly not-models to something I have a little bit of fondness for now.
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Those dragons look great as terrain! I’d never know they were cheap statuettes out of a junk shop had you’d not said so!
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Thanks mate – I’ve got some other stufff I grabbed from one last year to make statues out of. Maybe this year I’ll actually do it!
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Yeah, I’ve seen a few things in thrift stores and such over the years that looked like they would make good gaming statuary. Those dragons really came out great, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that they came from, idk, Reaper or someone.
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Thanks Alexis. Toys (cleap, or otherwise) can also be a great source of stuff like this as well. Even if they can’t all be Mcfarlane Dragons… 😉
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Everyone’s said it, but those dragons really do look very good indeed!
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Thank you, John 🙂
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Aww mate. I love the dragons and the sentiment behind them. I’ve often explored those junk shops and did actually buy a monster truck for my Orks but have yet to paint it. Didn’t think of looking at statue stuff for terrain. Not a bad idea.
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Yeah, lots of statue options in those places. From small(ish) statues to the hugest idols that would take up a huge chunk of the table!
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The story of the dragons was a really sweet one, and I’ll echo the people above: they look surprisingly nice! The paint scheme also ties in nicely with the rest of the stuff in this batch – I thought at first that this whole thing was a complete set from somewhere.
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Thanks Mikko. 🙂 They were prety much painted (or finished, in the case of the well) together, so it makes sense that they look like a set. If I wasn’t so behind in my posts and trying to catch up, they may well have been posted as two or even three posts, but they combined quite nicely together for the single.
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Loooove those dragons!
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Cheers Mark – I imagine they’d be pretty easy to pick up (or so close it wouldn’t matter) in a lot of places around. 🙂
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Chuffed to see some LOTR on here even if it is quite possibly the least interesting terrain sculpt they made (despite its important role in the Mines of Moria!). I love the base you added to it which really improves it. The rest of the scatter terrain looks fantastic and very versatile as well. I would imagine lots of mini games would work well with it. Any particular ones you have in mind? 🙂
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There’s more LotR on the way, though needing to putty the fur tufts on Wargs makes it a slow process. Mostly because the task is so boring I completely avoid doing it. Maybe I need to take the models and putty to work to do on a lunch break…?
As for which games to use the terrain with – I figure almost anything can work with almost anything else. 40k, Kill Team, Frostgrave, Shadespire, Kings of War, AoS, SAGA, WarCry….
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Yay! I can’t wait to see more. Are you talking about the LOTR Wargs? They have some bad gaps in them from what I’ve seen because people who don’t fill them often have terrible looking models. I don’t enjoy filling gaps either and I tend to do it slowly in the background while doing other tasks I enjoy more. If you want to batch paint them though, you’ll probably want to consider a lunch session to knock them out!
That makes sense to me. I wanted to see if there were any games you were thinking of that I wasn’t aware of. I think one day I will expand my gaming into other fantasy games and try to re-purpose my LOTR stuff for that as much as I can. I suppose I have your influence to thank for that 🙂
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Yeah, the first-gen LotR Wargs (not the Hobbit ones). The gaps are pretty horrible, as they’re pretty mediocre models. They can be made to look pretty decent with paint and care, but as models… mediocre at best.
As for games – models are models, and long as your models fit in with whatever you want to use them for, then it’s all good. We played SAGA here before my Vikings were painted using LotR Orcs with the Viking Rules and Gondorians with the …Saxons? Britons? Something else, anyway. My Kings of War Armies of Men force is my Gondor army, with stats borrowed from other forces as needed to make up the units, so using Elven Scout stats for Boromir’s Scouts/Grey Company models.
https://azazelx.com/2016/07/14/gondor-army-showcase-july-2016/
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