Monthly Archives: May 2023

Zombicide Black Plague: Abominalpha

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Zombicide Black Plague: Abominalpha

Another Zombicide model today – this time a Kickstarter exclusive model from the original Zombicide Black Plague campaign. The Abominalpha. This one is an interesting design, with a mix of several animals sort of smooshed together. We have some elements of (obviously) Human along with Wolf and Rat, Goat horns, and… Badger claws?

As wacky as that design description sounds, the artist actually pulled it off pretty well. Wrapped the whole thing in flayed skin and added a necklace of decapitated heads for extra drip. Unfortunately – the sculpt is one that I can at best describe – with maximum kindness – as wildly uneven. The overall head, body and musculature are pretty decent. The claws and bone spines are a bit too long and nearly as good looking as the artwork, the tail-spine looks like a decoration and the necklace of heads looks like blobs of undetailed, undefined chewing gum.

Zombicide Black Plague: Abominalpha

The result of all this was that I started painting this thing a couple of years ago with the best of intentions (I usually enjoy painting monsters – and they can often be quick and enjoyable), but it’s taken literally years and I’ve basically just hated the model the entire time.

Zombicide Black Plague: Abominalpha

The only way I got through it was by forcing myself to do a whole bunch of work on it last year for one of the Monster painting challenges, and then ran out of steam – only to harness this year’s Monster MayHem ’23 painting challenge for enough willpower to finally get it done.

Zombicide Black Plague: Abominalpha, Reaper Miniatures 50153 Berkeley Zombie Survivor

Well, regardless of how I’ve felt about the model over the long course of getting it painted, I’m hopeful that I can now forget about all of that and just let it become more or less the same as many of those D&D models I’ve gotten painted over the years – nothing special as a sculpt or paintjob, but certainly more enjoyable to look at and use on the table than unpainted grey PVC.

One more Monster to come for the month’s challenge – see you in 2 days!

Mythic Battles: Pantheon – Echidna’s Children: Basilisk (Giant Snake)

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Mythic Battles: Pantheon - Echidna's Children: Basilisk (Giant Snake)

Just over a year since I completed the previous two large models from this boxed set, the Chimera and the Teumessian Fox, I’ve finally force-motivated myself to complete the Basilisk – which in this case has the form of a giant snake as it’s the mythic form and not the D&D form.

Mythic Battles: Pantheon - Echidna's Children: Basilisk (Giant Snake)

I originally hoped to paint in the scale patterns using the sculpted scales on the model, but the original 3d sculpt as shown lost a lot of it’s sharpness and refinement in the transition from render to final product, and so my plans were a little …ambitious. The result was that I ran out  of steam and the model sat on the desk for several months before being “filed” away in a storage tub.

Mythic Battles: Pantheon - Echidna's Children: Basilisk (Giant Snake)

With this year’s “Monster”-themed challenge months, arriving (Monster March and Monster MAYhem) I dug this thing out of the tub where it’d been for at least half a year and then it sat on my painting desk until about a week ago, when I just put the “force it through” mentality into practise and just started dotting in individual scales in one pattern, then the next, then the next – doing as much as I could stomach each session (often while doing something else) over the course of about five days until finally completing it a few hours before I sit (sat) here typing this text.

Mythic Battles: Pantheon - Echidna's Children: Basilisk (Giant Snake)

In the end, I gave up on trying to fill in the scales based on the soft ones on the sculpt and just dropped them in as dots where I wanted them. There are messy areas, areas where the dags and jags are too big, or too small, a couple where due to the curvature of the snake’s coil that a jag or two are even missing altogether. The close-ups really emphasise the messiness of the scales, but in hand at actual size with that satin clearcoat, the model works pretty well.

Mythic Battles: Pantheon - Echidna's Children: Basilisk (Giant Snake)

In the end, the dotted-in scales actually seemed to work to give the snake both a shaded and textured effect, and using a satin varnish on the model helped to accentuate the positive and hide the flaws. And yeah. I’m pretty happy to have finally completed this thing and gotten it out of here and out of the way! Thanks to Angry Piper’s Monster MayHem ’23 painting challenge for the motivation!

Mythic Battles: Pantheon - Echidna's Children: Basilisk (Giant Snake), Reaper Miniatures 50153 Berkeley Zombie Survivor

As is custom for monster models, Chainsaw Girl Berkeley once again provides us with model scale (and yet another trophy for her wall!) In this instance, a bare-knuckled Conan would also have worked…