Category Archives: Wargame Scenery

Roll out the Barrel…. Conan’s Adventure Pack Barrels

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Like a fair few other people in our hobby, I backed the Conan Kickstarter a couple of years ago, and also like many of us, I had my first wave of stuff arrive recently. Now I only got around to taking the stuff out of the shipping boxes last week, and frankly, I haven’t had the time to look further into the actual boxed game or the equally huge “Kickstarter Extras” box. Boxes. I got two King Pledges… 😉

Conan’s Adventure Pack. Sans Barrels…

What I did do while I was cleaning up in the War Room and making space to put the Conan stuff onto one of the shelves was notice how nice the models in some of the add-on boxes looked. Specifically, the “Adventure Pack”. The models looked really fine, baby. That is to say that they looked very finely detailed. Much moreso than anything I’d expect to get from a boardgame, and moreso from a kickstarter boardgame where the usual reaction to the models is “yeah, these are pretty decent” or a sadly unsurprising disappointment. After seeing Subedai get busy with some of his Conan models, I thought “why not?” and opened up the adventure pack to paint the contents as they looked like they’d paint up nice and quickly.

Monolith Games Conan board game Adventure Pack Barrels

…and here are Conan’s Barrels.

So that’s what we have here. Barrels. I haven’t started on the other stuff yet, but the barrels are pretty nice for what they are. I usually paint my barrels up in the standard, admittedly boring way that most of us do. Dark brown wood, metal hoops. Job done. Nothing wrong with that, but with posts by Dagger and Brush on building trees with realistic bark colours resonating in the back of my head, I decided to paint these ones so that they looked a little more …realistic? worn? aged? So they would look like they’ve been left outside in the elements for their time. Faded, stained wood and rusted metal.

Monolith Games Conan board game Adventure Pack Barrels

Conan’s barrels. Stacked. Somewhat..

Primed white, base coated with Vallejo Skeleton Bone coloured primer and then drybrushed with Reaper HD Arctic Grey. Hoops painted with Vallejo Plate Mail Metal coloured primer and then painted over with very-thinned Vallejo Model Air Light Rust and Orange Rust. The whole thing then washed with 50-50 Army Painter Soft tone wash and windex, and then with Citadel Nuln Oil Gloss. Gloss Polyurethane varnish, followed by Testor’s Dullcote. I’ve got that down here fo rmy future reference in case I end up with more of these barrels or want to recreate the exact look. It’s annoying when you paint everything that you have of some kind of scenery, and then find more somewhere, and then can’t remember exactly how you did them. I found some more of those Confrontation walls recently, and so now instead of having painted them more or less instantly, they’re just sitting there. In fact, I’ve lost them again somewhere. Bah.

Monolith Games Conan board game Adventure Pack Barrels, Stonehaven Dwarf Berserker, Reaper Miniatures Dwarf Pathfinder, Eureka Miniatures Beowulf

Norsemen and their Norse Dwarf cousins discuss the best way to provide scale shots for barrels.

After checking the Kickstarter details, I see that each core pledge box comes with an extra 5 chests. Add those to the 5 in the accessories box and I’ll have 15 chests to paint up. They’re pretty finely detailed, but the thing stopping me from blasting through them now is working out how to paint them. Wood? Iron? Bronze? It’s bloody exhausting!

Ow! My Eyeball! ME-61 Throne of Sauron (without Sauron!)

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Yeah, so I haven’t been blogging for awhile now. It happens around this time of year – from September to the start of December work really heats up. This year, I’ve pretty much been working every day at work, after work, on days off and on the weekends for the past few weeks – so I’m tired as <pick your profanity> right now.

What I did manage to do for the first month or so was keep on painting, if not blogging or taking many photos, or being active online. This is one of the things I managed to finish. The Reaper Bones pillars I worked on in October were in many ways a lead-in to this model, which I’ve painted for Tarmor, from the Dragons of Lancasm blog. At this point it’s actually been painted for… well, over a month. 6 weeks perhaps? I dunno. We don’t manage to catch up often due to work and conflicting schedules, and so hobby things tend to go between via some mutual friends, and with work the way it’s been I’ve seen less of them lately, and kept forgetting to pass it on when I have…

Almost every time I see this model, the above Simpsons quote pops into my head.

Dating from about 1985, This model is something of a rare breed these days – something I’ve painted for someone else, which is pretty much something I never do anymore. I just don’t have the time these days, and I have way too many models of my own – and I certainly don’t need the money that I used to get for commissions back in the 90’s anymore.

Citadel ME-61 Throne of Sauron

When I first saw the model, my initial thoughts were to do it in what I guess is a pretty “traditional” manner – painting the spine in bone, and firey red-orange bodies and tentacles crawling around the red eye. After a bit of quick reflection, I visualised pretty much the exact scheme I’ve actually painted it in. The spine and ribs sculpted out of a dark green marble, while ethereal spirits writhe around the eye of Sauron, which sucks the light from the creatures around it – providing a nice contrast, and an ersatz eye socket effect.

Citadel ME-61 Throne of Sauron

As the ethereals and the throne itself create a rather cold feel, the warm colours of the eye – the redness of the iris and the yellowed eyeball – create a nice contrast that makes The Eye of Sauron really stand out.

Citadel ME-61 Throne of Sauron

While basing is an important thing to consider, there was a kind of dichotomy at play here. I used a rolled-edge base as I wanted the throne to be raised up a little to represent its importance and also to protect the model – old lead chips easily. At the same time, I wanted the floor to be rather understated and generic – both so the model can be used in different settings and also so the actual throne remains the complete focus to the eye. To this end, I went with a simple texture on a rather dull grey. It will fit into dungeons and the like, or also outside if needed, with only a slight greenish tinge/glow to where the floor meets the edges of the ethereals.

Now I just need to get the thing across town to him…