Mantic’s Dungeon Saga was one of the last of their Kickstarters that I went in on, due to the promise of it being a new Warhammer Quest – before Jake Thornton’s apparent dislke of HQ, AHQ and WHQ scuttled Ronnie Renton’s hopes and dreams – and their endless runs of Mediocre Miniatures caused me to finally pull the plug. I’ve still picked up some Mantic KoW stuff at retail over the years, but this post isn’t about those models. It’s about these ones.

For years now, I’ve been trying to convince Marouda to do some more painting. In the past, her stuff has been quite presentable, (even if I have to paint in the eyes for her) so it’s caused no end of frustration that she’s been so hesitant to do some more. So now, finally, and with the extra impetus of Dave’s Apocalypse Me challenge because Zombies, I convinced her to paint this little batch of pretty-straightforward undead from the Dungeon Saga game. So with that said – over to Marouda…

These took a few weekends for me to complete.

I am satisfied with how these turned out given how it has been so long since I painted any minis. There are some rock elementals that I started at the beginning of this year that are sitting in a tub waiting to be finished, perhaps now that I have painted these sets, I may have some confidence to go back and finish the others. I liked how Az would demo a technique when I was not confident and then let me continue and finish the application on the mini and subsequent minis.

Az bought me a headband magnifier (like what Jewellers wear) when I complained that the minis are so small and hard to see. This helped greatly in assisting me to be more precise, neater and not so sloppy when applying the paint. I also used my still sealed wet palete for the first time that Az bought me for my birthday last year. This stopped my paint mixes from drying out so quickly as I was working, given that I am much slower to work with/apply the paint than someone more confident and experienced.

Although I only used the wet palette for paint that had to be thinned down and not for metallics. I used the dry pallete for the other paints. The Bases/Tiles- were fun and easy to paint. The Skeletons were the simplest to paint out of 3 sculpts.

I really enjoyed painting the Zombies. Army Painter Warpaints Ink Purple tone wash was used on the zombie flesh to help seperate it from the beige of the base, Citadel Blood for the Blood Good was used for the wounds.The wash was tricky to apply to the flesh I sort of painted it on too thinly, and pulled the wash back out of the crevices rather than letting it do its thing and run into the recesses. I had to go back and dry brush to of the zombies flesh to lighten it again as the wash had darkened it too much compared to the first mini.

I had one small accident when squeezing out the Valejo Model Colour Beige for the bone clubs, I only needed one small dot of paint and I squeezed out way too much. Luckily Az wasn’t in the room to see, as I know how much he hates paint wastage, especially paints that are irreplaceable. I had to think fast to save this paint, I grabbed a pair of pliers and took the nib off the bottle, and with a clean brush scooped the excess paint from my palette back into the bottle, placed the nib back on and wella Az will never know, until he reads this post 🙂

I did not enjoy painting the robes on the Wraiths, I am not particularly skilled at blending. Initially a purple contrast paint was applied all over the cloak, but it looked patchy and rough.

I went over the Contrast paint with Army Painter Warpaints Fanatic Diabolic Plum and did the purple highlights with Warpaints Fanatic Cultist Purple and Hexed Violet mixed together.

Next in the queue are a box of Sylvaneth to paint as Az thinks these should be fairly simple to paint and I love Dryads, Ents etc.