Dungeon Saga: Some Small Scenics

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Like most people who backed the Kickstarter, I got my Mantic’s Dungeon Saga stuff a little while ago. While the models are (almost all) quite nicely sculpted, there’s some terribad warpage on many of them. Combined with the usual Mantic Kickstarter-quality packing (I’m still waiting on replacements for a bunch of broken and missing stuff), messed-up hardcover compendium and reviews that talk about how Jake Thornton clearly lost interest as he was writing co-op and campaign rules (apparently you can see his interest wane as you read through the Adventurer’s guide as he was really only interested in the HeroQuest-level rules) means the game’s extras got placed in a plastic tub and the game itself stacked on top to get back to one day (or not). Whatever. I’ve got Black Plague to scratch my boardgaming itch for the time being without any resentful rules being mixed in.

Mantic Games Dungeon Saga Scenery Benches

Benches!

The scenery items for Dungeon Saga on the other hand, are pretty damned good. The doors are made from a proper, hard plastic (ABS or HIPS, most likely) while the bookshelves, wells, barrels, and so forth are made from a softer PVC-type plastic. Both sets are actually pretty damned good – especially for stuff that comes in a boardgame – and I’ve got no hesitation in recommending them to anyone who is a wargamer. They obviously wouldn’t work so well in super-detailed dioramas, but that’s a separate category.

Mantic Games Dungeon Saga Scenery Barrels

Barrels!

So I decided to start painting up a few of these pieces. Now, a word of warning. I purchased several cans of Rust-O-Leum sparay paint awhile back, since the cans read that they were a primer and colour spray in one, and that they have some kind of special formulation that binds to plastic. Great! I sprayed a bunch of my PVC scenery with it, and the stuff simply never properly dried. Even after more than a week of Melbourne’s Summer Heat. This made my “quickly knock up some scenery quickly” task a lot more painful than I’d planned. The brown eventually mostly dried, but the black was still sticky and horrible, and so I threw them into some Simple Green a few days ago. I’ll get back to those, later. The point here being – DO NOT USE Rustoleum spray paint on miniatures. At least the formulation that they sell here in Australia. Never had a problem with other brands, and so I’m back to those. On reflection, though – it seems similar to problems that people have had with Reaper’s Bones PVC, so maybe it’s not the spray after all. I’ll have to do some tests on HIPS sprue and some resin offcuts….

Mantic Games Dungeon Saga Scenery Well

Desert Well!

As I have three wells in hand due to buying two of the sets + extras (I’m missing more scenery, too), I had an idea as I was taking them outside to undercoat. My first thought was to paint them all “dungeon grey”/bluestone but then as I was getting out the spray primer (damn Rustoleum) I had the thought to paint them differently. One to go with my desert mat, one to go with my green mat and one to go with the dungeon internals. So this one is sandstone.

Mantic Games Dungeon Saga Scenery Well

Field Well!

I added a bit of Vallejo realistic water at the bottom of each to make them look a little nicer than just leaving the shallow sculpted bottom (which, again is quite decent for a sculpted model.) I painted the second one here as field stone. I added a bit of variation between the stones, but that seems to have mostly disappeared after washes and highlighting. I finished it by adding some plant growth around the edges, and added a little more realistic water than the desert well.

Dungeon Saga Scenery Items.

And here’s the “group shot”. I’ll have to get onto the bookshelves next, since I didn’t spray those and therefore gunk them up at all. Sometime after that I’ll have to try and scrub that horrid Rustoleum off the other pieces. I’m not looking forward to that one bit.

Reaper Bones, 77249: Large Barrel Small Barrel, 77248: Crates (Large and Small)

Reaper Bones’ Barrels set and Crates set

As a very exciting separate bonus – here are the Barrels and Crates from Reaper’s Bones II line. I painted these last year and photographed them because I’m now trying to photograph everything I finish, but they weren’t exciting enough to even sneak into any updates until now. So here they are.

Ral Partha Europe – Undead Ogres (6-Month Tale of Gamers Challenge)

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Back in August last year, I put up a post reviewing the Ral Partha Europe Undead Ogres from the Das Schwarze Auge line – Undead Ogre – Axe, and Undead Ogre – Club. I’d recently picked them up and shared my experience with ordering from RPE and showed off the figures as well as the minor conversion work I did on them. I’d originally planned to take them to work, since painting bone and metal is something I can do there with limited time and a limited palette. It never actually happened, since the models were a bit too big to find a small enough carry case for them once I’d based them on their 40mm squares. So, like so many others, they sat on my desk, staring at me for months with baleful eye(sockets).

Ral Partha Europe, Das Schwarze Auge, Undead Ogres

Paint meeeeeee….

Over on Dakka, I threw together a post one night on my Plog asking if anyone wanted to join me in a “Tale of Several Gamers” type challenge to try and finish a unit per month for 6 months – and see how we do before extending it, or setting up a second one. By the next morning, there were a half-dozen people keen to come on board, and asking me when the proper thread would be started. I took this as a sign, and wrote up the “Official Post” with fairly open, flexible “rules” to get people painting, if not gaming.

Ral Partha Europe, Das Schwarze Auge, Undead Ogres

He axed me to paint him…

People just kept coming on board, and now there’s 28 people including a bunch of people I’ve never chatted to before and I’ve stopped updating the number of people in the OP. There’s not much there yet, but it did motivate me to get back on the horse with a double-challenge of both Marouda’s Undead and my own Gondor Army. I’ve even convinced Marouda to take part with the Mythological Greeks, though I’ll be contributing help to a greater or lesser extent there as well.

Ral Partha Europe, Das Schwarze Auge, Undead Ogres

The club this guy used to wield got axed.

So here they are. As a direct result of making some rules for myself in the form of the challenge, I knuckled down and finished these guys off yesterday. Mostly it was a matter of highlighting the bone, painting the shield, and finishing off the metal. Not too much, but sometimes it’s a matter of making yourself complete these things rather than an actual lot of work.

Ral Partha Europe, Das Schwarze Auge, Undead Ogres

Undead Ogres Three.

Ral Partha Europe, Das Schwarze Auge, Undead Ogres

And an old Marauder Miniatures Undead Shield comes into play.

This trio will be used in Marouda’s Undead Army for Kings of War. We’ll use the entry for Zombie Trolls, since the stats fit well enough with these big fellas. Now I owe the Gondor Army a completed unit for January!

Fake edit – after I’d written up the above text here but before I photographed my models, I found that Subedai has also just finished the very same models for his Undead Oldhammer army. For anyone interested in using these models in Oldhammer, some stats have been created on Rab’s Weekly Digest that you’re obviously welcome to use.