Mantic Dungeon Saga: Dwarf KIng’s Quest – Zombies, Skeletons and Ghosts/Wraiths

Mantic Dungeon Saga: Dwarf KIng's Quest - Zombies, Skeletons and Ghosts/Wraiths

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.

Mantic Dungeon Saga: Dwarf KIng's Quest - Skeletons
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.

Mantic Dungeon Saga: Dwarf KIng's Quest - Skeletons

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.

Mantic Dungeon Saga: Dwarf KIng's Quest - Zombies
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.

Mantic Dungeon Saga: Dwarf KIng's Quest - Zombies

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 🙂

Mantic Dungeon Saga: Dwarf KIng's Quest - Ghosts/Wraiths
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.

Mantic Dungeon Saga: Dwarf KIng's Quest - Ghosts/Wraiths

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.

Dungeon Saga: Some Small Scenics

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.