Tag Archives: Reaper Bones

77126: Vermin: Spiders, 77128: Vermin: Spider Swarm (Reaper Bones)

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A couple of very simple paintjobs to share today as the first 6-month “Tale of Gamers” painting challenge comes to a conclusion at the end of June. Like many of us gamer-types, I have a shedload of random figures from Reaper’s Bones I and II Kickstarter campaigns. I did back the third one, but skipped the base pledge this time round as Reaper delved deeper into add-on territory and offered less “value” with the base pledge. Especially as I’ve got more than a lifetime’s worth of random bendy PVC fantasy models, as Tarmor can attest to as I offloaded a bunch to him awhile back! With Bones III, I picked a much more “curated” set of figures. But this isn’t a discussion of Bones III. It’s showing off some rather bland and generic figures with paint to match!

Reaper Bones 77126: Vermin: Spiders

These three are the 77126: Vermin: Spiders. Not a bad sculpt to be truthful. I painted them in red tones with yellowish markings because Marouda’s far from a fan of realistic, life-size spiders and because they’ll be used in the Undead army, and red/black with a touch of teal/bronze/etc are the army colours. Their fangs are done with Citadels’ new “Gemstone” paint (the blue one) over a dark metallic base. Mostly because I’d only just gotten them and wanted to experiment with them a little on inconsequential figures.

Reaper Bones 77128: Vermin: Spider Swarm

The next three are Reaper’s 77128: Vermin: Spider Swarms. These are what they are, I guess. Much more for generic roleplaying purposes, but they didn’t take much time to paint up and ink. I used a few shades of ruddy red-browns so as to distinguish the spiders a little. It didn’t especially work, but at least the blobs are varied a little. I could have gone through and very carefully painted eyes and markings on each individual spider, but at the end of the day, these Swarm models don’t deserve that much of my – or your – time. As gaming models for what are essentially trash mobs, they’re good enough. I have a bunch more of the larger spiders and beetles and such somewhere from Bones I that I was cleaning up for paint a year or two ago, but they’ve gone missing somewhere.

Reaper Bones 77126: Vermin: Spiders

Reaper Bones 77128: Vermin: Spider Swarm

All six models were based on 30mm bases I got from Impact! Games, as 25mm rounds are too small, they fit them well enough – and quite frankly I’m buggered if I’m going to use my expensive 32mm Citadel rounds on them. I then made up some unit bases for them from 120x40mm cuts of MDF that I purchased for unit trays – somewhat inspired by Grimdork’s unit trays over on Dakka. The trays are for their main use – as “Undead Army Swarms” in Kings of War. Technically, they’re a unit that is part of the Army of Dust (Not-Tomb Kings) and not the more generic Undead (that covers the Vampire Counts stuff), but I’m in favour of fluff over RAW when it comes to army lists for friendly games. When I paint scorpions, they’ll be much more AoD/TK themed. I noticed after taking the photographs that the grass tufts I’ve added to the bases here are a little dull, so I’ve since added a few in a slightly brighter green.

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.