Reaper 14207: Traeg, Reven Hero/Beastman Champion (Neglected Model September ’18)

Reaper 14207: Traeg, Reven Hero, Beastman Champion, Beasts of Chaos

Hey! A Reaper Miniature that’s actually not a Bones model!

This model is a long-neglected one with a story behind it. Sometime in the mid-noughties, the main independent games store in the Melbourne CBD (Mind Games) was having a painting competition involving Reaper models as a sort of promotion, apparently involving Reaper Miniatures themselves. I was a regular back then, and so I decided to join in. I looked amongst the offerings, and found this guy. So I bought him and took him home. I didn’t like the shitty square, lipped base that he came on, and decided to rebase him on a larger base, and as I’d “envisioned” the leaping-over-rock pose from the moment I saw the model, and a 25mm round just wasn’t large enough, or have enough gravitas.

Reaper 14207: Traeg, Reven Hero, Beastman Champion, Beasts of Chaos

So the next time I was in, a few days later, or possibly the following week, the sales attendant who I was on good terms with asked how it was going. I told him I’d started it and it was coming along, and that I’d changed up the base. He told me that the base thing would prevent me from entering and pointed to the part of the sign that for some reason specified that the figure needed to be based on the base it came on. I don’t remember my reply (it wasn’t rude, I’d have remembered that much).

Reaper 14207: Traeg, Reven Hero, Beastman Champion, Beasts of Chaos

So the next time I was in, he asked me about how the model was going again, and I told him that I’d lost interest because of the basing thing and wasn’t working on it anymore. He then told me that the base woundn’t matter, and encouraged me to finish it anyway to enter it, but the thing was, by that point, my enthusiasm had been completely deflated and the figure sat for over a decade, every so often I’d think about wanting to try to finish it, but basically, fuck-all had been done on it since.

Reaper 14207: Traeg, Reven Hero, Beastman Champion, Beasts of Chaos

And that brings us to now. This figure has sat in the tubs of stuff I’ve wanted to finish for at least a year now, but my recent run of working on Beastmen, along with this being a Neglected Model month was enough to finally get me to properly work on finishing this model off, though it was still something I had to force myself to do for the entire process – and it involved a hell of a lot of the work, as I hadn’t gotten a huge amount of it finished before the comment about basing that put me off completing the model.

Reaper 14207: Traeg, Reven Hero, Beastman Champion, Beasts of Chaos

Anyway, as you can see, he fits in reasonably well with the Citadel goat-headed Beastman Gors, despite quite a few colour choices that separate him (skin, fur, loincloth, shield). As I said, though – I was building on what was originally done in 2005 or thereabouts while trying to finally finish this bastard rather than going for a complete repaint (because then I’d never get the fucking thing completed). The armour was originally black where it’s now a blued silver, so I was probably going for a Khorne-theme back then rather than generic. Bloody typical!

Oh! And he’s now available in Bones!

This guy concludes my little Beastman/Beasts of Chaos tangent for this month, unless something amazingly unexpected happens in the next three days.

 

Dwarf Adventurers – Pathfinder & Anti-Paladin

A couple of Dwarves to share today. These, like much of what I’m showing at the moment were painted during the latter months of 2016 when I was too busy to post. Basically, my free time was right down, so I spent a few months where my “hobby time” was spent painting instead of writing posts and following blogs and my “gaming time” watching YouTube videos before falling asleep for the night. Reaper Miniatures really has some lovely models for wargamers. We all know that their bread and butter is the D&D/RPG crowd, but the effect that this has for the wargamers is that their models tend to have a lot of character to them, and so make great low-level heroes, individuals and unit leaders (as long as you don’t mind some uniform variation amongst your usually-quite-uniform plastics. Since I’m an old grognard and love my old metal models this isn’t a big issue for me. On the other hand, they’re not especially cheap. They’re not expensive, or anywhere near the prices of GW’s hero models mind, but if you were looking to make a unit of Reaper metals, well, they’re not so cheap as to make that an easy option.

Reaper Miniatures 14460: Dwarven Pathfinder Grunt, 03508: Bregol Jagstone, Dwarf Ranger

Anyway, I saw this guy somewhere at some stage, and knew I had to have him, so I picked him up. He’s sculpted by Tom Mason and alternately known as Dwarven Pathfinder Grunt with a slotta or in “broccoli base” form, as Bregol Jagstone, Dwarf Ranger. Oddly, despite the “Pathfinder grunt” moniker, I can only find a single other dwarf pathfinder by Reaper, so…

Reaper Miniatures 14460: Dwarven Pathfinder Grunt, 03508: Bregol Jagstone, Dwarf Ranger

When it came to the figure, I of course got the slotta version, so he fit in immediately. Anyway, with his wrench shaped axe and hooded cloak, he could easily go in any of several directions as far as paint goes. I chose for reasons unknown to me to go with the “ranger” look and painted him with a series of naturalistic colours – a series of greens to give him some variation and red-browns to give the model a nice rich tone. I have a box or two of AoW’s dwarf rangers somewhere, so one day he’ll no doubt lead some of them. He did get a great ginger beard, since I felt that fit the sculpt and palette nicely.

Stonehaven Miniatures Dwarf Anti-Paladin, Death Knight, Shadowknight

Stonehaven’s sculpting is a little uneven, but many of the figures have a definite old-school charm to them. I’ve shared a few of them a little while ago, and will have more soon as well. They’re clearly also going for the D&D/RPG market that Reaper aims at, but that’s ok by me, and I’m sure it’s fine with roleplayers, who obviously have an absolutely huge range in what their characters look like. This model is their Anti-Paladin (Death Knight, Shadow Knight, etc). As such, I painted her armour with metallic blues with a sea-green/black tabard and gloves, and bright red hair as a nod to my old (non-dwarf) EQ character. Her sword doesn’t quite reach down to the ground (at least on my casting) so I hid it with a little skull at the front and a tuft of grass at the rear.

Stonehaven Miniatures Dwarf Anti-Paladin, Death Knight, Shadowknight

In game terms, they’ll both work well in RPGs and various board games. Bregol will have a place leading some Dwarven rangers, or as an Artillery guy in the interim (because wrench-axe) and the Shadow Knight can no doubt have some sort of spot in the Undead or Chaos armies. Until I get the Chaos Dwarves properly out and about, anyway…