Tag Archives: Scotia Grendel

Scotia Grendel Ruined Keep & Ruined Gothic Archway

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No figures to show off today. The painting’s been going well, but I’ve got to get out and take some more photos soon. In lieu of anything new, here’s some scenery that I painted a long, long time ago and photographed last year.

Scotia Grendel Ruined Gothic Archway

I bought both of the sets mentioned up top around the same time, but I vastly preferred this entranceway “Ruined Gothic Archway” to the “proper” one that came with the set, so this is the one that I ended up painting up to go with the walls. Much more “Gothic” and since the main game this stuff was used for over the years was 40k…

Rear View of Ruined Gothic Cathedral

Imagine my surprise and pleasure at seeing that the rear of the arch piece was void of all detail whatsoever – just a smooth resin piece from a one-piece pour mold. The base was fine, but I decided that I had to do something about the lack of detail on the upper. I scraped out the stonework with a hobby knife, and did my best to weather and stress the stonework using the tools I had at my disposal in the mid-1990’s. So probably the end of a file and a hammer, by the look of things.

Scotia Grendel Ruined Keep wall sections

As can be expected, these walls from the Ruined Keep have seen a lot of action over the years in no end of configurations. Another of the unpleasant surprises from the Grendel Kit once I opened it was the fact that all of those windows were sealed. As in cast-solid. It took my pin vice, a hobby knife and no small amount of time to cut them all out.

Scotia Grendel Ruined Keep ruined towers

As you can imagine, these “ruined towers” have seen a lot less action. Mostly due to being shorter than a Space Marine in height, so not exactly much of a ruined tower in any of their cases. Three or four steps hardly makes a tower, after all…

Scotia Grendel Ruined Keep with Gothic Archway – “Closed” layout.

Here’s the typical “closed” layout I’ve used in games for the entire set. It really could use some more wall sections to look a bit more reasonable.

Scotia Grendel Ruined Keep with Gothic Archway – “Open” layout.

And here’s the “Open” layout that gets used much more often, as it allows models to move through the ruins while taking cover from their enemies. Now that I’ve been gathering and painting a lot more scenery in the last couple of years, I could do a lot more interesting things with these. For example combining them with the WHFB Gothic Graveyard kit, as well as other things I’ve picked up and painted, like those Confrontation brick walls. I need to get some Hirst Arts molds as well, the Graveyard scenery kit looks promising.

Deathworld Fauna – Part 1.1 – Scotia Grendel Dungeon Crawler (Leech)

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Back in March, I found two out of the three figures from the Scotia Grendel Dungeon Crawlers kit that I picked up bout 15-20 years ago. (Damn that makes me feel old!) Because of the way that things seem to work in my life and on the painting desk, the frog-thing and millipede-thing have been MIA for a couple of months now (they might be in the shed, perhaps?) and I ended up finding the leech-thing, conveniently already glued to a 60mm base with some putty ’round the edges. Not wanting to tool around too much rebasing and agonising over the scheme – since that’s a great way to never get anything finished – I decided to get that sucker painted.

So here it is:

Scotia Grendel Dungeon Crawlers Giant Leech

I figure this thing can work just as well as a 40k-sci-fi alien leech as a D&D-style fantasy giant leech. So, you know, whatever. I went with green and mustard yellow since the underside was sculpted with a bit of contrasting texture, so I thought I may as well transfer that to the palette. Same deal with the pinky-purple tongue and the bone teeth, again so they stand out.

Scotia Grendel Dungeon Crawlers Giant Leech

 

A nice thick layer of polyurethane varnish on the model keeps it looking suitable shiny and yucky. I also added some Vallejo realistic water mixed with some transparent yellow to create the slime effect on the side of the model where the slime-holes(!) are located, and some realistic water without colouring onto some of the mouth-parts and tongue.

Scotia Grendel Dungeon Crawlers Giant Leech

I found that the figure looked too small for its base, and to help fill in the empty space without going overboard – or adding in fantasy or sci-fi-specific extras, I just went for some of the larger tufts that I had sitting around in the packets. Often those are the hardest ones to find a use for and they end up on scenery, since they’re too large for use on almost all miniatures.

Scotia Grendel Dungeon Crawlers Giant Leech with Warhammer High Elf for scale.

Finally, a big-hat Warhammer High Elf for scale. I should really finish this guy’s unit off. I bet it would take less than half a day if I ever manage to pull my fist out…  Actually, I’ve got some scenery that just needs finishing off that could be measured in probably less than half an hour…

Full disclosure – I actually painted this thing a couple of weeks ago but didn’t get around to posting it. After a pretty productive two weeks or so of painting I’m in a bit of a ..not burnt out, but kinda taking a rest. Also, my wife bought me a PS4 as a belated birthday gift, and so I’ve been running around Mordor after work and on the weekends instead of sitting and painting like I’m “supposed” to…