Grenadier Wizzards and Warriors W34b Medusa

The saying goes, “make hay whilst the sun shines”. In my case, it is “varnish figures whilst the sun shines”. After finishing the Asgard Land Dragon, the next figure to be extracted from the Lead Mountain was… this. 

My heart sank. Whilst I am a big fan of Grenadier sculpts in general, the figures from the Wizzards and Warriors range were pretty awful – coarse, low in detail, and probably designed more as toy figures than as miniatures for gamers. This one fits into that category. Alackaday. Still, we must do what we can…

The first thing was to try and get it in a reasonable condition to paint. That meant trimming and filing of flash from the figure, and then filling in small dents and gaps. After that, the paint job… starting from the top; the hair. There was little or no detail to suggest that these were snakes… it just looks like a bad hair day. I’ve attempted to paint each snake with bands, so it suggests something venomous like a coral snake; however, there is so little detail that the end product just looks like a Rastafarian Medusa. Not too happy with that! 

Medusa’s are supposed to be able to turn their victims to stone; with that in mind, I tried to echo that by painting the upper body grey, like stone – my reasoning was that if the Medusa kept taking glances at her body, the very least that should happen would be for it to take on a grey-ish tinge. I was quite pleased with this; I think it inadvertently channels Indian scriptures of Kali! The facial features are very coarse – barely etched into the face – and I’ve done what I can with it. Not sure what the harness it is wearing is supposed to be either, but I’m assumed it is gold jewellery and painted it accordingly.

The lower snake part gave a bit more joy; the sculptor had traced out banding (not with any consistency), so I was able to pick that out with GW putrid flesh for the underbelly, and green and yellow for the scales. The base is simply GW sand. After that… a wash with GW shades, and the highlighting. Lots of lots of highlighting, effectively repainting the figure again!

The end product has a certain naïve charm I suppose, but I’m not enthused. Having said that, it is more likely to see table top time than the Asgard Land Dragon!