Grenadier Wizzards & Warriors Slime variant, Minifigs Sword & Sorcery SS47 Slimeman and Unknown mud/clay man

Next out of the lead mountain were a number of related sculpts – all easy to paint – so I’ve posted them together:

The Grenadier sculpt was from their earliest Wizzards and Warrior range, which was produced to tie-in with the D&D craze that was just taking off. The actual sculpt itself is not impressive – just a smooth lump of lead with a “eye” stuck on – so it was a bit of a challenge to do something (anything!) with it. The first job was to glue it on to a base of PVA glue – not only did that secure the sculpt, but once the glue dried it provided a smooth surface that suggested the sculpt was rising out of it. After that, a really simple paint job – base yellow, pink for the “eye”, then a wash of Army Painter Soft tone, then picking out the “eye” again with pink. Simples!

The Slimeman is from the Minifigs Sword and Sorcery range in the early 1970’s, and were originally sold as the official range of D&D figures. They are VERY basic – hardly any detail – and I was not enthused when this came out of the box. Still, I tried – same approach as the Grenadier slime, stuck to the base with PVA glue, and then a base coat of yellow, then Army Painter Soft tone, and then a GW green ink wash. Much to my surprise this actually came out fairly well – it looks like a vaguely humanoid shape rising out of a layer of green slime. Most unappealing.

The final figure was in a job lot with the Grenadier slime, and to honest I have no idea what is supposed to be, or who made it. If anyone has any ideas – please let me know! It *looked* like it could be made out of clay or mud, so the same approach again – PVA glue base, then a sand base colour, then Army painter soft tone and highlights.

All of the figures were finished with a gloss varnish to suggest a slimy sheen, and on the whole they work pretty well for very basic figures that were sculptured over 40 years ago! Slimes and molds area feature of many dungeons, so I can see these getting quite a bit of table top time.  

Asgard Fantasy Monsters FM53 Balrog

Next to be extracted from the Lead Mountain was this beastie from Asgard. It’s their take on the Balrog from LOTR. It originally came in two parts – the body, and the wings, both cast in metal.

Attaching the wings to the body gave me no end of grief. The moulding to attach the wings was crude to say the least, and the wings are incredibly thick and heavy – they weigh about the same as the body! It took several goes, a lot of superglue and a LOT of cursing to get them to stay on. Once I had them fixed, the joints were filled with Milliput. Not an easy job! The next problem was the figure once the wings were attached – it wouldn’t stand up unassisted, due to the small base size. This was addressed by gluing it to a GW base – the original Asgard base had stones moulded into it, so I extended that by adding additional stones carved from Milliput.

So on to the paint job. This was actually the simplest part – base red, GW wash for depth, and then lots and lots of dry brushing. I wanted it to look like a creature of fire, and I think that the colour scheme worked pretty well. The flaming sword was problematical – not really much detail to work with – but I tried my best by picking it out with yellows and whites to suggest heat. The whip of fire was just a matter of highlighting the tail ends of the whip. As for the base… the easiest thing would have been to paint it gray, but I wanted to give the effect of heat and fire, so I painted them orange to suggest reflected flames. There are a few grains of sand on the base as well, picked out in red, to suggest embers.

Whilst I like the figure, I can’t see it getting too much table top time. I rarely run campaigns that make use of Balrogs or Fire Demons, although if I do need one I can bring this chappie out. And it has wings, which are one of my pet peeves with miniatures. And it is a seriously large bit of metal – look at the Grenadier early 80’s archer next to it! I understand Viking Forge still produce it using the old Asgard moulds, and I think it still holds up pretty considering it is nearly 40 years old!

Grenadier Fantasy Lords 1st series 134 Armoured Centaur and Garrison Sword and Sorcery SS76 Female Centaur

It’s been a while – a combination of work and then holidays has prevented me from posting – but I’ve still been painting. Here we have two figures on the same topic – centaurs – but with very different styles. The Garrison figure was bought as part of a job lot, and when I extracted it from the Lead Mountain I was NOT enthused… then I realised I was also working on the Grenadier figure as part of a HOTT Woodland army, and thought it would be interesting to paint them and show them together.

Garrison were one of the earliest figure manufacturers – I think this figure was sculpted in the mid 1970’s by the great John Braithwaite, and based on the Robert E Howard Conan novels. As consequence, it is VERY simple, and quite coarse, with some very strange proportions… maybe he was reading The Sun’s page 3 when he sculpted it! Still, out with the brushes… the main thing with the early figures is to keep the paint job simple, and I did exactly that – dark gray for the horse body and hair, then dry brushed white. The torso is just base flesh with Army Painter soft tone for shading, and then flock on the base.

I didn’t have any expectations of this figure, and I was quite surprised it turned out fairly well. It actually reminds me a bit of the primitive art, Neolithic paintings on cave walls, simple and a little bit child-like, but with a definite energy. I like this figure!

The Grenadier figure was done in the mid 1980’s, and shows just how far sculpting had gone. This figure was actually rescued from a junk pile at a war games fair, and had obviously had a very hard life – really badly painted and dented. Soaking it in Simple Green brought the paint off, but it had lost a bit of detail. Excuses, excuses….

I stuck to the same colour scheme – dark gray for the horse parts, dry brushed white, and then picked out the armour with white as well, followed by a quick coat of Army Painter dark tone and finally picking out detail with gold and burgundy. The face and arms were simply flesh tone and Army Painter soft tone again. I really like the mid-80’s Grenadier figures, the one produced before the oval flat bases and the Nick Lund era, and I think this is one of their better efforts – I’ll be happy to see him based up as part of a centaur Knights unit.

Interlude: Dipping - a UK comparison of Quickshade and two UK based varnishes

When I am not painting up old bits of lead, I am also painting up various armies for use with Hordes Of The Things (HOTT). This usually involves me ransacking various old games such as Battle Masters, Hero Quest and Dark World for the miniatures, which are then used to make up the rank and file aka sword fodder.

The majority of these miniatures are painted for tabletop use, and I've previously had good results with a furniture varnish by Blackfriar - I use the Dark Jacobean colour. However, I was given two tins of Army Painter Quickshade - one tin of Strong, one of Dark - and I thought I'd post how they compared. In addition, a friend had suggested using Wilkinsons own brand Walnut Satin Woodstain, so a tin of that was acquired.

I've tried to summarise my findings below by assigning a rating between 1 (poor) and 5 (good) for each of the following categories:

• Price
• Preparation for dipping
• Application of dipping
• Drying time

Price
Army Painter Quickshade Strong - £16. 2/5
Army Painter Quickshade Dark - £16. 2/5
Wilkinsons Satin Woodstain - £4.20. 5/5
Blackfriar Dark Jacobean - £7.29. 4/5

And here are the contestants - 4 archers from Battle Masters. all painted in the same base colours:

 
Preparation
Army Painter Quickshade Strong - just shake the tin. Easy. 4/5.
Army Painter Quickshade Dark - just shake the tin. Easy. 4/5.
Wilkinsons Satin Woodstain - needs LOTS of stirring and associated mess. 2/5.
Blackfriar Dark Jacobean - needs stirring and associated mess. 3/5.

Application - this was done with a brush, with the figure held upside down.
Army Painter Quickshade Strong - smooth, easy to apply, little or no pooling. 4/5.
Army Painter Quickshade Dark - smooth, easy to apply, little or no pooling. 4/5.
Wilkinsons Satin Woodstain - awful, really sticky and thick. Lots of pooling. 2/5.
Blackfriar Dark Jacobean - thicker than Quickshade, bit sticky to apply, bit of pooling. 3/5.

In all cases, the brush could be cleaned with White Spirits, as long as the brush was cleaned before the varnish dried!

Drying time
Army Painter Quickshade Strong - good, touch dry in 3-4 hours. 4/5.
Army Painter Quickshade Dark - good, touch dry in 3-4 hours. 4/5.
Wilkinsons Satin Woodstain - fast! Touch dry in 2 hours. 5/5.
Blackfriar Dark Jacobean - slow. Needed to be left overnight. 3/5.

Here are the figures after the drying:

And finally, after a coat of Dullcote:

My conclusion is that whilst Quickshade dips are expensive, the Dark version delivered what I wanted - easy to use, quick drying, and the figure looked good enough for general tabletop use.

If cost was an issue - then Blackfriar varnish is a definite alternative, if you can live with the stickiness of application to the figure and the extended drying time.

Asgard Fantasy Monsters FM43 Giant Griffon with GW Eagle wings

Now this is a bit of an oddity. I originally acquired just the body as part of a job lot – no sign of the original wings – and I was going to pass it on an incomplete miniature. As I was digging through the bits box, I stumbled across a pair of wings from a Games Workshop Eagle… but with no eagle body. Asgard body, meet GW wings.

Now, I am not a fan of winged miniatures. They take up too much space, the wings get chipped and break off far too easily, and worst of all they gather dust. But I like a challenge…

 

The wings actually fitted on to the body quite well using a few dabs of superglue, followed up with Milliput to make the join a bit less obvious. After that, white primer, then base coats of dark brown and yellow for the body and upper wings, and then dark gray for the lower wing tips – and then a wash of Army Painter Soft tone, and lots of lots and LOTS of dry brushing, especially on the lower wing tips. The GW wings really benefited from this – the Asgard body less so. As with so many Asgard miniatures (especially the large ones), the quality of sculpting is really coarse – the claws in particular were just indentations on the paws - and the GW wings did tend to show that up.
  
The figure needed a decent sized base to make it stable, but it did look empty – so the heads of victims were added, which are just GW plastic heads and various bits and pieces painted up in suitably decaying colours.

I was fairly pleased with this - it might even get some table top time for wilderness encounters. Not too bad for a late 70’s basic sculpt and a dodgy conversion job!

Grenadier Fantasy Lords 2nd Series 009 Titan

Titan: an enormous, powerful, and godly outsider. Though titans are supposedly of both chaotic good and chaotic evil alignments, the majority of them seem to be good, and hence, those are the ones which will be described here. In appearance, a good titan resembles an enormous (25 feet tall) humanoid, with perfect beauty and strength. They are hardy and muscular, but nonetheless extremely handsome/beautiful. Every aspect of them (teeth, hair, etc.) is also perfect.

When this nugget was extracted from the Lead Mountain, my immediate reaction was WOW – what a figure! It is fabulous bit of metal – large scale (look at the Grenadier-Copplestone Wood Elf next to it), and really well sculpted – lots of detail, and a great pose. I’d acquired this figure in job lot, and originally it had been quite badly painted, but I’d stripped that off and was determined to try and make a decent stab at it. 
With something this size, I thought the best thing would be to keep the paint job as simple as possible, so not to distract from the figure. The helmet, breastplate, shield and greaves were just base gold, whilst the tunic was white, against standard flesh tones. I went for a red plume on the helmet for a contrast against the gold and white, and also because the figure reminded me of the Spartans from 300!

After that – a wash of Army Painter Soft Tone, which really brought out the detail and gave the helmet, breastplate and shield a good polished bronze appearance, followed by lots and lots of dry brushing. I deliberately kept the base as simple and as cluttered as possible – it's just GW sand, inked over and then dry brushed.

I am very pleased with the way this one turned out!

Asgard Fantasy Monsters FM75 Huge Spider - Unknown Barrow Wight - Asgard Fantasy Monsters FM96 Vampire Bat

Just a minor update of some miniatures I’ve been working on. First up, the Asgard giant spider - I'd previously posted it here, but I wasn't especially happy with the photos, so I've added it again here as part of a group. Oddly enough it looks far better at a distance!

In the middle… an unknown. This came as part of a job lot, and the base was missing or had been cut off, so I have no idea who the manufacturer is. I think it’s a barrow wight – the crown suggests that – but I can’t confirm it. A Lich maybe? I’ve searched for similar figures and found one other owner, but they have no idea who made it either! Any thoughts on who the manufacturer is gratefully received! The actual paint job was fairly simple – light green, then GW Beltain green, then dry brushing, with the face and crown picked out. The base is simply flock with a few strands of cotton wool to suggest mist! Whilst I was fairly happy with the paint job, I thought it did bring out how coarse the sculpting is – the face of the wight/Lich in particular isn’t that great. Still, I like the sculpt and the figure – I think it is very atmospheric – and I can see this getting a lot of table top time.

Lastly, the Asgard Vampire bat. Quite an easy figure to paint; browns and grays, then Army Painter Dark tone, followed by dry brushing. Simples! Having said that – I honestly can’t see it getting much table top time. It’s not a particularly dynamic figure – I think most Role Players would have preferred a figure in flight, rather than having something scrabbling along the dungeon floor. From what I can make out, it wasn’t a particular popular piece, and it’s fairly rare now. One for the collectors than the players, I think!