Grenadier AD&D Small Figure Set 2010 Denizens Of The Swamp Giant Snake

Next out of the lead mountain was this little gem - one of the early Grenadier figures from the early 1980's, from the Denizens Of The Swamp box set. I'm a big fan of the early Grenadier figures - I know that they can look somewhat childish and naive compared to the more sophisticated sculpts of today - but to my mind they have a wonderful fun element that seems to be lacking in a lot of modern figures. They also seemed to mirror the drawing style of the illustrations in the early AD&D manuals! 

I think this is a terrific figure, with a definite sinister air to it. My only concern it whether I've done it justice with the paint job.I am sure every miniature painter has at least one figure in their collection that they look at and think, "why did I paint it that way". 

To be honest, that is where I am with this figure - I looked at it, and instead of going with inks and drybrushing, I decided to give it a black base coat and then pick out each of the scales with green or yellow. Yes, really. It seemed like a good idea at the time... but it took forever, and I'm still not sure that it was the right decision. 

The base is just standard green flock, with some shards of bark from the garden serving as "reeds". I also applied a single gloss varnish, to think and convey the smooth sheen on the snake scales.

The figure itself is great, although if you wanted to be picky you could point out that the head is maybe a bit too large, and those fangs are just comical... but it looks the part, and that is the main thing. I'm not too sure about the paint job though. Still, its perfectly good for terrorising lost adventurers who make the fatal error of crossing a swamp!

Grenadier Fantasy Lords 1st Series 163 Black Drake

Has it REALLY been 3 months since I last posted?!?! Good grief... I can only put it down to a combination of factors - work, holidays, kids needing ferrying to universities and colleges, unexpected sunshine and a garden that seemed to need constant attention. Excuses, excuses...

This figure was actually started at the tail end of June, and I have only just got round to finishing it.

It's well sculpted I think - plenty of detail - and painted up quite well. Black is a notoriously difficult colour to paint up, and this was done with a black undercoat and then drybrushing with several layers of very dark blue paint to bring up the detail. The red scales had to be picked out with white, and then painted red, followed by orange drybrushing. It's a long figure - hence the need for a custom base - and I added bits from a plastic Games Workshop skeleton horse to pad out a little at the ends. The texture on the base is some grit/gravel from a railway model, inked over to give it a suitably dark look.

As with many of the Grenadier 1st series creatures, it is a bit of an oddity. It looks like a standard dragon... but that beak is just strange. You just can't imagine it breathing fire! And that tail with the vicious looking club looks like something from a dinosaur.

A quick check through my old D&D manuals gave a few pointers:

When possible, black dragons prefer to feed on sentient beings, considering fey creatures particular delicacies. The bulk of their diet consists of swamp creatures such as snakes, alligators, small mammals, and birds. Like alligators, black dragons might let their prey rot in the mud at the bottoms of swamps because they prefer the texture and flavor of putrefied flesh. 

- which would explain the beak, as it would be more suitable for tearing rotting flesh, similar to a carrion crow.  I'm guessing that the preferred mode of attack would be to swoop down on an unsuspecting adventurer, club them senseless with the tail, and then drag the bodies to a suitable swamp to rot down before consumption. Yeuuccck. 

Quite pleased with this one! And I hope to post more regularly for the rest of the year...

Asgard Fantasy Monsters FM19 Storm Giant

From the D&D Expert rulebook: "These are the tallest giants, often over 22' tall. They have bronze coloured skin and bright red or yellow hair." This is Asgard's take on a Storm Giant, painted with the above description in mind.

This is an absolute whopper of a figure, in solid metal, and seriously heavy - if you look at the base, I have attached the skull from a plastic Games Workshop skeleton to give an idea of scale. In fact, to illustrate this further, I've added another pic of the same figure with a "normal" sized Asgard figure from the same era. 

Whilst you get an awful lot of metal for your figure, the quality of sculpting isn't that great - as with many of the Asgard figures of the period, it is is very coarse, with things such as fingers pretty much reduced to just lines scraped into the main fist. Other lowlights include the detail on the helmet, the legs - basically two thick stumps - and the mace it is wielding. Still, I did my best; base colours first, then a couple of washes, then lots and lots of highlighting. The base is just builders sand inked over, plus a few rocks from the garden, as well as the skull.

It's a fairly dramatic figure I think; it certainly looks the part, striding purposefully forward to smite some unfortunate opponent. If you saw it on a D&D table you'd probably want to get your party of adventurers out of the way of it ASAP!  It's also a fairly rare figure from what I can make out - I've only ever seen it on auction sites a couple of times, and even then usually without the mace that figure originally came with. I suspect that its scarcity is probably because of the cost of the figure in the late 1970's/80's - something using that much metal would not have been cheap - plus the line drawings from the Asgard catalogue of the time didn't give any idea of the scale of the figure, or really do it justice. A bit of a shame really, because as a piece of old school lead I think it's fantastic, even after taking the coarseness of the sculpt into account.

Finally, this from a later edition of D&D: "Very rarely, storm giants have violet skin. Violet-skinned storm giants have deep violet or blue-black hair with silvery gray or purple eyes." I have another copy of the same figure in a very sorry state - broken off at the legs, missing the mace and undercoated in what appears to industrial strength white car primer - but if I clean it up, I may well paint it up as a violet skin variant. Watch this space...

Grenadier Dragon Lords Fantasy Box Set 5002 Monsters - Slime A plus Citadel Runequest Demon Amorph

Two rather peculiar figures next. The one on the left is a Grenadier sculpt, depicting a natural hazard much beloved of Dungeon Masters everywhere - a green slime - whilst the one on the right has been kindly identified by Joe Thomlinson as a Citadel Runequest Demon Amorph:

The green slime is a splendid sculpt - rearing up to strike at an unwary adventurer - and was very simple to paint, just a base coat of green, green and brown ink washes and highlighting. The rest of the base was coated with PVA glue and then inked up accordingly. I deliberately used a gloss varnish on this sculpt to emphasise the sliminess, and it looks a treat - unfortunately, it makes it very difficult to get a decent picture, and to be honest I don't think the picture I've posted does it justice.

As for the Runequest demon... I found it in the lead mountain next to the green slime, so at some time I obviously thought they should go together. Again, very easy to paint - a base coat of pink, then red ink wash, then highlighting, then a matter of picking out the various eyes, teeth and lips on whatever it is. The rest of the base was coated with PVA glue and then inked up accordingly, and it came out with a suitably unpleasant look as if it is resting on a thin sheen of blood (!). Originally I used a gloss varnish but somehow it didn't look right, so a top layer of dullcote was applied for the final result.

Very pleased with both of these - easy to paint, good final result - and I can see both of them getting a significant amount of play time!

Grenadier Fantasy Legends 3107 Troll (2 of 2)

And next up - another Julie Guthrie troll from Grenadier. This was originally part of a two figure set; I did the first figure here. At the time I didn't realise that the two figures were a combo, otherwise I might have painted them together. As it is, they get separate billing. 

I've gone for more of a gray-skinned LOTR/The Hobbit feel for this one - in addition, this chappie might end up as part of a Winter Orc army, which uses whites and grays as the default colour scheme. The figure was actually quite easy to paint; a gray base coat, then an ink wash, then highlighting, then the slightly tedious matter of picking out the unpleasant red blemishes on the skin. The base is just stones and sticks from the garden under a flock coating, and then an ink wash on top of that.

It's a nice sculpt, as are most of Julie Guthrie's figures - it certainly looks unpleasant enough - but somehow I'm not enthused about it. The figure seems oddly stiff, and to my mind it lacks an air of menace. Still, I am quite sure he won't look out of place amongst the Orcish hordes!

Asgard Fantasy Monsters FM28v2 Half Troll with hammer

I haven't posted for a while due to a fairly hectic social life and work load - but I've still managed to do some painting in my spare time! The next nugget to be extracted from the lead mountain was this beastie from Asgard:

A lot of the early Asgard figures were quite coarse, but this one is quite well sculpted I think. It certainly painted up well - just the usual Citadel base paints, then washes and highlighting - although I wish I'd been braver with the shield, and done my own design on it. As it is, I've chickened out and used a transfer (actually from a Warhammer 40k Space Marine transfer set!). The base is just some small stones from the garden, some flock from a railway basing set and some thin strands of stick for the reeds.

It is actually quite a striking figure - literally! - with a very dramatic pose, which I haven't seen any other sculptor use. It is unusual, and makes for a very long figure base, which perhaps accounts for why it wasn't a particularly popular figure. I know Viking Forge still produce it, but on my travels I've only seen my copy of the figure and maybe one or two other pictures of it.

Grenadier Fantasy Lords 1st Series 138 Hippogriff

Next up from the lead mountain... another Grenadier sculpt:

I have to be honest and say that when this one was extracted I was not enthused. I am not a fan of large winged creatures in fantasy settings (dragons excepted), purely for the reason that they take up an inordinate amount of space to store, and also because they collect dust like a dragon gathers gold! Still, out with the brushes...

I made a decision to keep the colour scheme as simple as possible - just a light gray for the wings and body, white on the neck, and yellow for the beak, crest and legs/claws, followed by a dark wash and then lots and lots of highlighting, starting with light gray and then working up to white for the wing tips. It actually brushed up quite well, especially the wings:

It turned out a lot better than I expected it to - good quality sculpting from Grenadier! - but to be honest I can't see this figure getting too much table play, unless I make it a centre piece of my Hordes Of The Things (HOTT) wood elf army. Hmmm...