Massive Darkness Kickstarter set

So! Here’s the first of a series of photo dumps, putting down all the models I’ve painted so far for the Massive Darkness Kickstarter!

They’re brilliant models, I’m really enjoying painting them. Turning out nicely, even if I know I need more practice on eyes and things! And the photos have made me spot quite a few things I missed, so good to go back and fix the odd mistake or blotch. All the same, I’m pretty happy with it all so far!

These are all the goblin mobs (moblins) for the game. I want each set of minions to have a distinctive colour, so I can pick them out more easily in the box, and I chose yellow for these guys.

Great models, but a shame there’s only one sculpt! Sixteen identical minions is a slog to paint. Especially if you’re going to punish yourself and do checks on the edges of their robes. Sigh. Ah well – worth the effort, I was pleased with the results when I got them all done!

Orcs next!

There are two flavours for these, the Flayers with the twin knives and the standard Warriors with axes. The former are the slightly more elite kind, hitting harder but with less armour. I think, anyway! I’ve actually spent more time painting this lot than playing it, in all honesty.

The spot colours for the Orcs are purple and bone, which contrasts quite well with their deep green skin. I really like the Shaman model, and the Agent as well – brutal and cunnin’, both of ’em! The Agent is an albinorc, he’s got lighter skin.

On to the Dwarves, and these guys got blue as a spot colour. I didn’t use it much in the end, though, they’re mainly made up of armour and hair. Which seems appropriate – they’re dwarves, after all!

The standard warriors have mattocks, the more elite defenders have cleavers. The bosses are pretty sweet, they’d look good in a Chaos Dwarf army, but my standout favourite is the Agent. His pose really captures something for me, he looks mean and conniving. I can really see him standing at the back, sending his minions to their doom while he plots something major.

Having some non-monstrous foes in this game is a really nice touch. There aren’t many other dungeon crawlers around that have this, you’re usually up against various underworld monsters. I could think of Silver Tower from GW as one exception, with the Kairic Acolytes, maybe? Anyone think of any others?

Anyway, this is a pack of barbarians done with plenty of tattoos and facepaint. Red for a spot colour, and I spent a bit longer doing the details on them because there weren’t as many of them (I usually try to finish a unit of miniatures a week as a rough goal, and if it’s a big unit the really fiddly bits usually get rushed past).

Great models, as ever. CMON know what they’re about!

So hands up who loves painting doors?

…yeah, me neither. The only pay-off is that your game does look that bit better once the props are all painted. Just like a tabletop looks great once you’ve made the jump from random coffee mugs to scratch-built coolant storage facilities.

But lordy, is it boring to paint!

Easy and fairly quick, I guess. That’s the only other plus I can find. Slapping brown on a bunch of boards and then fast washes and drybrushes, it’s not long before you can move on to something interesting instead.

I very much have the mentality that the boring rubbish stuff needs to get done first, or it never gets done. So all these chests, doors, pillars and bridges were amongst the first parts of this project I tackled. Dull though it was, I did kind of get excited by the doors. Because they really open! Just like Advanced Heroquest used to! Ah, those good old days.

Right, all the big photo dumps out of the way. Time for the real meat and drink of this project, and that’s got to be the Roaming Monsters!

The main draw of this Kickstarter was the monster models, to my mind. Lovely sculpts in almost every case, and a proper rogue’s gallery of common creatures for DnD.

As I post this, I’m actually well over half way to completing the whole set. I promised myself I’d get it done this year, and after a long pause (painting three small 40K armies), I’ve broken its back. The monsters were my big incentive to get the rest done, so now the slog is over, it’s a gentle coast through the splendour of these critters!

I’m starting with the Bloodseeker Minotaur, which came in the Troglodyte expansion box. It’s a big, beefy, Tauren-looking dude. Everything a minotaur ought to be imho. GW can take it’s weird looking bullcakes and stuff ’em, this is where it’s at!

So here’s the rest of what I have done so far.

Too much to say to really go into much detail, I guess. The Overseer is one of my favourites, it gets used as a Neurothrope in 40K games from time to time. And I was pleased with the Ogre Mage and the Giant Spider in particular. That latter one got a scratch build victim on the base, which was a bit bare otherwise, it’s made from white cotton thread wrapped round tissue paper with two old 40K Space Ork arms poking out.

Otherwise I think they’re great models to paint, as I keep going on about! Hope you like them!

Next batch of three done!

I’m not the only one to paint the three werebeasts together, I think. They sort of make a natural trio, or an unnatural one, at any rate. Werecreatures usually leave me thinking ‘meh’, you don’t often see really good sculpts of them for some reason. And I’m not really a big fan of the lore, either (give me vampires any day).

But these three? I like. Good dynamic poses and a nice blend of human and animal. They’re great shoe-ins for DnD campaigns too, working as either Druid shapeshifts or Rakshasas or what have you.

Only ten more models left to paint!

Right, two massive beasties this week – meet the Cyclopes!

Cliff the Cliffbreaker has a massive throwing rock, and it makes him a bit back heavy. Can’t have your whacking great monster tipping over (despite an urge to homebrew rules that mean anything he lands on midgame gets killed), so I counterbalanced the base with a stone, an old bit of Necromunda lead and some 2p bits glued underneath. Plenty of sand and grit on the base too, so he’s a lot more stable now.

Sheila the Shieldmaiden has yellow-brown skin instead, custom mixed from XV88 and Zandri Desert yellow from Citadel, and a turquoise shield to contrast. That’s another custom colour, fifty-fifty Ahriman Blue and Kabalite Green. I’ve got a bit of a hybrid mix of paints in my box these days, although the majority of it is Citadel. There’s also some Secret Weapon wash on there somewhere, and some Army Painter skin tones in the leather. Barbarian Flesh, if I remember right.

Sorry the pics are pretty blurry. I’m useless with a camera, and have no idea how to fiddle with the depth of field settings. Models this size almost always end up half out of focus, it’s kind of frustrating! But you get the general idea, at least.

There’s no real rush to get the last eight done, I’ve given myself until the end of the year. But I’ve also got Deep Madness about to arrive any day now, and something in me wants this batch out of the way before that hundredweight of plastic clogs up the intray! So onwards and upwards…

I got bogged down in work last week, so a bit of a pause before what I hope will be the last couple of posts. Just eight monsters left to do before I’m finished, and here’s the first four!

The Ogre Rockbreaker and Brute, then both High and Low Trolls. I can’t really say which of them I like the most, they’re all very nicely done. Like the original 80’s Citadel Ogres and Trolls that started me on this long, slow decline in to hobby mania way back when, only bigger and better sculpted (sorry 80s minis, but it’s true).

The High Troll has an arctic look, the Low Troll is therefore swampy in keeping with his geographical background. Both the Ogres are fairly simply dressed, on account of having tons of fiddly accessories, but I did splash out on yellow polka dots for the Brute.

See all those tiny skulls they’re carrying? My guess is that all of these models were originally intended to be about 10-20% bigger than their final scale. The skulls are much smaller than the humans in the game. Maybe it was a sensible choice, though. Massive Darkness, like Zombicide before it, often gets very crowded squares on the board. Or maybe it was a postage weight decision – either way, doesn’t stop them being excellent models!

Just four models left to do. Three, really, I suppose, I finished Hellsbane here this evening.

Who doesn’t need a spare Daemon Prince in their collection? I’ve got the other three gods covered after years of collecting Chaos Warriors, although some are on quaint old square bases. Nice to have Slaanesh finally joining the rest, maybe in time for a big release of Emperor’s Children round Christmas. Fingers crossed, Santa!

I am hoping to have the last three models finished by the end of the week. Posts as I get them done!

This is the Cockatrice, the medieval monster known as the King of Serpents. Just let a hen hatch a chicken’s egg, and this poison-spewing, petrifying horror can be yours for breakfast. Delish.

It’s basically rooster coloured, I looked at some online pics to get the broad strokes right and then did some simple shading and drybrushing from there. Rooster feathers seem quite glossy, so I used gloss Nuln Oil on the wings, then a very sparing final drybrush of Waystone Green (one of the GW gemstone paints) over the top to make them a bit shinier. Ideally, some of those nice iridescent ones from Greenstuff World would do the trick too.

Only two more left to do!

Lord Tusk! Blimey, look at those cleavers. Huge and flat, and therefore ripe for a bit of freehand.

Last time I did celtic knotwork, I kept getting the threads the wrong way round, over instead of under or vice versa, so the whole thing looked like it was about to unravel. So this time, I painted the whole thing as a silver net, highlighted it and then went back over with thin black lines to pick out what was going where. Quicker and easier, at least for my poor old brain.

One final model, and I’ve done the whole set!

It’s the last model, the fabulous Nightmare Thing! Gotta love that formless spawn. It’s the kind of thing you’d find in the drip tray of the dungeon and get dared to take on at the end of a drunken saturday night crawl.

The pale flesh is Kislev Flesh washed with various amounts of purple, blue, red and black. The dark flesh is a mix of Rakarth Flesh and Black, washed with Nuln Oil gloss then layered up through Rakarth Flesh to Pallid Wych Flesh, then washed again with purples and gloss black again.

The teeth looked like they were going to be a pain, but they weren’t as bad as all that in the end. Time and patience, as usual. Then a bit of Blood for the Blood God and ‘Ardcoat here and there to finish, and I’m pleased.

And now the whole lot are done!

That’s the lot!

I’m not a great photographer, but here’s a couple of group shots of everything done and ready to play!