Dark Souls – The Board Game

The second enemy type encountered in the board game are Silver knights. I again looked to the series artwork for direction. These enemies appear in all three Dark Souls games and their colour scheme varies with type and location. I decided to go with a cleaner, bluish hue to the armour of the Swordsmen, while the Archers armour would be more broken down with brown and green tones.

All of my armoured models were primed with Lead Belcher and given a coat of Nuln Oil to bring out the detail. Further colouration was achieved with washes and light dry brushes. In the case of the archers I used Agrax again while the swordsmen were washed with Darkenhorf Nightshade. A Runefang Steel dry brush added highlights and brought the metallic look back after washing.

These two larger knight models are known as Sentinels. Again they appear in various locations and colour schemes throughout the Dark Souls Video games series. For clarity I used the colour scheme depicted on the unit card which is from the city of Anor Londo location in DSI. Here they can be found guarding the doorway to the final boss battle of that level; ‘Ornstein and Smaug’.

Hollows are a common enemy throughout the Dark Souls universe and come in many guises. I initially considered painting each model uniquely to reflect this diversity. In the end however, I decided that it would be less confusing for players if each enemy type in the game could be easily identifiable by colour scheme. This is a convention I would stick with going forward and had the added benefit of making each enemy type quicker to paint as I could work through them in small batches.

Three types of Hollow are represented in the core set, Hollow Soldiers, Hollow Crossbowmen and the Giant Hollows. I chose muted tones to block these out before washing them generously with the hobby staple that is Agrax Earthshade.

The miniatures were given a coat of Army Painter Soft Tone before being finished with a coat of Vallejo mat varnish. I adopted this method of finishing for all the models in the set. The soft tone adds further shading to the miniatures and adds to the muted, dirty look common to the Dark Souls universe. The mat varnish is necessary to remove the shine from the soft tone and also adds a further layer of protection to the paint.