Demonsub goes all in with Sláine

Today I received my preorder from Warlord Games for the phase 2 release.

These miniatures covers everything else mentioned in the main rulebook. As far a that book is concerned I now have everything. Any future releases will be brand new and unexpected.

Here’s some photos of the miniatures from the boxes.

As you can see the details on these miniatures are amazing, especially the fine work on the cauldron of blood. They’re going to be superb to paint.

These look great. The bear and boar will be really useful for Frostgrave as well as I don’t have any of those type of miniatures. I probably won’t paint the wolf as I have around eight already painted from Otherworld Miniatures and this one is a little too small to fit with the others. I’m at odds with why they included a porcupine. Of all of the animals to include they could have given us something that is at least native to either the UK, Ireland or Northern Europe. It’s certainly an odd choice and I’ll be adding it to my bits box as I currently have no use for it. I’ll use other miniatures for the beasts of the forest.

Just for fun here are all of the packing slips from the boxes I received. Clearly Judit and Alicja did more work than the others, but I think Laura deserves a mention due to her smiley face.

While reading through Sláine The King graphic novel two pages gave me an idea…

…and after looking on the Scotia Grendel site I put an order in for eight of their stone arches. I could have gone for twelve but I reasoned that eight was a good minimum number to adequately represent a stone circle like Stonehenge on the battlefield while doing less work and cutting down on the expense.

The arches come in three sections and the resin used was very hard and dense, almost like real stone. The carving and detail is very nice. I quickly realised that I needed some mdf square bases which I didn’t have so one trip to ebay later and I got my bases.

Because the resin was so hard it took ages to smooth the stones down and I eventually pinned most of the top stones down onto their supports. 

With fine resin dust everywhere wearing a mask was vital. Cleaning up afterwards felt like disposing of radioactive material.

Here’s the final result and I’m pretty pleased with what I have. I’m excited to play some games with this, either with the stones close together near the centre of the table or with the stones further apart forming a ring around the whole table.

Here are some more shots.

Last night I had a few friends over and we played a battle. One wanted to play the fomorians so based on that, I calculated an equal notoriety value for the Earth tribes for my other friend. Notoriety is Sláine’s name for points. I wasn’t playing in this battle, I was to be rules jockey as I was teaching the game and I was still rusty on a few things.

The scenario was simple, just kill the enemy. Here’s the table.

The Earth tribes could set up along the table edge to the left and the fomorians along the right.

As the forces arrived for the battle it was customary among the Earth tribes for the last to arrive for the battle to be executed in honour of the Earth Goddess (it also encouraged punctuality). A spearman was thus removed from the table (in the game this is optional for the Earth tribe player granting him a blood point).

Both sides advanced with the fomorians taking full advantage of the river moving up it towards the lake. (Fomorians have the aquatic skill which allows them to move through water without any movement penalty and to receive +1 to their evade stat). Balor of the evil eye lead the advance on his huge war elk heading around the trees next to the lake to charge Morgan Axehead and injuring him.

Sláine on the far flank seeing the danger ran across the lines but winded himself as a result. As the tribes advanced Ukko crept forward slowly, yelling encouragement.

The two remaining spearmen ran in to support Morgan Axehead in the fight against Balor while the rest of the tribesmen approached the shore of the lake. The fomorian netters and harpoonists stood off in the lake as various weapons were thrown with little effect, while the fomorian axemen advanced behind their fellows heading to support Balor.

Sláine, having taken a breather, charged Balor. Even Ukko, running around the behind, tried to help by stabbing Balor in the back (but to no effect). With fighting to and fro, Balor was pushed back almost to the river. Sláine pushed home the charge, killing Balor and his elk. A great loss to the fomorians indeed.

In response the fomorian axemen charged Sláine, slightly wounding him. The other fomorians and the tribesmen charged each other, with fighting both on the shore and in the lake. 

The site of the massed carnage brought on Sláine’s warp spasm and then the killing really started.

Morgan Axehead charged in but was cut down, as well as the remaining spearmen. Sláine charged back into the fray.

The battle ended with the bodies of both friend and enemy littered around and floating in the lake. The water ran red with blood. All of the fomorians were dead, while only Sláine, Ukko and a single tribesmen had survived, the rest of the tribesmen, including Sláine’s foster father Morgan Axehead were dead. 

Sláine thought it too many.

I started with this in early March…

…to this roughly two months later.

We have:

The Tribes of the Earth Goddess

The Drunes

and the Fomorians.

I didn’t think it too many.

I saved the largest miniature unit last, the only one to be mounted.

While painting I leaned closer and closer to Simon Bisley’s iconic full page image, particularly the redness of the blood soaked armour and the heads on the trophy rack. My go to gore formula is a 1:1 mix of Army Painter Flesh tone with Army Painter Red Ink. Left to dry for a little until the ink has thickened up a little makes it look all the more disgusting.

It also took me two attempts at the blood splatter on the sword. I went a little too much on the first attempt and my efforts to fix it made it worse, so I just painted over and started again.

So with this miniature painted that’s all of the Sláine miniatures completed, for now.
Later this week I plan on taking a few photos of the whole collection, then this weekend I’ll hopefully have a battle report.
I’ve had great fun with this project and will certainly continue on. It’s been good to concentrate solely on just one game.

I was at first unsure what colour to paint these. I thought the smooth green that the Warlord Studio miniatures were painted didn’t seem right or really very accurate to how they appear in the Horned God graphic novel. I imagine they were painted like that to make them stand out from the other factions and to differentiate them on the box.
Looking at a few panels from the Horned God was confusing as sometimes they appeared green while other times almost flesh colour.

I decided to go for a blend of both, adding green and then brown to the colours while getting lighter. While the eventual look of the models are quite different in colour to either way they appear in the comics I’m quite happy with them.

Fomorians with nets.

Fomorians with axes.

Fomorians with spears.

I just have one more model to paint from the initial release of Sláine miniatures as well as a few more pieces of terrain then I’ll be all done for now.

Also I’ll be playing another game this coming weekend, so I’ll try to take a few photos and maybe do another battle report.

I’ve finished the rest of the heroes from the two boxes, the Drune Heroes and the Earth Tribe Heroes.

First up is the rest of the Drune miniatures.

There’s actually only two characters here, Medb and Robym the dwarf. The lady in black is also Medb, but in disguise as Megrim.

I gave Medb a blue cloak as this is how she is depicted in this panel from the Horned God.

Obviously the designers at Warlord decided to give her more clothes.

Here are the Earth Tribe Heroes.

We have from left to right Mongan Axehead (Sláine’s foster father), King Gann with the spear of the sun), Niamh (Mother to Sláine’s son) and her husband King Rudrage with the Silver Sword of the Moon.

Rather than paint the Spear of the Sun aflame, I thought I’d depict it as dribbling blood. 

Similar to how it appears in this pane, which I quite like and makes it look more dangerous and possibly possessed.

I haven’t done much painting this week as I’ve been back at work after a week off. As well as building some rock terrain and painting it I did paint one miniature, the Lord Weird Slough Feg.

Apart from the weapon he carries this miniature is clearly inspired by a particular panel from the comic The Horned God, where Feg is depicted as standing in a similar pose surrounded by skulls, so raiding my box of Citadel Skulls I piled them up onto the base.

I did add a slight purple/red glaze to the skulls as a homage to the art, but decided against painting the red lighting on Feg’s body.