Draconis does….. The Silver Bayonet

Project system errored and duplicate post created

10th August 2025

Happy enough with the test model I built up four more soldiers to become ‘spectral’.

I made a French Guard, French Line Infantry, Austrian Infantry and British Highlander, just for a bit of a mix.

These were based and primed white. I then painted the bases in a dark brown, followed by giving them a white drybrush around the models. Then I applied the Pastel Sea Foam speedpaint to the models and the base area that had been drybrushed.

Then I added flock/grass to the bases and drybrushed the minis and the grass near the models in matt white. I followed this up by applying the seafoam to the grass that had been drybrushed. With that, and a tidy up of the base rim, they were done.

I prefer this lighter glow effect on the base compared to the more blue effect of the test model.

Also, as before they look a bit more green in real life than in the pictures.

6th August 2025

Just a quick test model for the Spectral Soldiers needed in the Italy supplement. I put together a British line infantry model, added some gravel for the base and hand primed it rubber black. Then I sprayed it over with white, leaving a little of the dark in the deepest shadow sections.

Then it was just a case of painting the base brown and rolling out the Speedpaint Pastel Seafoam, bought expressly for this purpose 😊

I followed this up with a drybrush white over the model. Then I added some flock and a tuft. To approximate a glow effect from the ghost I overbrushed part of the base area and part of the tuft in Hydra Turquoise, then highlighted that with Neptune glow. For the others I may not go so dark for the first stage.

Pretty quick paintjob, but serves the purpose. I will build a few more brits and some frenchies, then apply the same to all of them.

4th August 2025

Next up it was a couple of werejackals. Prepped and primed in my usual way.

I neglected to get pics for most of this, so I will summarise what I can.

For the more upright jackal I started out with a Wyldwood contrast, which I then drybrushed shoulders, elbows knees and tail with three shades of progressively lighter browns, making the drybrush area smaller for each lighter shade. I drybrushed the hands and snout with a couple of shades of flesh. Then I picked out the jewellery in gold.

I then worked on the second jackal. Started out with snakebite leather contrast all over. Then for the back, shoulders, top of tail, thighs and painted on thinned Gore grunta fur, then in a smaller area thinned Wyldwood, then finally thinned black in a smaller area again. Picked out the gold here as well.

For both I then washed and highlighted the gold. Used a brighter highlight on the crouching one, as the regular gold was blurring a bit against the lighter fur colour.

For the clothing I went with a dark blue, highlighting up, then finishing with a touch of turquoise. This was then given a thinned wash of nuln oil.

Picked the eyes out in ivory. I may add a red or yellow wash at some point perhaps, but not sure. And will probably give them a matt varnish spray.

28th July 2025

Another Egypt scenario calls for a handful or Scorpion swarms. I don’t have any specific scorpion swarms, but I did have a few things that could represent, again from my Reaper Bones kickstarter.

I had two each of large scorpion, scarab swarm and spider swarm. They were stuck onto 25mm round bases and primed. The scarabs were primed gloss black, the rest were primed black then over sprayed corax white.

The scarabs were then painted with colour shift paint, that changes from purple through to green (but doesn’t show too well in pics).

The scorpions were painted in two different contrast browns, then I picked out some detail on their stingers, claws and added a red patch to their backs.

For the spiders I painted one base in contrast black and one in brown. Then I picked out individual spiders in other shades of blacks and browns, and for the more prominent ones I added some patterning to their backs. Some were given a gloss varnish to make them pop out a bit.

All bases were then painted in the base sand triad.

Again, they don’t stand up to close scrutiny, but they will suffice for the one scenario.

24th July 2025

More of the same really.

These were made from the smaller rolled left overs of milliput / putty. Magnetised as per the rest.

Initially I did not put any sand on the bases, and just painted them sand colour. But I didn’t like that, so I went back in, glued some fine gravel/sand to the bases and repainted them with my base sand triad.

They were then painted in much the same way as the vipers. Where possible I used a mix of shades on each base, and applied smaller dot and line patterns compared to those used on the Vipers.

Again, they are not super realistic, but they do fulfil the role and function as Snake Swarms.

21st July 2025

Another enemy type that is in just the one scenario.

Planning ahead during this, whenever I had spare milliput (or other putty) from other work I rolled the left over into snake like shapes. Sometimes I did try to make a cobra hood or suchlike. So, when I got to this stage I had quite a few ‘snake like’ objects that I could use for Vipers (and also snake swarms using the smaller ones).

I lost the early pics that I took, however I glued the larger snakes down one to a base for the Vipers. I made 14 in total, which should suffice under normal randomisation rolls. They were primed white, and I added magnets to the bases (with a coffee stirrer as a small shim to move the magnet closer to base level.)

I then painted the bases using the Foundry Base Sand triad and started out painting the snakes in browns, beige and blacks.

To break up the dull appearance I added spots or stripes onto each of the snakes. Some had green or red as well for extra variety. I added a lighter shade to the underside of several of the raised up snakes, and added paler stripes here to represent their underbellies.

Make no mistake, these are very basic ‘sausage’ snakes. However, I think that they do the job, and look ok when close to other minis. And it also made use of my left over putty.

14th July 2025

A couple of the Egypt scenarios require Skeletons as one of the enemy types. So, off to my old minis…. After a while I found a bag of loose plastic skeletons from circa 1989. I believe they had been in the bag for at least 16 years (when I last moved house), but potentially longer – so for them to have survived as well as they did was quite a surprise.

After some minor repairs I managed to get together a dozen of the bone boys for painting up.

They had the usual black then white overspray as prime, and then were treated to an all over covering of Contrast Skeleton Horde (seemed appropriate).

They then all had a drybrush with Vallejo ivory. The bases were painted with my Foundry Base Sand triad, starting with the darkest then stippling on the subsequent lighter colours.

Next up the wooden parts of the wargear were painted brown and the metal parts painted with Vallejo Bronze. These were all given a nuln oil wash. The shield fronts were picked out with turquoise.

The final stages were to add the Verdigris to the weapons using thinned Speedpaint Pastel Seafoam and then a basic tidy up.

Just a relatively quick paint job for these, but they fill their role 😊