The Minions of Mark: Dark Age miniatures

 Over the years I've accumulated a lot of random miniatures. Among these models was a blister pack of strange little guys that my local games shop was selling for £5 in a bargain bin. 

They're actually from a game called Dark Age, which I think is now defunct. It was a skirmish wargame based on the pictures of an artist called Bron, and seemed to be about small warbands abandoned on a desert planet. The guys I bought, if I remember rightly, were the followers of someone called Saint Mark.

What they look like, to me, is a cross between the War Boys from Mad Max and the Cenobites from Hellraiser. I put them in a drawer for a long time, and was rather intimidated by the prospect of painting them, especially because they would need a largely monochrome paint scheme, which made me nervous. I don't really enjoy painting black, because the highlights often come out as chalky or too stark. 

Well, I finally dragged these guys out, painted one as a test, found that it worked, and got going on the other four. They're strange designs but really well sculpted, with loads of detail. They seem to be holding guns that fire circular saw blades, as well as truncheon-type weapons that might be electrified. I doubt that they're the good guys of the setting.

Making the skin different to the clothing was quite hard. The clothing is highlighted from black to light grey, by adding more grey and white. The skin started off as light grey, was given a very thin wash of purple, and was then highlighted by adding first bone and then pink to the mix. The skin was eventually given a thin glaze of pink to suggest that it is alive. I'm not sure how well this comes out in the photos.

Here they are.

Weird, aren't they?