The Very Big Plastic Talisman Dragon

 Last week I started quite a large repair project. Many, many years ago - well, in the 90s - Games Workshop made their first plastic dragon. It was sculpted by the great Trish Carden, and had the same - somewhat controvertial - S-shaped body as the older metal dragons of the 90s. It originally cropped up in the Talisman board game, and then featured as the mount for a renegade elf lord in the Dogs of War mercenary army for Warhammer Fantasy Battle. The basic plastic body was then used, with extra metal parts, as the dragon mount for several other characters.

And I own one! Well, I own most of one. I bought this thing ages ago to convert into a sort of Eldar Exodite riding beast: as I've observed before on this blog, not much is cooler than a bunch of space elves riding a dinosaur. But I thought it would be nice to repair this monster as part of the Bretonnian army project. After all, not only do knights traditionally fight dragons, but you could take dragons in the original Bretonnian army book. How cool is that?

I took the model apart and bathed it in dettol to lose most of the paint. Then, because it was missing some of its spikes, I made new spines out of a green stuff/milliput mixture sculpted around a piece of wire. Here is a work in progress shot, although it's hard to make much out.

The next problem was that I needed some wings. I found some old plastic wings on ebay. They were decent enough but the "shoulder" connection was a mess. That meant that I had to improvise with wire and various clays to pin the wings to the body. The mold lines were pretty awful, and cutting them away and smoothing over the joins with milliput took a while. I'm still far from sure that I got them all.

Then for the painting! I went with red because it's a classic dragon colour, and the colour used for the Talisman dragon. This thing is massive: it's probably a quarter bigger than the older metal S-shaped dragons. I used a mixture of blending, washes and contrast paint for the dragon, along with some careful highlighting. I'd forgotten how much of a pain wings are to paint.

The original base for this model is a large, ugly square thing - used, I believe, only for this model. It's not very nice, and I gave the dragon a bigger base instead. Various leftovers were used to make broken signs and trees to give the base some variety, including a plastic snail from the Bretonnians, which is probably invisible now.

Here he is.

He's big.

This thing actually wasn't too hard to paint: no fiddly details, and no faces. On the minus side, all that red did start to drive me a bit crazy. Still, he'll look good looming over my knights!

A Quick Knightly Update

 So, in a way it's been a quiet week for painting. Actually, I've spent a lot of time doing repair work on a very old plastic dragon, and I hope to post more about this next week. One of the good things about doing all this oldhammer stuff is that I can finally do justice to the old models that I've got, and the dragon is definitely one of them. Oh, and it's pretty cheap.

Anyhow, in lieu of anything else, here are the two units of knights that I've painted. The first unit comes from miniatures released in 1991 - plastic horses and metal riders.

The second is made of plastic knights from the Battlemasters game, which came out in 1992. They're almost all the same miniature.

Knights are cool. I see that North Star Miniatures have just released a set of "Bohemian knights", who would make brilliant oldhammer-style Bretonnian foot knights. It will be difficult not to buy some. We'll see - it's not as if I've not got things to get on with!

The Duc de Bordleaux

 I've not painted many things this week, but the main thing that I did paint took a while. Back in White Dwarf 138, there was a unit of Bretonnian knights. Most of them were quite simply painted, but their leader, the Duc de Bordleaux, was converted and had much more complex heraldry.

Being an idiot, I decided to make my own version.

Cutting the horse to rear up was more complex than it ought to have been. Keeping the legs the same length meant that one foot was higher than the other, and I had to raise the model's base with plasticard to keep the horse level (the original model is standing on a tactical rock for the same reason). I then pinned it for stability.

The original GW model has reins made from paper. I always find that paper starts to look tacky very quickly, so I used very thin plastic from a blister pack, twisted into shape.

The only other alteration was the addition of a plastic sword. Somewhere in time, the Duc's (rather small) mace had disappeared. I think that the new sword looks good.

And then I painted him. Ye gods, this was fiddly and slow. I used a brighter blue than GW, to match the rest of my knights, and simplified the paint scheme a little. Otherwise, I tried to stick to the original scheme as much as possible, and it was not easy. I've painted smaller details on the Escher and eldar harlequin models, but all this freehand was tiring, especially since I was trying to duplicate the same images on different parts of the model.

I reached a point where I was just unable to get it any better. I would correct a mistake and, in doing so, make a new one. So this is as good as he's going to get - which isn't bad, to my mind. At the end of the day, I'm pleased with this guy.

Back to Blognia - "Napoleonic" cavalry and randoms

 And now for something completely different.

It's been a while since I looked at the charming principality of Blognia and its wretched inhabitants. While there has been a Blognian army for time immemorial, its main function has been to fight itself in an endless cycle of banditry and civil war. Now that the Arch-Duchess has effectively declared war on the undead, the army is having to actually do something useful.

The cavalryman here is actually an English Civil War soldier, with a crest added from a Napoleonic helmet. I'm not sure where the sword arm came from, and I sculpted him some suitably grandiose epaulettes. The horse's head is from a medieval knight.

The Blognian Cavalry has a long history. Traditionally, many aristocrats have either gone into the cavalry or some kind of mental institution. Indeed, few people have the skill or patience to put up with the notoriously foul-tempered horses, and it is said that the heavy armour cavalrymen wear is largely to protect them from their noble steeds.

That said, the cavalry is not entirely useless. At the tenth battle of the River Plob, the Grand Imperial Lancers charged a unit of Swedish mercenaries, thus turning the course of the battle. Although the River Plob was in the way, the lancers drowned so spectacularly that the rest of the Blognian army was able to retreat in good order. 

Also joining this rider is an infantryman - well, an infantry person, really. Blognia operates a "don't ask, don't tell" policy as far as the gender of it soldiers goes: not out of equal opportunities but because it's desperate for absolutely anyone to sign up. This particular soldier is either unusually disciplined or hasn't had time to lose bits of her uniform and acquire more confortable kit yet.

Here is the entire army unit, so far. 

And here are some crazy pagans. The woman with the massive sword was inspired by a character from the cancelled computer game Fable Legends, which featured a Lady of the Lake armed with an enormous sword. The legs of this model were from a dark eldar mandrake. The arms and head are Frostgrave, and the body was sculpted by me. Overall, a really enjoyable little project.

The person with the antlers is an odd kitbash. The arms and head are from Frostgrave cultists. The body is a Perry Miniatures Afghan. I think he's some kind of deranged cultist, perhaps about to do magic with his raised hand. 

Well, that was fun!

I Have A Plan - And Some Classic Ork Firepower!

So I had this random idea, and I thought I'd run it past both of my readers.

What if a bunch of painters bought a box of - say - ten minis each, painted the models, sold them on ebay and gave the profits to charity? I think that could be a nice idea. You could sell the painted models for anything from £40 to £150, depending on how well they were painted and who painted them. They would be fun to paint and you could try out a new paint scheme or models from a game you don't usually play (personally, I'd do a Blood Bowl team).

Unfortunately, I have virtually no clout in the painting/gaming community - not that I've ever looked for it. But it someone with a "name" picked up on the idea, or enough people went for it, I think it could be really effective. Of course, you'd have to rely on people to honestly donate the profits and not just pocket them, and there would be some showoff who tried to paint an entire army for it, but by and large wargamers seem to be decent people who would be willing to turn their talents to a worthy cause.

Does anything like this already exist? Would you consider doing it? If anyone fancies doing something like this one-box charity challenge, or has any idea on how you'd go about organising it, drop me a line.

*

Right then. This week, it's space orks. I've been picking away at these for a long while, but I've got a batch done, and here they are.

I bought some metal guns off ebay, which originally came with 1990s Deathskull Lootas. They must have been some of the last old-style ork models. The guns are comically large and (of course) fit really badly with the ork models, metal or plastic. I used ancient shoulder pads to mount the guns and added handles made of a green stuff/milliput mixture.

I actually used an old metal madboy as the wielder of this weapon. For one thing, he's got a great expression and for another, you'd have to be mad to be carting this thing around. I think it's an autocannon.

He got a little plastic friend to act as a spotter. By turning the left hand the other way up (it's meant to be supporting his bolter) I've got him shielding his eyes. Shame his mate is looking in the wrong direction.

The next pair are both plastic models. Again, the gun took a lot of fitting. I've gone for the usual jolly freebooter/Bad Moon colours. 

And now onto the really fun stuff!

 The old plastic ork warbuggy gets a lot of stick for being a bad model but, once you factor in the odd design of the crew, I think it's perfectly decent. The detail is reasonable for a kit from 2000 or so, and you can add as much detail as you like to the big hubcaps and the front. It's also pretty easy to convert and customise.

The main problem is that the crew don't really look like GW orks. They resemble hefty humans (like House Goliath Necromunda models) with no necks. In sculpting terms they're not bad, although they don't resemble either the Oldhammer Paul Bonner-type orks, or the ape-like monsters from 3rd Ed onwards. If another company had made this model, it would be fine.

I particularly like the driver, with his deranged grin, and the guy operating the gun, who looks like an unusually green fat biker.

This model is pretty much as it came from the box, slightly repaired rather than deliberately converted. It was missing its banner pole, but I've got no great love for banners, and that won't be much missed. 

Broom!

I've got a Bretonnian leader to paint, but I'm trying to put him off, as it's a really daunting bit of conversion and painting work. Got to do it sometime, though!

More Knights From 1990

I've been painting more knights this week. As with last week, I've been using the models from WD 137 and 138 as a guide. 

The green stripey guy uses a pattern taken straight from WD 137. The chap with the blue, yellow and checkered heraldry is based on a knight in WD 138, although I've simplified the heraldry a bit because it was incongrously complex compared to the rest of the unit. As I said in the previous post, painting and building these models is a slightly awkward process, because it's easier to paint the inside of the barding and the horse's legs before sticking it together and smoothing down the joins with milliput. But it is nice when they're finished.

This last chap is wearing heraldry taken from WD 138, simplified to stop me going mad. The woven pattern is straight from the original, but I used a white cross on the red quarters instead of the complicated freehand lion heads in the GW version. I just can't paint that well. Anyhow, he was complicated enough without that, and I really like the final version.

That brings this unit up to nine knights. Pretty good! However, I want to make a leader, and I've got a model that will do the job. I just need a break from painting heraldry. Maybe the space orks can help...

Knights from the 90s

More progress on the first edition Bretonnian knights. These models date back to 1990 - I've got friends younger than them.

I've found that the best way to paint knights is in pieces. This isn't something I tend to do - I like to have the whole model made before the painting stage - but it does help as there are bits that you can't reach easily once you've stuck the model together.

There are four main pieces to each knight: horse's head, left horse side, right horse side and rider. I spray the inside of each horse side black. I also spray the rider black. I spray/paint the outside of each horse side and both sides of the head white.

First, I paint the inside of the horse's legs. They have a black undercoat on one side and a white undercoat on the other. This shouldn't really matter, since the barding would throw shadow over the legs  anyhow. I do a very small amount of highlighting on the inside of the barding but it's almost invisible. It's definitely not something that the viewer needs to see. 

Then I stick the horse bits together (head, sides and tail) and if necessary use milliput to smooth the joins. Once this is done, I do the most fun part and paint the heraldry on the outside of the caparison. 

After that, well, it's the remaining bits of horse, then the rider. I do the messier metal parts before the rider's tunic, just because it's neater. Then I do the shields.

I've used pieces of plasticard for all the shields in this unit. I traced around an old plastic shield, drilled a hole in the middle so the peg on the knight's left arm would go in, and smoothed the join down with more milliput. 

When painting the horses, I've tended to stick to two or three strong colours, to make the heraldry stand out more. I like the idea of the unit looking like a blaze of bright colour. I've also found that (to my eyes at least), the "main" colour on each knight is a mixture of what's on the rider's surcoat and what's on the shoulders and back of the neck of the horse. I try to vary these. 

I've followed the very old GW paint schemes from WD 136-138, but I've found that the two GW units look too yellow and too white respectively, so I've kept the heraldic shapes but varied the colours used. I particularly like red/blue, green/white and yellow/blue, but lots of contrasts work well.

 Anyhow, here are the first six.