A Frogman, a Dragon and Whatever Next?

 Slaark Shallow-Stalker is one of the greatest hunters of the Froglodyte tribe. For many years he has tracked his prey through the marshes, feeding off catfish, swamp-gulls and even the occasional skaven (he tends to avoid eating frogs in case one of them turns out to be his infant son). Slaark is a master at blending in with the dank marshes: partly because of his green colouration, and partly because he smells like a rotten herring.

He is basically a Bloodletter of Khorne with a kroot warrior head and a bit of green stuff to make him look more aquatic. I think the spear came from an orc. I'm pleased with the shading on his skin.

It is said that dragons are a proud and noble breed: if so, nobody told the Marsh Dragon. A creature of unrelenting sleaziness, it spends much of its time sliding through the muck in search of a new meal. The recent incursions by the skaven have provided it with a plentiful source of food: even the worst of the ratmen tastes quite reasonable to it after a week underwater. The Marsh Dragon is fast and strong, and can pull down a rat ogre without much trouble. If faced with anything larger, it belches out highly flammable marsh gas, and takes its next meal lightly grilled.

This model was made out of all kinds of stuff. It has come together quite well, but it will always be an old and slightly damaged miniature. Taking a half-decent picture of it was really difficult: it would have been easier to get a good photo of Nessie.

So, what to do next?

Over the last few weeks, I've acquired and stripped down quite a lot of metal models. Pewter miniatures are dead cheap (by which I mean less outrageously expensive) when they're missing pieces. And if you look about, especially for Imperial Guard, you often get some quite characterful models. I could spend a lot of time converting all sorts of weird things, which would be a lot of fun. But it would also be nice to do something with a theme, and in the process start to eat into the mound of lead that I've got knocking around.

The current ideas are:

1) Finish the current, rather odd, Frostgrave warband, which consists of all kinds of random lowlifes with a rough paint scheme tying them together.

2) Do a second Frostgrave warband, formed from the many, many goblins and gnoblars that I've acquired over the years. I think this would look cool, if ridiculous.

3) Some kind of military unit. I could either do some space soldiers for 40k, who would have a vaguely WW2 look (British Airborne in space) or actually try something for Conflict 47. The thought of painting whole units fills me with horror, especially whole units of green and brown that have to be historically accurate. But maybe I could do something like the commandos led by Captain America: a mix of dangerous oddballs from all kinds of Allied units. I'll have to give this thought.

4) Paint all the stripped metal models. To be honest, I ought to do this. I'll probably be eighty before I'm finished.