New recruits for the Army of Darkness

The very first miniature I remember buying was a skeleton. A hobby shop in town had several of the Grenadier large boxed sets open under the counter, and you could buy a loosey for $1. I picked the skeleton with a sword raised over his head — a very simple sculpt, and, it turned out, very fragile. But I had loved skeleton decorations at Halloween, and was kind of obsessed with drawing them and so on to the extent that my parents briefly thought I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up. Anyway I have slowly been working getting all my undead figures painted, and earlier this year I hacked away at the cavalry and a few other larger pieces. Photo dump!

These ghostly riders are a pair of Prince August undead riders I cast from a mold and a Heritage undead rider from the Knights & Magick range.

Since I have the mold and lots of metal, I made a handful of riders to fill out the ranks. These are painted more like traditional skeletonmen. The shield for the rider is, unfortunately, where they decided to place the main sprue opening (where you pour in the molten metal) so so several of them I just added a plastic shield rather than try to reconstruct the demon face that is supposed to be on the small heater shield.

 

I also decided to repair and touch up some skeleton cavalry I painted in the early 1990s. These are all Grenadier — the first two from boxed sets and the others from Fantasy Lords blister packs.

This big fellow I painted for Ral Partha Legacy. They sent me another as payment, but I haven’t decided if I want to use undead crew or not. Since this one has skeletons crewing it, I tried to make the mammoth look like he’d been revived from the dead too — hence the bluish skin on the trunk and eyelids and blood seeping from the ear. I probably should have added some gore or ribs poking through the coat, but I didn’t want to aler the model in case they use it in their catalog rather than just for convention games.

These next ones are all Grenadier — two zombie riders and good old Napoleon Boneyparts on the litter. I have a second Napoleon with a bunch of other skeletons added to a large base for use in wargames, but I when I chanced to get this copy I decided to try to leave leave him as cast. Like the Prince August riders above, I went for “speed painting” on these.

The rest of these are conversions and kitbashes. First up, a Dragontooth figure, called “Rictus, the zombie king.” Mine was lacking his sword and head. I gave him a Citadel plastic head and left his hand empty, as if he’s waving his troops onward.

I have very, very few Dragontooth minis in my collection. I never saw them in stores and the company folded in the 1980s. The few I have turned up in assorted job lots. They are certainly crude, but have a ton of personality. Tom Loback, who did most of the sculpts, was a serious artist and worked on all kinds of things after he got out of miniatures, including building driftwood statues that he left, unsigned, along the river near his home.

Next up is a kit bash using a Grenadier horse, Rafm shield, Maurauder rider, and an arm supplied by figure from the Lionheart game. He was also speed-painted and the photos show a lot of imperfections, but at least he’s not a pile of loose bits any more.

The last was a very long term project. The cart driver is a Citadel figure I chanced to pick up in a bag of bits at an Origins convention in 2003 or 2004. I’d been planning to build my own version of the plague cart since I first saw it in a white dwarf in the 80s or 90s, but the kit was so expensive. A year or two ago I realized I finally had all the bits I’d need.

The horse is a Eureka mini from their Chaos Army line. The bottom of the cart was a partial wagon from a Heritage kit for an orc war-drum. I scratch-built the yoke and poles, rather crudely. The sides of the wagon are from a skeletal dragon. I had just the tail, neck, and ribs from a job lot I  bought online.

The banner is from a Reaper kit — it was to be carried by a wraith, who I instead armed with a sword. The additional bits (skulls, heads, etc.) are from Games Workshop and Zvedza plastic kits.

The cargo is a coffin from a Minifigs kit — I built mine using the pile of bones instead, so I had this loose coffin.

I did eventually finish the bases on these with flocking and grass tufts, not pictured.

More orc & goblin cavalry

Still terrible photos from my phone but here are the rest of the orc & goblin cavalry I’ve finished.

First up: some boar riders. These are some Citadel figures — an orc and a goblin.

The next two are from a company I have found very little about. They were called Enigma, naturally. They had a short run in late 1990s, making figures that were chunky knock-offs of Citadel’s Warhammer Fantasy and 40k lines. They always came with solid metal bases that were separate from the figure, but with no slots or points to attach them. These two are a leader/boss type and a shaman.

Net up various conversions. The first two are Milton Bradley/Games Workshop BattleMasters figures mounted on toys — in this case a chicken and a rat. They were pretty fun to do.

The next two are Ral Partha hobgoblins which were meant to ride boars as well. I used one boar to draw my Grenadier orc beer wagon, and the other I use without the rider, so these two needed mounts. I used some home-cast horses from Prince August molds for them, and I think they look pretty good.

 

This next figure was really beast, both to assemble and to paint. It’s a very old Grenadier war mammoth. The mahout is original (I think it’s an orc or hobgoblin?) but the two crew are from the AD&D Orcs Lair set. The axe-man in that set breaks easily and mine has a pike to replace it.

Here’s a look at the crew before I glued them into the howda.

Lastly, an orc riding a dragon from the Grenadier Fantasy Lords line. I repainted this one as the paint was worn off in several spots.

Wolf riders

Long time no posts. I have been painting here and there though. Here’s a photo dump of some orc and goblin cavalry — all wolf riders. Assorted other mounts to follow.

First up, some really old Custom Cast figures: Warg Riders from the Der Kriegspielers line. I had a few from an earlier lot, and they were bolstered by a set of someone gifted to me. They have a mix of bows, axes, and spears.

The giant pumpkin heads on them are great.

I also painted a bunch of wolf riders for Ral Partha Legacy. Below are some archers (the ones I sent in to RPL; they sent me a set of similar figures as “payment” but I haven’t taken pictures of them.

There were the first wolves I really tried to give something approximating a realistic coat to. In the past I always just did them uniformly black or grey, but for these I checked a reference photo of a wolf and tried to follow that.

 

Before I did the archers, I did a group with hand weapons. I don’t seem to have photographed them, but here are the “payment” set. I based them on 1.5″ poker chips, and later added flocking.

Here’s a group shot with a few that I didn’t photograph separately, and a couple of oddballs on nonwolves.

Finally, a line up of wolf riders showing some variations. The far left one is a Tom Meier sculpt, recently released by Ral Partha Legacy. I think they may have been originally intended to be part of his Thunderbolt Mountain line, before it shut down in 2017.

The next one is a Nick Lung wolf rider from Grenadier’s Fantast Warriors line.

Next to him, with the axe, is a very early Ral Partha wolf rider, also sculpted by Tom Meier decades before the Legacy one, perhaps around 1978. He is also re-released by Ral Partha Legacy, though my copy is from the 70s.

And last is one of the Custom Cast again, from about 1976 I think.

 

The Compleat Orc’s Lair

At long last, I’ve finished painting my collection of Grenadier AD&D orcs! I got the original “Orc’s Lair” way back in the 1980s when it first came out, and as I recall the shaman was broken, but it had an extra axeman in the box, so no complaints. An “Action Art” set acquired some time later had another orc captain (which for some reason I remember having a more ostentatious name in the painting guide). Since then, I acquired a few more of each pose secondhand in game shops, in large “job lots” I bought online, in trades, and a few outright gifts from people who didn’t want them any more.  My original crew were painted back in the 80s, and mostly in the bright green used in the box art. For the rest, I decided to paint them in a more muted olive tone, but kept the dominant black and reds used for the originals so they look more uniform.

These orcs are all more ape-like (as drawn by Jeff Dee in modules at the time) than pig-faced (like the Monster Manual illustration), which is also more in line with Tolkien style orcs. They are also considerably less bulky than most orc miniatures. I like the mish-mash of weapon and armor styles, suggesting it is all looted gear.

The crouching short swords men were never my favorite pose. These came in both the boxed Orc’s Lair and separate blister pack of five figures, which may explain why I have so many. They are simply more common than some of the others.

The archers only appeared in the boxed set. I actually have one more who will serve as a crewman on an even older Grenadier war mammoth. 

The two axemen broke fairly quickly after I got them — the axe handle was somewhat thin. The thirc I acquired later was already broken. So all have new weapons grafted on: a plastic axe head, a plastic sword blade, and a broken bit from a later Grenadier goblin figure. The axeman, like the short sword, was both in the box and the blister, so they should be fairly common as well. I have a fourth (also broken, of course) who is also serving as a mammoth crew with a pike.

The swordsmen were in both boxes and blisters, so they ought to be common. It’s a decent pose and would good for wargame stands.

The “captain” should be the most common by far, as he was in the box, the blister, and a large “Action Art” box set of monsters. The one in the center had his axe replaced but the rest are intact. I always liked this pose, and the crested helmet.

The war-club orcs were only in the small box, so it’s surprising that I have four of them. I like the vaguely Aztec theme. One had a broken club and I replaced with a plain, rather than obsidian-studded, club.

The last trooper with a mace appeared only in the blister pack, and is the only one I have just one of. Presumably he’s the rarest of the AD&D orcs. 

The “Command” types are all pretty nice too. The shaman has a skull and some kind of spike club or rattle made from a bone. This club was also break-prone so one has a replacement (on the left) and for the other (on the right), I carved the back of the handle into a a curved knife which you can’t see from this angle. The center shaman is intact.

The standard bearers are both lightly converted. (I was very confused, as a kid, that this fellow was labelled “standard” on the box, since I thought they were saying this what a “standard/tpyical” orc would look. Only a bit later did I learn that a standard was a banner or unit insignia. On the left, I converted the club to a sword for reasons I no longer remember. The club certainly didn’t break off on its own. The other has a standard from a Heritage kit (the Middle Earth orcs with a drum on a cart). I was missing his standard, and this one was superfluous so it was a luck meeting.

Lastly the “leader” types (or in some boxes, he’s labeled the “captain” and the captain above is an “axeman,” and the axeman is a “w/waraxe”). His axe broke on both models as well, so one got a replacement from a Prince August mold and the other has a warhammer from a Ral Partha dwarf (who in turn was converted to hold an axe to match a player’s character in some long ago game). Another very menacing pose despite the relatively small stature of these orcs.

And here’s how they all go into storage in a small bead organizer.

 

 

 

Big photodump of minis

Here’s some of the minis I’ve finished in the past couple of months.

The smallest one first, a mutated rat that was an extra piece on the sprue for the vampire’s corpse-wagon. Mounted on a penny.

One of Citadel’s stranger mutants were the “Beasts of chaos” series, and none stranger than this “Beast of Nurgle,” which is a sort of giant slug with legs and mass of suckers on its front. In the Warhammer game, the suckers shoot streams of acid. This figure is maybe two inches long.

Here’s the profile.

Nurgle is the chaos god of decay and disease, so he’s all about slime and other fluids gushing or seeping about. Here are two “Nurglings,” imp-like creatures that are tiny images of Nurgle himself. Both are also mounted on pennies.

I especially liked the angry little maggot crawling out of his mouth.

Continuing the demonic theme, here are three Rafm “death angels.”

The “Harbinger of Hell,” which is a bit reminiscent of the flying demon in the movie House. I mounted this one on hexagonal tile I recovered when remodeling the bathroom at my old house. Waste not want not.

The next one is the “Faceless Demon of the Void.” He came with his own pillar to perch on. I went with a more traditional red for this one.

Lastly, the “Specter of Doom.” His base is a bunch of rubble and bones, suggesting a ruined tomb or mausoleum.

Otherworld Miniatures has some great if pricey models. They’re a bit hard to find in the US, at least in my experience. These two are barbed devils, closely modeled on the Trampier illustration in the original AD&D Monster Manual.

And now for something completely different, some Old West figures. These are figures my brother originally painted decades ago, but which had lost a lot of paint to wear and tear, and a couple that were never completed. I tried to retain his original color schemes for the touch-ups, although some were painted with PollyS/Floquil paints that I couldn’t easily match. We’ve been playing a Boot Hill game again, so I was motivated to get our PCs in a finished condition. All are Grenadier “Gunslingers.”

The next group are figures we used in a previous Boot Hill campaign. The two cowboys are from the same Grenadier set while the Native Americans are actually from fantasy ranges: The chap with the big axe and headdress is a Citadel barbarian, and the one with the bow is a Ral Partha ranger. Obviously neither is particularly accurate for any real tribe. Could be worse though.

Back to monsters, here’s one of Julie Guthrie’s trolls from the Grenadier “Fantasy Lords’ line:

These manticores are (l) Maurauder and (r) Ral Partha. A study in scale creep, the once fearsome Ral Partha figure is more of a cub in comparison.

I got the Maruader manticore in a lot of figures sold on eBay as scrap tin! He was missing his wings, so I filled in the sockets with putty and textured them to suggest a continuation of his mane, which was already spreading down his chest anyway.

The oldest figure featured today is this Minifigs fell beast, missing his Nazgul rider:

It was part of their “Mythical Earth” range, absolutely not a ripoff of “Middle Earth.” This figure was actually listed in their catalog as “ME57, Ringwraith and Nazgul.” The publicist must have thought “nazgul” was the name for the beasts they rode. The Mythical Earth range was started in 1972, making this possibly my oldest fantasy figure. It’s hard to say for sure as Minifigs is still in business, and parts of the range are still in production. I think my copy is pretty old though, since it came with a bunch of figures from long-defunct manufacturers.

The last blast from the past are these Ral Partha “trills” — bigger than orcs but smaller than trolls.

The shield design is a total cheat, I cam into some old Citadel shield transfers, which you soak in water and glide onto the surface, where they adhere as they dry. The next two figures are much newer.

The “Umber Cuke, aka Nipper,” a riff on the AD&D Umber Hulk was pretty fun:

This is a much newer figure for the “Lowlife” game designed by Akron artist Andy Hopp.

Slightly less silly is this Wargames Foundry orc mercenary. All business except for the tasseled tail-cap.

Lastly, the largest and most impressive of the bunch. Also by far the biggest pain to finish. I am still noticing details I forgot to paint. Ral Partha’s “The necromancer’s throne of bone.”

A couple of shots taken before I finished the base show some better details.

The skulls and ribcage on the base are spare bits from other kits. The long bones are real bones recovered from an owl pellet I found in my backyard back around the time this model was first produced. Some of the bones from the mole or shrew or whatever was in there grace the bases of several other figures too.

From 1986 or so, and it could be on the cover of any heavy metal album from the period. Bikini-clad chick with a snake, tons of skulls, gross dude in a thong — it’s got it all.

Re-re-post: Old school minis on the web

A longer version of this post originally appeared in 2010, and was reposted in 2017 with updates, but the question keeps cropping up in various forums so here’s another update. Many links in the previous post are broken now. 😦

A lot of miniatures people turn their noses up at old Grenadier and Heritage and Minifigs figures. I will grant that many modern figures, which take advantage of sculpting and molding techniques unavailable to the original manufacturers (and an aesthetic sharpened by the intervening years of fantasy illustration, comics, etc.) are often quite impressive. The level of animation, and the overall quality are amazing. The crisp detail, and the fact the pieces fit perfectly make them a joy to assemble and paint. But I still love the old school minis too. They often have a gritty realism modern figures just lack, and an undefinable sense of character.

Heritage Models has a site devoted to the Dungeon Dwellers line, Dungeon Dwellers info.  If you didn’t know, this line would have been their “Dungeons & Dragons” line, but the license agreement never got signed and instead Grenadier would get the license for AD&D miniatures. There were several Yahoo groups devoted to collecting particular figure lines and they all had some of the original sculptors, mold-makers, or casters present to share memories. The activity slowly shifted to other forums and you might still be able to find groups on Facebook, blogs, etc., but these are all too ephemeral to link any more.

I love and hate Games Workshop/Citadel figures. They are certainly nice looking. The only things not to like are the scale creep and cost. Citadel minis, back in the late 1980s, were the first figures I had that just didn’t quite fit with my Grenadier, Ral Partha, and Heritage stuff. Ral Partha was always a slight bit smaller than the others, but with Citadel I could tell the scale was actually shifting. Of course nowadays, almost all modern figures are a little bigger than before. “28mm”, “30mm”, “heroic 28mm scale”, even “32mm” are bandied about, whereas in the olden days everyone claimed to be making 25mm figures, whether that 25mm was toes-to-eyes, toes-to-tip of head, or just scale of 1/72 (25mm=6′). Confusingly, 1/72 is sometimes referred to as 20mm scale, since most humans were under 6′ in the historical periods they model. Your vintage Ral Prtha might be close to 20mm, while Archive or Grenadier were more like 25mm+. Some of my newer Reaper and Kenzer Co. figures absolutely tower over my old figures. And that is too bad, because no-one chooses a Ral Partha figure any more for their PC in the games I’ve been playing. They just look too runty. In fact we’ve been using a Ral Partha mounted fighter as a Dwarf on a pony, and I’m probably the only one who realizes the figure was “meant” to be a human! Still, when Citadel was making RPG minis instead of exclusively Warhammer/Warhammer 40k/other branded IP minis, they made some seriously awesome figures. And they made so many that there is a whole wiki just for Citadel, which rivals the Lost Minis Wiki! But readers of this blog may be more interested in another site that just focuses on Citadel’s old AD&D/D&D lines.

The Lost Minis Wiki was created in 2009 with the explicit intention of covering all the out-of-production lines and models, and I can kill hours there. Update: The wiki is now also awash in newer and current lines. Mission creep, I guess. But you can still find lots of old stuff. The Lost Minis Wiki has vast amounts of unpainted lead, but we really want to see the painted stuff, right?

Stuff of Legends hasn’t been updated much lately, but as far as I know it was the first site devoted to classic minis. There is also a site devoted just to dwarves.

Anyway I found a legal copy of the Armory’s Buying Guide to Fantasy Miniatures at the Mega Minis Magazine site. There is a stunning array of old catalogs there to drool over, with images of miniatures that you can only hope to scrounge up at a convention or eBay. But if you love classic minis, the good news is that there are both new lines that are inspired by older lines, and a few companies still casting the classic figures. Update: although Mega Minis is out of business, the first link still works. The second is now a link to the Wayback Machine’s backup.

You can find many old miniatures for sale second hand in the usual places buy things second hand, like eBay, Craigslist, and similar, or sometimes hobby shops and thrift stores. (Last week I found some in a Half Price Books store, of all places.) But some you can still buy brand spanking new, often in better metal alloys than the originals. Here are some options:

Classic Miniatures is recasting many Heritage models, as well as some from other defunct companies. It’s a more of a hobby than a business, though, so please be patient if you place orders.

“Minifigs” today is usually taken to mean Lego people, but the original Minifigs company is putting their old fantasy lines back in production. Details here.

Ironwind Metals, which rose from the ashes of Ral Partha, is producing some of the old RP lines, and Kickstarting more. See the details here.

Thunderbolt Mountain, Tom Meier’s company, is producing figures similar to his Ral Partha classics, but in a more “modern” 28mm scale. Update: new site launched in 2018, but no updates since…

McEwan Miniatures, some of which were sold as part of the Masterpiece Miniatures line, are still being produced in part here: McEwan Miniatures.

Mirliton, an Italian company, is producing some of the latest Grenadier lines, including some of  the old Wizzards & Warriors/AD&D lines! Pricey but classics.

Mega Minis produces original figures as well as an extensive array of older lines. They are providing a great service but I wish they didn’t cancel lines after short runs. Update: Mega Minis, sadly, is out of business. Their molds may have been picked up by other companies. Their original stuff is now at Johnnyborg Castings. These seem to be Kick Starters so caveat emptor.

Viking Forge is producing classic Asgard minis … the ones illustrated in the Armory ads in old Dragon Magazines!

Armorcast is producing many old Lance& Laser/Castle Creations figures, as well as new designs in the old school aesthetic.

If you are looking for old Citadel, there have been occasional revivals of some models, but a consistent source is Wargames Foundry, which has some of the Citadel dark ages vikings and Normans here.

A few other companies are also still producing older lines, such as RAFM and Essex.

And others are producing new lines with old school aesthetics.

You’d have to be living under a rock not to know about Otherworld Miniatures, which is creating minis directly inspired by the classic illustrations of Sutherland, Trampier, etc. Update: But they are in 28mm scale, not classic 25mm. 

Pacesetter Games is producing some old-school designs originally created for a disastrous KickStarter by another company. They look nice though.

I have some hopes for Satanic Panic which is doing some old style “gnolls” after the manner of early 1980s Citadel “Fantasy Tribe Gnolls”.

Skull & Crown is doing a line of skeletons that follow the aesthetic of Minifig’s Valley of the Four Winds undead, themselves based on Brughel’s Triumph of Death.

No doubt there are more… maybe another update in a few years…

Monsters–another pass at stain painting

I haven’t had a lot of time for painting lately, and the fact that I’m having someeye trouble hasn’t been an incentive either. But I did manage to get a few things painted a couple of weeks ago. The stain-painting technique (prime white, apply thinned paints just pick out details with full-strength paint) has allowed me to be productive in a few minutes here and there.

First up, a Heritage models dragon.

I think this was exclusive to the “Cavern of Doom” boxed game. There were two variants, one with the body cast in two pieces and athis one, with the bod in one piece and just separate head, wings, and tail. I’m not sure which was the first version but imagine they re-tooled it for better casting. If you click on the image, you’ll see just how crude the sculpting is. The scales were probably just the end of a small tube, like the ink reservoir of a pen, and there were lots of joints to fill in with putty. I have another copy of this, from back in the day, but somehow the head, wings, and tail were lost, so I had to reconstruct them with epoxy putty and miscellaneous junk. I was never happy with the result, so I’m glad I was able to trade someone for this complete model.

Next up, a Rafm night gaunt (from their Call of Cthulhu line). I though it would make a passable ice devil for D&D, so I painted it light blue instead of flat black.

Third, Grenadier ghost. This figure came in a small lot of figures I got from a thrift store. There were several recognizable copies of gaming miniatures, including this one. The Grenadier logo and copyright are still partly visible on this one’s base, though the others were Citadel miniatures with square metal bases replacing their “slotta base” tags. So they must be “pirated” copies. There were also a bunch of junky animals I’ll melt down for my own casting operation.

Next up, my favorites of this batch. A pair of Citadel Nurglings, using pennies as bases. I really love the worm emerging from the first one’s mouth. I’m not sure if they had any stats in Warhammer or were just for decorating the bases of larger Nurgle troops. But they make great imps.

Lastly, some zombie dogs from a Zombies!!! game expansion set. I bought a bag with like 100 of these, but only kept a handful. They are mounted on pennies as well. They were a breeze to paint.

 

The triumph of death, again

I’ve always like the Bruegel painting “The triumph of death.” I was pretty happy to find some miniatures clearly based on the design there, and relatively cheaply. Getting them gave me the impetus to also paint a handful of skeletons from the Valley of the Four Winds line, made by Minifgs in the 1970s. All the images can be clicked to enlarge, but unfortunately that will also make some of the defects of my painting more evident.

First up though, some Skull and Crown skeletons. The majority are armed with “war darts” rather like the fellows in the lower left of Bruegel’s painting, including the coffin-lid shields.

I got my Skull & Crown figures second hand, and had to supply some different weapons for the marching pose.

There were also some “command” figures — musicians with a horn and two hurdy-gurdies, a pair of champions with laurel crowns, swords, and hourglasses, and three torch-bearers.

These were not the first figures to be inspired by Bruegel. The Minifigs “Valley of the four winds” line had a whole army of skeletons mostly based on Breugel (along with other monstrosities from Bosch, but I don’t have any of those).

My Minifigs skeletons also came second hand, and had to have a few repairs made.

Unfortunately they are “true” 25mm scale, perhaps closer to 1/72 scale, while the newer skeletons are in the modern “heroic” 28mm scale.

I also painted a few more ornate Games Workshop skeletons I bought a couple of years ago.

 

Great detail, especially considering they are plastic.

One last skeleton, not so triumphant — a Ral Partha “wounded skeleton”.

And as long as the dead are walking about seasonally, here are a few mummies. The center one is an old Citadel figure, flanked by two Grenadier mummies. On the right, the original sculpt for the “Wizzards & Warriors” line, and on the left the resculpt of the figure for the AD&D “Solid Gold” line.

Beastmen and goatkin

No telling if I’ll be able to follow through with this, but my master plan is to start getting the vast backlog of unpainted miniatures painted by tackling one type at a time. Here is the result of trying to get all my “beastmen” finished. (I do have a bunch of other animal/human hybrids yet to do, but the beastmen are all vaguely goat- or bull- headed humanoids.)

All images are clickable to enlarge.

 

First up: some beastmen from the Battle Masters game (jointly produced by Milton Bradley and Games Workshop back in the early 1990s). The guy on the far left was one I painted years ago. The others were languishing unpainted until I got more inspired and swapped out some of their weapons.

I used a variety of thinned down paints, including some GW “contrast” paints. The idea was to just prime everything white and paint in thinned colors using the old Heritage Models idea of “stain painting.” The GW Contrast paints are simply paints thinned down with some kind of flow enhancer added to help the pigment pool in the recesses of a sculpture and form “shadows” of more intense color, so that you don’t need to shade or highlight. It really speeds things up. Mixing my own cheap craft paints with some water and a couple of drops of Liquitex flow aid gets similar results. I used the stickers that came with the Battle Masters game for their shields.

The next group are Grenadier “goatkin warriors”. They were sculpted by John Dennett, who did some of the best monsters Grenadier produced in my opinion. The white ones were painted at least twenty years ago, so I touched them up a bit to cover spots where the paint had worn off, and also to correct some sloppiness.

The last group are a random collection: a figure from the Descent board game, a satyr (a WizKids recast, for MageKnight, of a Ral Partha design), and a Citadel “ogre.” The citadel model was another I’d painted many years ago, and touched up. I bought him through Wargames West, an mail-order service from the pre-internet days that published huge newsprint catalogs. I bought several figures through them, even though they did not have illustrations, so it was a bit of a surprise.

Finally, another Citadel figure, meant to represent a beastman champion. He came out a little better than this blurry photo suggests.

And here’s the whole set (including a figure I did not photograph separately because he was done a long time ago and needed no work).

I used a lot of beastmen in the D&D campaign I ran a while back, because I wanted something a little different from the usual orcs. More recently they have been standing in for gnolls in a game I play in. I do have a box of gnolls to paint some day too…

Bonus: another Dennett sculpt, the Vi-Perdon!
I like the animation in this one.

Denn die Todten reiten Schnell

Admittedly one of the weirder miniatures now in my collection, this is a “Corpse Cart” from Games Workshop. I found the kit in a discount bin so how could I not? There were a few extra bits for alternative assemblies and customization. It’s not my neatest paint job, but I’m happy with it.

As you can see, it’s a cart pulled by a team of zombies who have apparently been nailed to, or impaled on, the yoke. The corpses in the cart don’t all look dead, and they are being munched on by a handful of giant rats (some of them are tunneling through the bodies).

The ghoulish driver might be a vampire, or some kind of necromancer. I have no idea how this thing functions in a game of Warhammer, but I imagine it either spreads terror through the opponents’ ranks, or rams into them like an Achaemenid Persian scythed chariot. Maybe your necromancers can use it to raise additional zombie forces. In that case it sort of goes with the Skeleton recruiting party.

I do like how the cart mimics a rib cage.

The blood splatter was accomplished by taking an old toothbrush, loading it with a bit of paint, and running my thumb across it so it splattered the model when I nearly finished painting it.

While I was waiting for various parts to dry, I worked on some vampires, which I’ll photograph eventually. Here’s a Grenadier “Blood giant,” which I suppose is what happens when a giant or ogre gets bitten.

I was still having fun with the gore effects. The fuzz near his feet is meant to suggest a cloud of fog or smoke. His left foor was not fully formed and there was a suggestion of liquid or gas welling up around him, so maybe he’s emerging from, or disappearing into, some fog.

Here a few other odds and ends I painted recently.

The first is one of John Dennett’s Grenadier figures from the Monster Manuscript series. Maybe inspired by the Mi-go of H.P. Lovecraft.

Next up, a Superior Models wizard. Very clearly based on the description of Gandalf from the Hobbit; his eyebrows really do come out to the brim of his hat! I like the face in the staff too.

Lastly, three serpent folk.

The oldest is a Grenadier “Wizzards & Warriors” medusa. It’s a rarity, being male. His expression makes me think of “Little” Steven van Zandt. The arms are very disproportionate. It’s obviously one of the very early monsters from that range, when Andrew Chernack was still developing his skills.

The other medusa is from German “Metal Magic” line. It’s pretty standard looking but nicely sculpted.

The last one I’m not sure about. His left arm probably had another “sword” originally, but it had been cut off when I got him. He’s holding a shield from the Zvedza “Orku” set. I got that figure in a lot with a bunch of broken or incomplete figures sold as scrap metal on ebay.