Steve - Lady of Deathly Shadows & a Gnoll

  Heya  tiny totem painters,

This week, from the array of partly painted minis strewn across my hobby desk, these few finally received their last dabs of long due paint. 

I think I picked up this lead mini (who I choose to call the  Lady of Deathly Shadows), a log time ago with a notion of using her as a proxy model for a Necromancer in an Undead Warhammer Fantasy Battle Army.  No idea the manufacture, but I recall this mini was sold to me in a little plastic bag stapled to a simple card board backing, which I had found hanging off one of the pegs at the back bottom corner of the miniatures wall at my favorite old hobby store.

I had several failed paint jobs attempted on this mini, bad color schemes and poor observance of paint lines resulted in this mini spending a few nights in a jar full of oven cleaner to strip away failure and make way for a new paint attempt.

Now at long at last, years later, in the AHPC 'Black and White' studio a silent short film was shot to tell the tale about how she escaped the clutching darkness deep within the old pile of abandoned minis. the color scheme she needed to find freedom was a scheme without true color.

Where one finds a path out of darkness, (or an old unpainted mini pile) others may follow, so it was  this Gnoll escaped the old mini pile and moved beyond the years of wearing only a black and white zenithal base coat to become  table top ready.

I think I bought the Gnoll for a D&D Monster Character campaign, which I think may have lasted two rough and bumpy game sessions at most, back when in my old game circle the DM's hat was getting passed around and there was a lot of home brew that went down like bad brew before a worthy story teller became the new king behind the DM's screen to reign over a long running campaign that has brew without the p-eew.

Lurking around these two mini  are three bits of Grave stone scatter terrain, each originally an extra scenery item that had been packed along with some manner of mystery brand undead mini.  These three grave markers served in many a game with no more than a blast of black spray paint, and on a whim of fancy are now painted to better serve on table top games in future.  

28mm figures,

Lady Of Deathly Shadows (Foot Figure)                            = 5pts 
Green Studio Pass 'Black & White'                                   = 20pts
Gnoll (Foot Figure)                                                            = 5 pts
Gravestones (Scatter Terrain) [~ 1/8 of a 6" square cube] =  2pts 
Total = 32 Points

Steve - KoW proxies and another Skeleton Cav

 I knocked the dust off a couple old partly painted projects that have been in my "get back to this soon" pile for over a decade, and completed some recently printed minis I had started to paint a few months before the challenge.  

Following up from 2 undead skeleton Cavalry in my previous post, this week I completed an old GW Skeleton Box set Skeleton Cavalry conversion I had created a long while back by using green stuff to Zombify the skeletal horse model.

   Back when I had briefly played an Undead army  for Warhammer fantasy battle, I had notions that the Skeleton rider on the Zombie horse was the leader of my undead cavalry unit, whom all the other skellies on boney steads followed.  This model had been partly painted for over 2 decades before the remaining painting efforts were completed this week 

For Kings of War games I play with Byron we use 10mm minis fixed atop the same sized regiment bases as used for the proper 28mm  KoW  ( to give a stronger impression that our battles are well attended)

For my KoW force, I had dug into an old box of miscellaneous minis to find a 54mm Demon to use as a proxy for a large monster unit.   This demon model and been partly painted and stripped of paint several times since the 90s, before I had started a new paint job on it last year but not finished until this week.

Also, in summer of 2022 I had applied a sparse few dabs of paint atop a base coat for some 10mm Despoiler Charioteers and Ogres minis,  (3d printed designs by Forest Dragon)  and this week they received their overdue finish. 

This Week's Total                                                      61 points

 x1 Skeleton Calvary  (Mounted Figure, 28mm)     = 10 points

 x1 Deamon                (Foot Figure, 28mm)            = 10 points

x11 Despoiler Ogers  (Foot Figure, 10mm)           = 11 Points

 x5 Despolier Chariot (Mounted Figure, 10mm)    = 10 Points

Studio: Under Construction                                     = 20 Points

Steve "Late Risen Undead" [High Adventure] (100 points)

Back in the early 90s to me were halcyon times when I had long hair atop my head and many pots of fresh Citadel paints at the ready - all things minis were awesome, the dice were six sided devils with whom I liked to share a few beers as we played a few haphazard table top battles with our friends while the metal music played... My back-log of unpainted minis was growing but manageable, and there seemed no reason to slow the accumulation of wargames I was getting into.  My Games Workshop fan boy fever dreams of many fully painted armies seemed both reasonable and inevitable, glorious. 

Well, with the discovery that reality was a poor friend to unchecked hobby ambitions, it came to pass that my back-log of unpainted minis grew faster than I laid paint from brush to models.  Then after a short few years of my enraptured submersion below war gaming waters, the stuff of life banished all of my miniaturing hobbies into a few crammed boxes that were hauled through a couple moves and left to languish in the darkest closet corners for over two decades.  

In those boxes of unpainted model shame and unspent paints, were unfinished soldiers for my mostly completed  "Undead Army", a mix of official Games Workshop undead and proxy miniatures that seemed fit for purpose at a lower price point for purchase, for playing games of Warhammer Fantasy Battle that made sense at the time. 

Now here I am in present day,  after a couple years of slowly resuming some of what is best in life, that being the painting minis and playing table top battles with friends!   At last, the call from the things dwelling in the closet were  not from bothersome haunting ghosts and gremlins, but rather from my brush, paint and minis of old!  My hair may have fallen from scalp to chin, and lost all color in the descent, but to battle I am called!  I must slay the grey!   Big thanks from me to ByronM and a couple others for relighting the creative fires whereupon I layer paint upon models for purpose of waging war and skirmish games upon dice battered and beer splattered table tops. ( and also there is a big thanks from the ghosts and gremlins in my closet, they are using the recently freed up closet space from my moved hobby supplies to set up a modest Karaoke stage for themselves.)

I am now rearmed with many new pots of paints, with paint brands new to me; Vallego and Army Painter as well as a few pots of what GW has to offer now..  and also surprisingly my old Citadel Colour pots of "Snot Green" and "Putrid Green" survived decades where my many other pots of citadel colours (and Ral Partha) paints had perished. These two old Citadel paints together are both fortuitous and relevant to this post.... as these old green pigments are present in my pictures for this post. 

Back in the day when I was painting my Warhammer Fantasy Army of "Undead", I was naturally inspired by what I saw in White Dwarf Magazine and 'Evy Metal painting.. which to me meant all bases were treated with sand and white glue and painted with a foundation of Green Snot, dry brushed with Green Putrescence then given a wash with whatever the painting gawds saw fit to have mixed upon my pallet that day

I had the old models, I had the old paint, I had a new challenge...

So for these new reborn undead, once lost to long years to the purgatory unpainted grey, they arise painted at last,  their moldering feet atop the same sandy green bases as their fellow undead in an army last painted many years ago... better late than never I suppose..

... and as these undead clamber and shuffle their return to the High Adventure of fantasy themed table top battles,  so do I also return in earnest to the hobbies of mini painting and rolling war dice with the first points scored next to my handle-name.

28mm Undead figures x 11 + Challenge   =   Total  100 points

Zombies (Foot Figure) 8x5pts                                        = 40pts
Skeleton Calvary (Mounted) 2x10pts                            = 20pts
Undead Dragon (Score as Mounted Figure Vehicle)    = 20pts
1st Green Studio Pass: 'High Adventure'                     = 20pts