It Will Not Die

So before you head on past the page break, see if you can guess what I've been painting this week. Go on, pick something. I feel confident I can surprise you.

Not with these, obviously. You'll have seen these coming a mile off.

The Mantic Zombie Parade is out, and it's nice to wave goodbye to this lot. As with the skellies, decent sculpts, but really not very inspiring to paint them again. The main joy is that there's only a single batch of Dungeon Saga left to go (not including the interminable jumble sale of furniture, of course) before I have a fully completed set in the cupboard.

The Zombie Shaman came out a bit better than the last time I did him, I think. A better palate of colours, apart from anything else.

And I did my copy of Blaine. Can't stand the model, can't see why they make such a deal of him being in all their games. Yeah, it's the Predator with a slight fantasy twist. He's got a blobby head and rubbery-looking skulls on his belt. I painted him like a Genestealer and I'm glad never to have to do him again.

Now that the chaff is out of the way, I can get on with trying to surprise you.

Okay, maybe you predicted these too, with your Trumpesque foresight. It's the other half of the Frostgrave Barbarian warband I started a while back, the blue-and-black scheme with the Mind Flayer wizard.

Damn Harlequins have ruined me for shield designs.

This was a bit more vikingy. Better.

Now to convince anyone to play Frostgrave again.

But there's a blast from the past hiding amongst them. Spot him?

This guy is an 80s Citadel Barbarian, from a blister pack my brother bought. You can tell he's 80s, his spear heads aren't bigger than his shins. And he wasn't alone. Deep in the bowels of our cellar, a plastic bag was lurking. A plastic bag that held the contents of my bitz box from about ten years ago...

Mrs Kraken was hunting through the wreckage down there looking for the right size welly boots for our girls, and came back with the plastic bag. "Do you want this?" she asked. "Is there anything in there that's any good?"

Most of it wasn't, in fairness. Battered plastic titan hulls, endless dwarf heads from the Fantasy Regiment box set, over a hundred Womble Marine ammo packs. Tat and crap. But there, glistening like gems amongst the dross, were a handful of classic lead pieces that got my blood all fired up.

The Barbarian Javelineer was the first of them. Four of these Marauder Goblins were the next.

They were a blister pack of twelve, once upon a time. Not sure where the rest went, but I still had two in my box of painted lead (shown above. I did mean to take 'before' shots of the others, but this blog airs before the watershed). Once their old aquaintances got underway, with a fresh coat over their original affair, (the hornblower and the boss joined in for a fresh-up. As did the four Reaper Goblins who were nearby at the time.

Before

After
Nothing extravagant, just redoing the skin and armour with brighter highlights, really. 

Here are the ones from the bag - two archers and two swordmen.

Red trim on the leather was as fancy as I was feeling, so no shield designs for these two. They're just plain goblins, after all.

Tiny models, but all bristling with character. They needed some fixing - missing falchions replaced by chaos warrior or Heroquest weaponry, new shields, etc - but they make a nice little raiding group. Maybe even a Frostgrave Warband, if I really want to claim unfair cover bonus for very small models.

They'll never see us coming! All we need now is a wizard...

So far, so surprising. I didn't see the Marauder Goblins coming, even if you did. But in keeping with the theme of 'back from the dead', could you possibly have expected...

Windswept and interesting? Oh my!

Yes! Another classic 80s model, a Wardancer! So old, he still had one of their moulded on shield bosses (on his leg, of all places). I clipped that off and redid the paint, and here he is, red and green and celtic.

Also back from the dead - a Necron Warrior.

The freebie handout from White Dwarf, if I remember right, from when they introduced the race in the first place. This when they were a race of murderous Terminator-style robots with little backstory, rather than the Tomb Kings in Space that they are now. Iirc, back then you never removed Necrons as casualties until the entire army was beaten. There was always a chance that a downed model would get back up. Very slow, rather dull as an army (just Warriors and Lords on offer to start with), but quite fun for a themed match. I think I preferred the original fluff somehow, although the newer models are much better. This guy has appalling posture - that jutting head is terrible. Stand up straight, man!

And finally, in a vague nod to the forthcoming Kharadron Overlords, the most treasured chunk from this mini haul. Ladies and Gents, the race that will not die - the Squats!

Cry Vengeance! For Karag Neckbeard!

A friend of mine had a squat army, way back when. All bikers and trikers, backed up by Squat Terminators (Hearthguard, was it?) and psychic Living Ancestors. I know that the race is now a verb, that 'to squat' something is to remove it totally from fluff and game and deny it will ever come back. But it's a shame.

His beard looks like it could be fake, thanks to that heavy black shading. Oops.

Three reasons:

1. Viking-style space dwarves with burrowing tech would make for cool miniatures. Update them a bit, sure, but GW are good at doing that.
2. Financially, if Harlequins and Genestealer Cults sold well, Squats would similarly appeal to the wallets of our generation of gamers.
3. I think there's room in 40K for an all-vehicle army, or nearly all-vehicle. If all squats could field were strange and interesting artillery (grav-cannons, mole mortars, etc) and fleets of light bikes, they'd be bringing something to the field that I don't think any other army does. Lots of other armies can, of course (Eldar and Space Marines both often do bike swarms, I think), but there's other options for them too. Stick in some of the Epic scale Land Trains, and you'd easily have a range that would appeal to the fans and the tacticians. 

Now, there's still a single lead model left to fix and paint from this trove, but it was that much more battered it will take a bit longer to do over. So stay tuned!

Gone, but not forgotten