43. Descent showcase

In the last post, I showed some solutions for storing and organizing ideas for complicated (dices, tokens, cards, tiles, miniatures, other thingies) board games, especially for Descent (Journeys in the dark second, and so on...). Since then, I received a lot of requests, to show my painted miniatures... Actually not, but I will show them anyway.

Please, be gentle with them, they are my first painting attempts. So they are even more far away from any aesthetically pleasing results, then my recent paintjobs. I will try to take them in chronological order (as far as I remember it right).

• Barghest: I thought at first, that it will be the easiest to paint something, thats not too small, and is full with fur. Because painting fur on (beginner level) is the easiest thing to do: a basecoat, a drybrushing, and it looks decent. And I was right! If You are a beginner, or a beginner is asking You for advice, for the first thing to paint, the answer is obvious: something furry! Note, that the rims of the minions are grey, and thee of the master is red, and there are some minor differences int the color scheme too, for easier distinction on the board. And, however, its not really visible on the photos, but I made some doggy footprints in the mud, and it was fun!
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Goblin archer: One of the ugliest sculpts with the worst molding quality... Even a bloody amateur cant make a big disappointment here, isnt it? Ok, they are small, and so harder to paint, but they hardly can get uglier. At the base, I wanted to show some forest terrain with real branches (and lichen), stones and not-real bushes.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Goblin witcher: They were witcher, before it was cool (although not the same type)! They genuinely ugly, the only thing to like on them are the chicken feet on their staffs. Here I made some mushrooms out of epoxy putty (no, not Milliput or Green Stuff, but some repair putty from the DIY store), because they cant bear their own appearance without some narcotics...
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Cave spider: Again, not a big deal, mostly fur, some (eight, if right) black legs. The only hard to paint things are those eyes, but they are really hard. Not to paint a dot, but to paint eight dots in the same size and in regular pattern... I added some fun here with a skull design on their abdomens (minions: tan, master: red).
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Fire Imp: I was getting more confident, so I tried painting flames. I think that the result is pretty decent, but at what costs? How many hours I spent on glazing, and glazing, and glazing... Now I think I could make this much faster, but it was part of the learning process.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Zombie: After my confidence was gone, I wanted something easy again. The zombies are also pretty ugly, and honestly, what can go wrong while painting zombies? Will they be ugly? Will they look dirty? Who cares? Here was the basing the fun part again! My son had the idea to put gravestones on them, and I found it excellent! So I made some of that repair-putty, and think that they actually look better then the zombies themselves...
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Rat swarm: A heap of fur. The grandmaster rat is albino the one, and I made some skulls for the base. Not much more to say.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Merriod: Well, the hardest job for Descent so far. They are big, they are flat, so I tried (and faild) wet blending here. In my opinion its really one of the hardest exercise to paint something similar. As expected, it didnt turn out so well, as I was hoping for (even with a lot lowered expectations...), so I had to find another way to make those surfaces interesting. So I glazed stripes, white ones on the tentacles, and reddish/blueish ones on their back, and I think that the results may be not good, but still acceptable. The best part here was the base again! A made a little diorama of an underground lake, with (real) snail-shells, (fake) skulls, and my first ever resin water.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Doors: Although the are no miniatures, I wanted to get away from those cardboard standies, so I sculpted these from air drying clay and popsicle sticks. From a bit of a distance, they arent that bad. But because of the time consumption, I made only two of them. More will come, well, sometimes in the distance future... And I made some chests instead of search tokens too, but forgot to make pictures of them. Next time.
  

Declaration: most of the Descent miniatures are pretty good looking, and the ugly ones in this list are over-represented, because I wanted to learn on them, so I started with them.

And whats left? Not much, only a giant sized, full box...

If You are interested, how these miniatures can look with a professional paintjob, I strongly recommend the excellent video series from Sorastro, with breathtaking results!