Painting – A bunch of Kobolds

Salamander shall kindle,
Writhe nymph of the wave,
In air sylph shall dwindle,
And Kobold shall slave.

Who doth ignore
The primal Four,
Nor knows aright
Their use and might,
O’er spirits will he
Ne’er master be.

— ”Faust” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This dozen of Kobolds are Reaper Bones figures. Years ago I bought two packs of six, giving me four figures each of three poses. I’ve painted them in D&D/Pathfinder style, going with a red draconic ancestry. They are nice figures with a reasonable level of detail, but they are small – only 20mm high and this made them quite awkward to paint well. Apart from cleaning up the base from the sprue they’d been on, no trimming or filing was required.

Initially I decided to do a red base coat and had trouble with paint staying on a few of them unless it was reasonably thick, or I did a second coat. I’d read of different problems with painting bones figures, but hadn’t had this problem before. Thankfully, nothing went wrong after some repainting. I stuck with simple colours, mostly green and blue for jackets, kilts, etc and so on. I was finding detail a nuisance because of the small size of the figures, so I haven’t been as fussy as I normally would with a larger figure. (For example, I’m not going back to dot pupils in their eyes.) Even so, I’m happy with the way they look.

I like the pavement sculpted base a lot, and since they were all square and flat based (without filing or trimming required) I’m not re-basing them.

I’ve almost finished a reaper bones “great worm”. The painting is pretty much done, but I’m waiting on some 50 and 75mm bases to arrive in the mail so I can mount and finish it properly. I would have completed it this weekend, but when I dropped in on my local Games Workshop store on Friday (enjoying a day off work) I learned that they don’t stock bases and would have to order them in. I chose not to order, and instead went online and arranged for to get four times as many bases at about twice the price (including postage and currency conversion). I hadn’t been to a GW shop for years and I don’t plan on going back.