Painting – Nolzur’s Demons

The last of my Nolzur’s Marvelous Miniatures – a pack with a D&D Succubus and an Incubus. Mold lines bothered me a bit with these two, particularly annoying along hands and the tails. While better than some of my early purchases, I think mold lines are still a concern when the figures involved are slim and/or have long thin hands/arms, etc.

These are the female/male version of the same D&D minor demon. Good looking humanoids, who can change their appearance to look more or less human, who are frequently employed to deal with mortals. Both will be quite handy to represent any winged humanoid that appears in my game, and not just the actual demons.

The colour scheme on the pack is detailed, but quite dark – not the first time with this range. Since its only slightly larger than actual size, it doesn’t help much to see how someone else has painting these figures. With the exception of the dark red of the wings, I’ve pretty much gone and done something rather different with each. It’s taken me roughly a day each to sort out what I wanted, paint and wait for them to dry. Apart from the initial flesh, and the red on the wings, I painted them one after the other. Painting under and around the rear of each figure got interesting – you have wings, arms, a tail, and the flared skirt (or whatever you call it) that all try to get in the way of a brush. I regularly cleaned an unwanted colour off the tail, and painting the arm-bands/straps was real fun. (Not!)

Both have a nice pose, and are a good sculpt – except for one leg, and the odd head connection on the female. With the latter, the odd neck depression on the succubus looks like it is meant to define part of her top, or be a necklace – at least according to the official painted image. Doing detail with a depression around the neck is odd to me, normally you have raised detail for something like that. (Which is the way the dress straps are done.) At least painted, it doesn’t stand out as odd like I’d thought it was going to.

And that clears a lot of figures, and my tray is reset with Space Marines. With a good chance C-19 lock-down is wound back this afternoon, I may get some more ‘Little Scythe’ figures to paint this week. Either way, I’ve got some stuff that should be fun and not complicated to paint over the next week or so. Hope you are all coping with life where you are!

The current state of Tray

Actually the current state of tray has a lot of colour on it. The photo below was taken on Saturday and I did some base coating on some figures on the weekend, and a bit of painting every evening after work so far this week. Now that the Chaos Marines are done, everything on the tray is a WizKids Nolzurs/Deep Cuts figure.

 

There’s a deliberate, strong beholder-kin theme here. A few months back I looked at the new releases that WizKids had. Last month I found a Oz store with the proper Beholder to go with my undead one, and they had a few more figures I wanted. The “Gazers” (Eyeballs in my ‘Monsters of Faerun’) are almost complete after I painted eyes tonight, and the Spectator has his base coat and ink. I’m not sure whether to highlight him now or start base-coating his big brother.

I bought a pair of boars mostly to use in Frostgrave, though I’m sure I’ll use them for D&D at some point. At least one blog I follow has mentioned this game before, but I never looked into what it involved. With more time at home to myself this year, I’ve been sorting through the myriad game resources I’ve collected over the years, especially looking at stuff I hadn’t actually read. Back in April this year, Osprey offered three PDF’s (including the Frostgrave 1st Edn rulebook) for free. A month or so ago I was sorry I hadn’t actually looked at it when I downloaded the copies. I really like that I already have most of the figures that anyone would likely want to play (Wizards) or encounter. I’ve developed a single session game for my gaming group. A multi-wizard delve into the city ruins (with more monsters than usual, and possibly less PvP fighting) using Frostgrave is basic enough (rules-wise) and similar enough to our D&D that everyone should get the hang of it really fast and have fun. An actual campaign would also be a nice change for the occasional get together with one friend instead of playing Zombicide. I have the second edition rulebook on my personal wish-list now too.

More Nolzur’s/Deep Cuts D&D Miniatures

The past two weeks have been fairly busy for me painting wise. During the last week I’ve completed two Yuan-ti (snake-men), two air elementals and a cage. The weather was great this morning for drying figures, and photography.

These five figures are all from the Wizkids line of “high defintion” pre-primed figures. The Yuan-ti “Malisons” are Nolzur’s D&D figures, the others are from Pathfinder Deep-Cuts. All required a little bit of cutting and filing to remove mold lines. Being a nearly-transparent plastic/resin, I couldn’t remove the line completely from the air elementals. It might be possible with a really fine file and fine sandpaper, but likely not wortth the time required.

I’ve had a number of Yuan-ti being encountered in my FalsKrag D&D adventure, so adding to the two Reaper snake-men (that I painted in April last year) with actual Yuan-ti figures is a bonus. (Especially at the price of Nolzur’s pack of two compared to Reapers single metal figures.)

Both figures have nice detail and were fun to paint, using a colour scheme based off my previous snake-men. I’m considering going back to the one with the snake tail and darkening the rivets on the chest belts. “Malison” appears to be the D&D 5th edition name for what were previously “halfbloods”; Yuan-ti with both human and snake body-parts. Here’s a group shot with the Reaper figures:

Next the Air Elementals. Following a friend’s post with the same figures, I tried a light wash of white with a hint of blue. I could have left them ‘as-is’ but I hoped to bring out the swirls of the figure a bit more. It didn’t work as well as I’d hoped, but it’s definitely fit for purpose as a game piece. I think you’d need a fine detail brush and actually paint along many of the lines to get a really impressive effect, and the time and interest to do so.

Last, the cage. I’ve wanted a cage for a while, and bought this after seeing Azazel’s work. (Thanks for bringing all these figures to my notice and your notes on painting them! Like your original post I’ve forgotten to photograph it with the “wooden” base.) It was pretty fast & easy to paint – mid grey inside, black outside and then a not very precise silver over the top – leaving some of the black still visible. The bits in between each bar took a bit longer. A little ink, mostly on the corners to bring out some of the bars and rivets. The three figures with it are just to show it’s size. If I end up getting another cage, I’ll paint it rusty. This also came with two ‘piles’ of chains that have gone aside into a box. I don’t see a use for them now, but you never know…

Summer of Scenery Challenge – Nolzur’s Pillars

Wargame Sculptor’s Blog has a Summer of Scenery Challenge (July-August) – or the ‘Not-so-Summer’ challenge for those of us in the middle of Winter. When I was planning my last lot of figure purchases I noticed that WizKids Nolzur’s Mavellous Miniatures line had a set of pillars. I’ve generally used discs or tokens in game play to mark impassable terrain or pillars and thought these would be an excellent replacement. So here’s my scenery/terrain entry.

This is a simple set of four identical stone pillars and a collapsed pillar. Each of my pillars is slightly different because my original base coat of dark grey had a bit less black and a bit more grey as I did each one. The one of the right (above) would have been the first. Some ink, then two dry brushing of lighter greys to bring out the uneven surface of the blocks got them done pretty quickly. They did come with a hole in each to fit a banner, which I filled and painted over. I’ve kept the banners which could always be painted and blue-tacked on if I wanted.

Overall, these are a really nice set from Nolzur’s, that were easy and quick to paint. They are likely to get a lot of use, and I’m tempted to get another set in future. Lastly, here’s a different shot with a few standard figures to show scale. (The images can be clicked on for a larger version)