Zombicide: Black Plague – Painting Necromancers

I have two of the standard Necromancers, plus four specials (two of which are also player survivors). That’s six figures done and they were fun to paint and look good on the board – in particular it’s great having the standard necromancers stand out from the regular zombies. I’ve followed the standard images as a colour guide with small variations for all but one figure.

Standard Necromancers – front

Back when I painted my dark elves (Drow), I’d been reading about how black doesn’t always come out well when painting figures – its hard to shade and highlight to pick out detail. The necromancer cloaks are painted with black mixed with some grey, making a very dark grey. Red for the cloak sash and arm bandages. Silver over the dark grey with the armoured legs and boots, brown then copper for chains, brown rods, dagger hilt and beards. Straps/bindings on the bottles and raised skull proved a nuisance – I need a new brush for fine lines. Some ink to shade the face, skulls and bandages, and a then white highlighting on skulls.

Necromancers – rear

I may come back to these later. They could do with a little more shading and highlighting on back on the cloaks.

Now the special necromancers – Evil Troy, Grin, Ostokar the Pale and Queen Medea.

 

Evil Troy – front

Evil Troy – better known to many as “Evil Ash” (Bruce Campbell) from Army of Darkness. The figure wears a breastplate (rather than armour banding over his shirt as shown on the card and in the movie) so I went a dull gun-metal with silvered edging. I choose a red cloak to match the movie rather than blue-black on the card. I don’t believe the eye sockets are well formed on the figure and were very difficult to paint. My final result is mostly black with a bright orange pupil in the middle – which hadn’t come out in the image above. Light reflection makes the skull helmet look silver rather than the white it actually is. Gameplay: When killed, put him back in his spawn zone, unless killed with a 3 damage attack/Dragon Fire.

 

Evil Troy – rear

Grin – or more commonly known as a medieval “Joker”, from the Batman comics. I pretty much ignored the card colours. The Joker usually wears a purple jacket and pants, yellow vest and green shirt – so this became the basis for the clothes on the figure. I liked the blood effect across the chin on the Z:BP image, rather than just red lips, so kept that. I don’t like the jawbone on the end of the staff – at some time in the future I may cut of the end and replace it with a standard human skull (with red mouth?). Gameplay: When he moves, he moves up to two zones instead of one.

 

Grin – front

 

Grin – rear

Ostokar the Pale – a “Naiade” special guest figure from french artist Xavier Gueniffey Durin. You can look at more of his stuff here. Originally I was planning on grey rags that got darker with each lower “layer”, and ended up with a bit of both green and brown over the grey and shaded that. Mostly gun-metal on the chains with some silver highlight and various colours to detail belts, sheath, straps, etc. Gameplay: Each time he gets an extra activation, all zombies in his zone also get an extra activation.

 

Ostokar – front

Ostokar has been used as a survivor in one of our games so far (I enjoyed using Zombie-link), but not as a necromancer. I like the look of the figure and there’s some flexibility in the chains, which means they are less likely to break through handling or being packed in with other minis.

 

Ostokar – rear

Queen Medea – or “Queen Ravenna” (Charlize Theron) from the movies Snow White and the Huntsman and The Huntsman: Winter’s War. There’s some debate that CMON should have used the pose on the card rather than the final sculpt (dagger held in front not over the head) and I agree – although it’s still a nice figure. The red lips look a bit too bold in the image here, but don’t stand out so much on the actual figure. I found an online image where someone painted her in dark blue (rather than the black from card/movie) and liked the shading to almost black in the dress folds. I’ve used a lighter blue for the bodice than the image I saw, and managed a better effect with shading/highlighting than I usually try for or achieve. Gameplay: Cannot be eliminated if there are other zombies in her zone except with Dragon Fire.

 

Queen Medea – front

 

Queen Medea – rear

That’s all for now… I’ve got wolfz and abominations I can start on, but I might spend a week on something else before I come back to Zombicide. I hope you enjoy the pictures and have fun if your playing Zombicide!