The Long Road to Avalone

Every now and then I have a wave of realisation, one I'm sure many gamers are familiar with, that I actually have a lot of little toy soldiers to paint. The fact that Bring Out Your Lead 2014 is fast approaching - August 8th to 10th - has caused one of these realisations and this has forced me to confront my growing pile of unpainted lead.

A part of the 'pile' - I don't have a problem, honest!

So, I've done what everyone else in my position, having an understanding partner and no children, would do and I've dropped pretty much everything to get some painting done!

The wolf pack.

You may have seen these guys in my 'useful stuff' post. They came thickly coated in paint and one of them had a nearly-snapped ankle that needed pinning, but after a good clean up and a coat of paint I think they look alright. I went with the ever popular base, wash and drybrush approach for these as I don't think anything fancier was necessary. Unfortunately one of them looks to be a bit miscast and has got a large area of flatish fur. Oh well, chaos mutations and all that, right?

I'm pretty sure these are Marauder wolves, but I just can't prove it!

The Village Militia lead by Marta Hartmann

These models aren't really old at all, but they are from Foundry's ex-Citadel range. I wasn't worried about being particularly neat with these as they are meant to look patchy, dirty and generally downtrodden. In games they are going to be my unfortunate village militia and everything that can go wrong for them probably will as they'll likely be assaulted by all kinds of nightmarish creatures. Poor little guys. 

They'll be accompanied by eight far more competent looking archers in the next week or so.

They are lead by Marta Hartmann who is, I'm lead to believe, a Chronicle CF series female cleric. Although it would be good to confirm this as I can't find her on the CCM Wiki. She will be acting as the champion of my human forces and will get some more background as part of my next battle report.

Melondil v3

Next I worked on the latest incarnation of my unfortunate Dark Elf hero, this is in fact the third model I've painted up to represent him now! His skin has turned a slightly unnatural shade from the acid covering him and he's unarmed and largely unarmoured, although I entirely forgot to try and model the fact that he's only meant to have one eye, d'oh.

The model is a Wood Elf Wardancer with the weapons removed and the arms bent into a new position. The model itself is wearing trousers but has been painted in skin tones in an effort to hide this. I had to spend entirely too long sourcing a relevant model and in the end settled for this one, although I'm not entirely happy about the choice. Searching for a 'naked male elf model' takes you to some dark corners of the Internet, that's for sure!

Centaurs #1 and #2

Lastly, I've finished up the first two of the twelve centaurs that will, along with the wolves, be taking part in the Siege of Avalone game at BOYL 14 on the Friday. They are fairly simple models and quick to paint up although they have absolutely hellish mould lines everywhere. Looking at them now I know I've missed some. At least one of the centaurs had a 1mm deep mould line running the entire length of the model on the top and bottom and many run right across fur and long hair!

Could mould lines count as a mutation?

I'm going to try and do some fairly realistic horse colours for the bodies, these two are Standard and Incomplete Tobiano I'm lead to believe. I want to try and do some more exciting colours later on, including some Dapple Grey or Leopard Appaloosa for the heroes.