It’s happened! I have now officially painted all of the figures from the new HeroQuest “Mythic Tier” set.
The lone holdouts were two alternate “Abominations,” the dragon (excellent figure, this one), and three alternative heroes: The wizard (Mentor), the bard, and the warlock.
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| The final line up, in various stages of painting. |
Duck, Duck, Duck, DRAGON!
Part of my delay was in trying to decide how I was going to paint the dragon figure. Although I had painted a dragon in the past, that was in 10mm scale (Games Workshop’s [i]Smaug[/i] figure for [i]Battle of Five Armies[/i], this would be my first time painting such a large miniature for HeroQuest’s nominal 28mm scale. Granted, Avalon Hill/Hasbro did a remarkable sculpture of this beast to have it both be huge and still be workable with HeroQuest’s grid system— the solution was to have the beast coiled around a stone plinth. It’s brilliant design, and a fantastic looking piece, so I wanted to do it “right.”
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| Green and bone, from all sides. Needs more work… |
Although the adventure quest the dragon is designed for, “The Crypt of Perpetual Darkness” (by actor and game enthusiast Joe Manganiello), presents the dragon as black in color, I felt that was a little too restrictive for such a tightly sculpted figurine. I thought it would wind up as just a dark black mass in play— and I’m not good at highlighting, which would be absolutely necessary for such a color scheme. Red, too, seemed overdone… and Smaug was already my “red” dragon. So I wanted something different. The more I looked at the creature crouched upon his perch, the more my mind whispered “green”— a green dragon, of subtle appearance but ready to strike… yeah, that was just what it called for.
I’ll give you a few shots of it in progression. There was a lot of trial and error in this attempt. First I painted the plinth with a quick work of dark grey (and some gold on the engraved disks), mostly to give myself some definition to separate the monster from his mounting spot. I then went over it in “Evergreen,” the darkest green I have. This wound up looking too dark, and I settled on Kelly Green as a highlight color with a dry brushed first attempt— no luck on that. I also gave the horns, teeth and claws a coat of an ivory that I use on skeletons and paper or parchment decorations as book pages and scrolls.
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| Looking mighty green,,, |
I wound up recoating much of the dragon in Kelly Green, and then using Evergreen to produce shadows and muscle crevices. I followed up with another covering of the plinth and the various discs and skull decorations on the same. Finally I gave the recesses, teeth and plinth a wash of very thinned black. I think the result, for tabletop purposes, suited my goals. I won’t win any painting competitions, but at arm’s length gaming distances, that dragon looks imposing.
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| Better… |
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| A few more hits to go… |
Also being painted through all this was Mentor, using a dark blue and gold scheme with a satin granite on his under-robes. (Although the Hasbro and even classic Milton Bradley art gives Mentor red elements, I prefer the subtler all-blue approach. Red is for the bad guys!)
And also the bard, which is sculpted as a half-orc for some inexplicable reason. I’m not a fan of this sculpt because I don’t like the half-orc as hero trope. For what it is, there’s a lot of humor in the pose, but it really doesn’t fit the dungeon environment of HeroQuest. At first I attempted to treat this as a human figure, thinking I’d use darkened skin tones. That was horrible, so I sucked in my objections, stripped the never-to-be-revealed disaster using alcohol wipes, and went with my stand in for orc green, “Seminole Green” (Why “Seminole?” Maybe a reference to the Everglades? Really dumb color name…) It’s a silly looking figure, with satin purple paints and a clashing light blue vest (“Cerulean”). But silly is what works for this. Again, on the tabletop I don’t care that much.
The Abominations were basic— dark blue and green coating, followed by light blue and light green drybrushing for highlights, then dark blue and green wash into recesses, and a black wash into the recesses among the tentacles. Teeth are ivory, and the tongues (if you could see them) are a dark red.
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| Everybody say “Zargon is a cheese doodle!” |
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| “About FACE!” |
That leaves us with the warlock. Again, I don’t care for the character, but the sculpt is a neat twist. This is either a halfling or a little girl who has made some pact with an eldritch entity of horrible aspect in return for some sort of corrupting power. As such, the figure works— an image of innocence with a huge creep factor, from the obsidian knife to the vile green claw. I wound up borrowing the purple and light blue elements from my bard— I assume these two twisted cases are good friends— with an overall sunshine yellow dress. I tried to use a dark wash on this— big mistake. She wound up looking like she needed a bath. I redid my color coats for the dress and the skin— the rest was fine— and used King’s Gold (a darker shade of yellow with a slight tan element) as my shadow wash. It’s okay. I may need to come back later with a darker shadow yellow.
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| The figure of Innocen… WOAH! What’s that CLAW?!? |
And there were a bunch of other figs I finished earlier, including some additional orcs, goblins, skeletons, armored skeletons, female zombies and mummies, another Gargoyle, the NPC prisoner figure “Sir Ragnar,” a hero “druid(ess)” a “dread sorcerer,” a sorceress (possibly Kavra?), and the Witch Lord. (Note that the druidess has some green grass growing at her feet. Zargon’s gonna need some weed killer.
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| “… and the rest, here on Zargon’s Isle!” |
But That’s Not All…
I’m not done with HeroQuest figures, because I keep adding expansion sets to the painting pile. On my shelf are The Frozen Horror, The Mage of the Mirror, Rise of the Dread Moon, and the latest addition, Against the Ogre Horde. Looks like I’m gonna be painting now for a while. Maybe I should stop purchasing more minis… what am I saying? That’s crazy talk!
— Parzival
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