#HeroQuest2019: This is a Gargoyle!

As key luminaries of the realm have aptly pointed out, one of the best things about HeroQuest is the Gargoyle:

And while I stand by my earlier assessment that the Chaos Warlock is actually the cooler miniature, the Gargoyle pretty much won by sheer shock and awe tactics, back when I originally opened the game box: He was massive! He came in three separate parts! I remember a younger version of myself not wanting to let go of the model for the entirety of Christmas, back in 1989 😉

A couple of years after that, I actually painted the Gargoyle, trying to match the paintjob that appeared on the back of the HeroQuest quest book (once again, courtesy of Mike McVey). Here’s the result:

I remember being over the moon with my paintjob back in the day. From a modern perspective, it’s easy to see how my approach was hampered by the limitation of seemingly never using any shading and merely painting on the base colours 😉 I am still pretty pleased with the colour blending on the sword, though…

Now it was clear that painting another Gargoyle would have to be a part of my #HeroQuest2019 project. My original plan was to keep the Gargoyle for last and only paint him once all of the other monsters had been finished. But then real life (TM) had been such a slog recently that I felt I deserved a little reward for soldiering on, so the Gargoyle jumped the queue a bit.

When it came to the actual painting recipe, I didn’t have to think all that long: Sure, one option would have been to actually paint the model as a stone statue — after all, the Gargoyle is supposedly rather a stone effigy come to life than an actual Daemon. Plus there are some rather gorgeous “stone” Gargoyles, painted by fellow hobbyists, out there. But this approach just seemed a bit boring to me.

These days, I am actually aware of the fact that the HeroQuest gargoyle is a slightly rebranded Bloodthirster of Khorne (or a statue of a Bloodthirster brought to life, to be precise). To the point where the vintage metal Bloodthirster from the time HeroQuest was released actually included options that allowed you to basically assemble a bigger HeroQuest Gargoyle.

And a Khornate Daemon required bold colours: Red and brass. So I ended up back with the “official” Mike McVey paintjob yet again:

Now the picture above doesn’t really use the actual Gargoyle model as included in the HeroQuest boxed set, but rather a slightly more elaborate metal prototype. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why my paintjob ended up looking slightly different — although it’s still heavily based on Mike McVey’s approach. Here’s a first tentative look:

I wasn’t so sure about the somewhat different look at first, but the model has definitely grown on me over the last couple of days, and I am pretty happy with the finished model now — definitely an improvement over my last paintjob from the mid-90s (even though the difference doesn’t look quite as stark in the photo as it does in real life):

I would also be remiss not to mention Tale of Painters’ flame tutorial yet again, which really came in handy when painting the Gargoyle’s sword — I merely reversed the recipe this time around 😉

So with the model finished, I set up the usual, proper “glamour shots”. So here, without further ado, is the Gargoyle:

All in all, I am really very happy with the finished model — this guy will make for a brilliant boss monster to pitch against those pesky heroes… 😉

What’s more, with the completion of the Gargoyle, Team Chaos is now finished as well. Just look at them, all glorious red and dark metal:

At the same time, I still need to complete quite a few models before my HeroQuest set can be considered finished: The Goblins are still missing, as are the Fimi/Fimirs/Fimirach (?!). And then there’s the furniture, of course, something I am already looking forward to quite a bit! If nothing else, though, I do have at least one model for each of the monster types now:

And while we are at it, here’s a look at all of my completed HeroQuest models right now:

As you can see, the assembly also includes the two “bonus models” I have created to round out the set, namely Sir Ragnar and the Witch Lord.

What’s more, I was surprised to find out that this collection actually makes for some forty models that I have mostly managed to paint in the first quarter of 2019 — that’s quite an achievement, given my – usually glacially slow – pace when it comes to painting!

So that’s it for today. Of course I would love to hear any thoughts and feedback you may have, so don’t be shy! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

#HeroQuest2019: The Forces of Chaos

In a way, all of the greenskins and undead I have painted for my #HeroQuest2019 project so far have mostly been a preparation for the models I want to share with you in today’s post — because even back when I got my first HeroQuest set, I immediately fell in love with the chaos models above all others: This was basically my very first contact with GW’s approach to the forces of chaos, but even back then, the faceless, armoured menace of the HeroQuest chaos warriors deeply appealed to me — and with long lasting consequences, arguably, because I am still a fan of heavily armoured, spiky chaos models to this very day!

So I wanted to do the chaos warrior models justice, but I was also slightly nervous about coming up with the right recipe for them. And there was also another problem, one that becomes obvious when you take a look at the chaos warriors appearing in this picture:

Yes, two of them had already been painted previously — and quite horribly so, to be honest: The first model was caked in an absolutely atrocious paintjob that mostly consisted of a thick coat of Blood Red, slathered over an even thicker undercoat of the old white GW primer. Even with several scrubbing sessions, I wasn’t able to completely strip off the paint, so I feared he would never exactly be a beauty again:

Case in point, there was even a weird lump on his left shoulder that didn’t match the look of the other chaos warriors, and only after some prying with a hobby knife did I discover that it was an ancient lump of superglue… Oh well… 😉

His buddy, on the other hand, seemed like he would be less of a problem, because old his paintjob was a lot thinner — it consisted of hard to remove scale model acrylics, though, so even after stripping, there was still some black on him:

…So these two were the models I started with. Here’s another look at them, next to an old plastic WFB/Talisman chaos warrior whom I may use to represent the named chaos warriors that appear in some of the quests. Since he already looks like a slightly upgraded version of the HeroQuest models anyway, this seems like a pretty sound approach (as an aside, I still have an entire squad of those old plastic warriors that forms a part of my very first WFB chaos army):

So it was clear that I would start with the more damaged of the two chaos warriors as my guinea pig, because there was simply a lot less left to lose with that – already pretty rough – model. But still, the question remained: What recipe was I to use for my HeroQuest chaos warriors?

My first point of reference was to take a look at the classic Mike McVey paintjob from back in the day:

But it didn’t take me long to realise that this approach wouldn’t work for me: I am no Mike McVey, for one, and wasn’t sure I would be able to reproduce all of the tiny patterns and detail you can see in the model above — and I also have to admit that the finished look seemed just a bit too trippy and artistic to me — I was looking for something a little more down to earth for my own models.

Another approach that I had seen fellow hobbyists use was to paint each of the four chaos warriors as a follower of one of the four chaos gods, respectively. This seemed like such a cool idea, and I really thought about it for quite a while. In the end, however, I really wanted the four models to work as a massive, unified block of inhuman, armoured malice, and having them in all colours of the rainbow would have worked against that intended effect.

So I went back to the other obvious reference material: The chaos warrior monster card included in the game itself:

Now this seemed quite a bit closer to home — and it would also have the added benefit of perfectly matching GW’s classic “Red Period” for chaos models.

So here’s how my first test model turned out:

GW’s modern red hues look great when layered on top of one another, so they also worked like a charm when highlighting the armour. I was basically able to use a variant of Duncan Rhodes’ Bloodthirster recipe (which I also used to paint my own Bloodthirster and Daemon Primarch Angron conversion, respectively.)

The sculpt itself helped a lot, as well — in fact, it feels like those old HeroQuest chaos warriors were basically invented to teach people how to edge-highlight armour plates. Granted, the results are still not quite as tidy and clean as I would have liked, but I was still really happy with the finished piece — and all on a model that had seemed like a total loss beforehand, no less! 🙂

So I quickly painted the second chaos warrior in line, the one that had previously been painted black all over:

Things got even easier afterwards, because the remaining two chaos warriors were still pristine and didn’t require any salvage operations. So it didn’t take me long to finish the entire set of four chaos warriors:

So with the success of finishing the chaos warriors still fresh on my mind, I turned to the model I actually feared the most: The Chaos Warlock:

Don’t worry, we’ll be getting to this guy in a furture post…

The Gargoyle may be the showiest, biggest and most complex monster in the HeroQuest box, but I think I like the Chaos Warlock even better — again, I blame being a huge fan of Skeletor during my childhood. But even from a modern perspective, I think it’s one of the most interesting models in the box, and one that hasn’t really been superseded by flashier, subsequent Warhammer releases. There’s also the iconic pose — anyway, to make a long story short, I think the Warlock is the coolest model in the entire HeroQuest box, period.

Unfortunately, he was also always and, invariably, the first model to be lost for good. I have actually managed to lose two of those over the years — I distinctly remember painting one of them about about 25 years ago, it was even the first model I ever used actual Citadel Paints on, incidentally. But it’s nowhere to be found today, probably lost at the bottom of a moving box in the attic or basement…

So I was really lucky when, back in 2013, fellow hobbyist (and grimdark impresario) Alexander Winberg was awesome enough to send me an extra chaos warlock — and after the model had been part of my to-do pile for more than five years, I felt it was finally time to get it painted at long last, nervous though I was about the prospect…

Once again, I first looked at the classic McVey paintjob:

And even after doing quite a bit of research, this was where I ended back up — it’s just the most inconic way of painting this model, and the one that seems to work best (unless you are going for a direct copy of Filmation Skeletor’s look):

So for once, I would try to approximate a McVey paintjob directly — no small feat, certainly…

Another point of reference that helped immensely during the painting process was RemyT’s warlock (his are probably the best-painted HeroQuest models in existence), and his version actually used the plastic model, and not the metal pre-production prototype, which definitely helped.

Anyway, I had to cheat a bit here and there, suggesting detail instead of actually perfectly painting it, but I quickly felt like I was actually on to something:

The whole exercise actually gave me a whole new appreciation for Mike McVey’s and RemyT’s respective paintjobs, simply because they have managed to feature so much detail in so very little space. I did the best I could to replicate the look, but like I said, some of the more intricate patterns and effects are suggested, rather than cleanly painted (those tiny white triangles on the robe get less and less convincing the closer you look, for instance). I also left out some of the most delicate wrinkles and squiggles from the reference material, mostly because it felt like taking the model even further would have meant pushing my luck and risking a paintjob I was already really happy with…

That said, my paintjob basically shows off the maximum of detail I could safely pull off, within the limits of my abilities as a miniature painter. Like I said, I was really nervous about this particular model, and I would argue I have managed to do it justice, at least to the best of my abilities.

So here’s the finished piece:

In spite of not achieving the exact same level of detail visible on Mike McVey’s and Remy’s models, I am still really, really proud of the finished model, if I do say so myself: Finally having painted the warlock to this standard was one of the moments I was really looking forward to when I started this model!

So, in closing, let us take a look at “Team Chaos” as it stands right now:

And with that, we are done for today. I would love to hear what you think, of course, so feel free to leave a comment! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more! 🙂

#HeroQuest2019: The Witch Lord

More #HeroQuest2019 today, but after blazing through the entire set of undead monsters, I felt I had earned myself a little wiggle room for a bit of fun. So what is this about?

As you have already seen in a previous post of mine, I won’t simply limit myself to painting the classic models, but I am also looking at some chances here and there to add some custom models to my set of HeroQuest, in order to create representations for the special characters that appear in some of the quests, but don’t have an official model. So this time around, my plan was to create a model to represent that most dastardly of recurring HeroQuest villains: The dreadful WITCH LORD!

For those who don’t remember the game, seeing how it’s been thirty years and everything, the Witch Lord made his first appearance in the standard quest book: Intrepid adventurers would accidentally awaken him about two-thirds through the base game’s collection of quests, while actually searching for a magical artifact, then had to find a magic sword that could harm him in response to his awakening. The Witch Lord then served as the quest book’s end boss, so to speak. Yet that was not the end of it:

A couple of expansions for HeroQuest were released a bit after the basic game system, and one of these was titled “Return of the Witch Lord”. Here’s Les Edward’s cover artwork for that particular expansion:

Illustration by Les Edwards

When I saw it, I was instantly in love! In fact, the cover artwork alone sold me on the expansion, so when I was allowed to choose a HeroQuest expansion box as a birthday gift, I chose this. How could I not, with all those wonderfully skeletal knights on the cover, and let’s not forget Skeletor’s debonair cousin at the centre of attention!

In hindsight, especially from a collector’s perspective, it would have been so much smarter to get, say, the “Against the Ogre Horde” expansion that actually came with some original sculpts, whereas Return of the Witch Lord just featured more skeletons, mummies and Zombies. But I couldn’t help myself, that illustration just went straight for the throat — in fact, it remains one of my favourite fantasy illustrations of all time, and I feel tempted to say that I even prefer it to the actual HeroQuest cover artwork.

There was also something truly cool about having a recurring villain across several iterations, especially one so blatantly inspired by Skeletor. Fun fact, though, I didn’t even realise the villain of the piece was supposed to be the Witch Lord as the German title of the expansion was “Die Rückkehr des Hexers”, and the only character referred to as a “Hexer” (Warlock) in the German version of HeroQuest was a character from an earlier quest, represented by this model from the box, yet another skull-faced evildoer:

Don’t worry, we’ll be getting to this guy in a furture post…

Anyway, be that as it may, I think you can maybe understand why remembering the Witch Lord gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling. So when I sat down recently to think about whether or not I could add a couple of custom conversions to my classic HeroQuest set, it was obvious the Witch Lord would end up right at the front of the queue.

I started by collecting inspiration online and looking at other people’s work, as I usually do before a conversion project. Once again, Lestodante’s collection provided ample inspiration:

Models from Lestodante’s collection

As you can see, the model he uses for the Witch Lord is, in fact, a custom sculpt that almost perfectly replicates the artwork while also looking very much like an official HeroQuest model from back in the day — a wonderful solution, and I am still green with envy!

There was also Ampersand’s really cool Witch Lord:

Witch Lord conversion by Ampersand

As you can probably guess from looking at the model, this one uses more modern GW plastic parts, namely from the (still available) Skeleton Warriors. So I made a note and earmarked that particular kit as a possible source of useful bitz.

As an aside, there’s also the Frostgrave Lich Lord, who would have would have worked really well, too, even though I only discovered this after the fact:

In fact, given the resemblance in both the design and the very name, you’ve got to wonder…

But anyway, a proud converter like me has to come up with his own version, right? So keeping the excellent inspiration in mind, I decided that the best way to start was to work from the very artwork that had inspired me so much many years ago. So here’s a closer look at the Witch Lord as originally imagined by Les Edwards:

My initial idea included some Skaven Stormvermin and Empire flagellant parts and would have looked a bit like this 40k renegade psyker I built a couple of years ago:

And I think the general approach would have worked pretty well, too. But then fate struck, and I discovered an even better approach:

You see, one of the things I wanted to achieve with my Witch Lord model was to have the model invoke that particular, slightly clunky “retro GW” Oldhammer look: I wanted a model that looked like it could actually have been produced back when HeroQuest was originally released.

So what better way than to start with a vintage model from back in the day?

So here’s what my very first Witch Lord mockup looked like:

The model is actually mostly based on an old, early-to-mid 90s Dark Elf Warlock. This guy:

And I still had the remains of one of those in my bitzbox. It was already in a pretty sorry state, too, missing both its its head, right hand and staff by the time I got it, so it’s not like I actually had to vandalise a classic model to make my Witch Lord — if anything, this was yet another salvage job!

The head came from the – aforementioned – GW Skeleton Warriors, with horns from the plastic WFB Chaos Marauders. And I began building the Witch Lord’s staff by combining an old Skeleton standard bearer arm (for the staff) and a bird skull from the GW Skulls kit.

After I had the basic outline, it was mostly a matter of matching as many visual cues from the artwork as possible. So here’s the finished conversion:

I replaced the first version of the left hand with a Empire flagellant hand. The detailing on the staff was achieved by grafting some Bloodletter horns and teeth to the bird skull for a pretty convincing look, if I do say so myself (Fun Fact: I have since discovered that the staff wielded by the leader of the Nightvault Godsworn Hunt warband would have been an almost ideal place to start — oh well…).

And since everything was still looking rather hideous at this point, it was a good thing that the undercoat had the great effect of pulling all of the disparate parts together rather nicely.Take a look:

Even though I had to make a couple of compromises, I think I have still done a pretty good job at matching both Les Edward’s art and the somewhat clunky vintage HeroQuest look, wouldn’t you agree?

When it came to painting the model, the artwork worked as perfect inspiration, so I tried to match it as closely as possible, especially for the luxurious crimson robes, dark metal and bright golden parts. Here’s a PIP shot…

…and here’s the mostly finished model:

Of course the Witch Lord needed to be on a proper HeroQuest base, so I carefully cut a damaged skeleton from its original base and used that for my Witch Lord model. One weird but cool thing was that the undercoat produced a really pronounced crackle effect when sprayed onto the base, and for no discernible reason, at that. At first I was a little miffed, but then I realised that this was a cool little effect, seeing how this is the base of a powerful undead monstrosity, so I actually embraced it:

And I still wasn’t done with the model itself either, as I wasn’t perfectly happy with those empty eye sockets, and rather wanted to feature those evil, glowing eyes from the artwork. So I went back to the model and created the tiniest eyeballs you can probably imagine, from almost microscopic amounts of GS. So here’s how that turned out:

And with that, the model was officially complete. So without any further ado, I give you: The Witch Lord:

All in all, this was a great way of expanding the classic collection of models, give myself a fun distraction between painting all of those monopose monsters, but trying to match the retro-GW look was also a neat little challenge.

So here’s a look at the Witch Lord commanding his army of the undead:

So that’s it for today. I am pretty happy with my little undead horde, but I still have a lot of work before I can call my set of HeroQuest completed, so it’s back to the painting table for me 😉

It goes without saying that I would love to hear your thoughts on my version of the Witch Lord, so drop me a comment! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more! 🙂

#HeroQuest2019: The Walking Dead

More #HeroQuest 2019 this week — after completing a bunch of Orcs, I turned my eyes to all of the undead creatures appearing in HeroQuest. And I still remember how I was very much in love with the undead models back when I first received the game: I had a huge thing for skeletons back then, for some reasons (I blame Masters of the Universe), and I still remember simply being blown away when I saw John Blanche’s “Skeleton Horde” illustration on the back cover of HeroQuest’s “Return of the Witch Lord” expansion quest book:

“Skeleton Horde” by John Blanche

Once again, I had already painted some test models back in 2014, and my testers also featured a proof of concept for each of the undead creatures appearing in the game:

Of those three, I liked the Zombie the best, so that’s where I started — I also feel the Zombie is one of the best monster sculpts to appear in the HeroQuest box: It’s such a deceptively simple model, but between the effective pose, the sinister looking weapon, and the surprising amount of detail, this guy is really one of my favourites. Maybe that’s the reason because one of the HeroQuest Zombies was the very first model I have ever tried to paint:

 

“AHHH! IT BURNNNNSSSS!” 😉

My first painting steps notwithstanding, I was still pretty happy with my 2014 proof-of-concept:

So I decided to stick to the original recipe fairly closely. Unfortunately enough, I was not quite able to match the greenish tinge of the skin, seeing how it was originally achieved by using an old GW Green Ink that has since dried up for good. I still did my best to make the models look suitably moldy, though, and here’s what I ended up with:

Funnily enough, I painted these while watching Christopher Odd’s playthrough of the Resident Evil Remake on YouTube, which seemed like a pretty good match 😉

As you can see, I once again added some variation to their clothes, so as not to end up with six models that were completely alike. Oh, and I allowed myself one small kitbash, swapping in an axe blade from an old Warhammer Skeleton kit. The weapons have that certain HeroQuest clunkiness, so I think it works rather well:

So with the Zombies finished, I next turned my attention to the Skeletons.

For the 2014 test model, I used a very simple approach of brushing the bone colour directly onto the brown undercoat:

It seemed like a good idea at the time, and if nothing else, it made for a bit of contrast on the model. It also led to a somewhat dirty and dusty look, however, and I really wanted to look my Skeletons look much more bleached, and maybe a tad cleaner. So for the new models, while I still used drybrushing, I went for a lighter colour overall and basecoated the entire Skeleton in GW Rakarth Flesh before washing and drybrushing. And I think it worked pretty well:

Here’s a direct comparison between the old and new recipe, and I think the new approach works far better:

The rusty scythe was definitely a keeper, though, so I kept the look 😉

What was really nice was how quickly I was able to bang out eight Skeletons (and I’ll even need another for to have everything I need to play the “Return of the Witch Lord” expansion). Here they are:

And finally, the mummies. Once again, there was a 2014 version…

…and while it worked well enough, I felt the models needed a little more contrast. So I threw in an extra drybrushing stage (and used a general recipe very close to that of the new Skeletons). Anyway, these guys were probably the quickest of the bunch to be finished, and I am pretty happy with them:

So all in all, this means another bunch of models for HeroQuest and a whopping twenty models to cross off my list. Take a look at my little undead army here:

Oh, and since those models were all painted back in February, I’ll consider them another contribution to Azazel’s “Neglected Models” challenge one again 😉

Truth be told, there’s actually one more undead model that I haven’t shown to you yet — but that’s a subject for another time, as I would say the …gentleman in question very much deserves his own post…

Until then, I would of course love to hear what you think, so drop me a comment! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more! 🙂