I'm currently working on updating and re-painting one of my earlier Dragon Rampant undead armies. The first one actually, it needs a bit of work, but over the last couple of years I have changed a lot of the ways I do things and I think it's time these guys got some of that.
Journey back with me through the years to a land where once mighty knights and brave warriors bestrode the earth in the service of their rulers. Rulers who began to eye other realms with avarice and sought to conquer them. In the process they turned to dark knowledges and magics - yada yada yada - long story short, the other realms ganged up on them, they beat seven coloured lights out of the aggressors and left countryside in the state it is now - a bare desolate waste.
(splendid image of Iceland west of the Vatnajökull National Park. Now I'm pretty sure that there is a lot more going on around here than we can see - obviously it's not that desolate - paved road for example - but the vegetation is the clue here)
If you know anything about fantasy stories, you'll know that the dead don't always lie quiet.
Cue Fenella, and her little friend.
She is from the Caesar Undead set, though she had her hand changed for one from an Imex Saxon warrior. Little Friend is from Dark Alliance Zombie set 2. Once she appeared on the wargames table, she rapidly acquired the nick-name Fenella, after the actress Fenella Fielding from the film Carry On Screaming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk_1qs82R7U
You can see from the state of the bases that they need work, and while the rest of the army are passable, they just need a bit of love - which they obviously didn't get before they became undead!
Of course, it wouldn’t be one of my army projects without adding some terrain into the mix. I already had some bits – these rocks and the tomb by Crom’s Anvil, for example. Ostensibly they’re 15mm pieces but they work in 20mm, and the big ‘tomb’ piece harks back to the location in the first Schwarzenneger Conan film (based on the RE Howard short story, “The thing in the Crypt").
There are also some very Victorian-looking graveyard pieces – railings and a gateway - by Blotz (some of the first of their scenery I bought).
However, I wanted to get back to the army being barbaric, the scrapings of the wastelands; intent on revenging themselves – and their mistress – on the living. So, the tomb and rocks stay, but I thought I would create a tomb specially for Fenella; a mastaba – one of many littering the waste lands, designed to contain the dead for eternity … it's just that this one didn’t work so well.
The tomb was built out of a combination of MDF, heavy duty cardboard, a white styrene ball cut in half, some plastic tubes and some blue styrene scraps for the stone work.
This is the tomb pretty much complete, but before it has been added to a larger scenic base.
A young magic user is about to do something really dumb – and distinctly anti-social, by poking about inside. (These things never end well.)
Next I added the tomb to base of 3mm MDF, fared it in with some filler and added a path to the door made out of scribed blue styrene foam.
Once that was done I began the greening process. A scatter of materials like flock, chopped dried herbs, clump foliage and some whisps of rubberised horsehair.
The figure is from the Caesar Mycenaean Warriors.
I left it alone for a day or two and when I came back I decided that although the tomb was okay for a desert, I wanted something a bit more like the picture of Iceland, so I hit it with some more vegetation.
I left the tomb alone for another day and decided that it still didn't look like it had been left in desolation for a couple of centuries. Mrs P agreed with me and so I added a curl of brambles (rubberised horsehair) over the door, and some pretty unhealthy looking tufts along the path.
Some people have commented on the colour - my usual yellow ochre, so that it works with all of my other scenery; and the dome. The round top, it was felt, spoke more of desert/Middle Eastern architecture; but I wanted to get away from the normal grey/gothic theme of undead armies and do something different.
So, that's that! Not doing this one as a series, I'll come back and talk about the figures and other scenery as and when they're done.
Thanks for looking in, stay safe all.
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