Like a fair few other people in our hobby, I backed the Conan Kickstarter a couple of years ago, and also like many of us, I had my first wave of stuff arrive recently. Now I only got around to taking the stuff out of the shipping boxes last week, and frankly, I haven’t had the time to look further into the actual boxed game or the equally huge “Kickstarter Extras” box. Boxes. I got two King Pledges… 😉
What I did do while I was cleaning up in the War Room and making space to put the Conan stuff onto one of the shelves was notice how nice the models in some of the add-on boxes looked. Specifically, the “Adventure Pack”. The models looked really fine, baby. That is to say that they looked very finely detailed. Much moreso than anything I’d expect to get from a boardgame, and moreso from a kickstarter boardgame where the usual reaction to the models is “yeah, these are pretty decent” or a sadly unsurprising disappointment. After seeing Subedai get busy with some of his Conan models, I thought “why not?” and opened up the adventure pack to paint the contents as they looked like they’d paint up nice and quickly.
So that’s what we have here. Barrels. I haven’t started on the other stuff yet, but the barrels are pretty nice for what they are. I usually paint my barrels up in the standard, admittedly boring way that most of us do. Dark brown wood, metal hoops. Job done. Nothing wrong with that, but with posts by Dagger and Brush on building trees with realistic bark colours resonating in the back of my head, I decided to paint these ones so that they looked a little more …realistic? worn? aged? So they would look like they’ve been left outside in the elements for their time. Faded, stained wood and rusted metal.
Primed white, base coated with Vallejo Skeleton Bone coloured primer and then drybrushed with Reaper HD Arctic Grey. Hoops painted with Vallejo Plate Mail Metal coloured primer and then painted over with very-thinned Vallejo Model Air Light Rust and Orange Rust. The whole thing then washed with 50-50 Army Painter Soft tone wash and windex, and then with Citadel Nuln Oil Gloss. Gloss Polyurethane varnish, followed by Testor’s Dullcote. I’ve got that down here fo rmy future reference in case I end up with more of these barrels or want to recreate the exact look. It’s annoying when you paint everything that you have of some kind of scenery, and then find more somewhere, and then can’t remember exactly how you did them. I found some more of those Confrontation walls recently, and so now instead of having painted them more or less instantly, they’re just sitting there. In fact, I’ve lost them again somewhere. Bah.
After checking the Kickstarter details, I see that each core pledge box comes with an extra 5 chests. Add those to the 5 in the accessories box and I’ll have 15 chests to paint up. They’re pretty finely detailed, but the thing stopping me from blasting through them now is working out how to paint them. Wood? Iron? Bronze? It’s bloody exhausting!
Refreshing take on barrels. I like this one much more than the regular brown which does not really look like natural wood at all. Well done!
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Thanks. All credit must go to D&B for making me think about how dark brown is more our shorthand for wood and trees rather than the 100% usual colour. Of course, stained and lacquered barrels can still work just fine in the dark brown…
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Nice, I really like that bleached look with the staining. Looking forward to the rest of the scenery set from you for inspiration!
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Thanks. I’m going to have to crack open the boxes to gather the rest. I haven’t looked at the rules yet – are the chests all a much of a muchness in-game, or are some differentiated in some way?
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As far as I know at this stage (reading through the scenarios but not actually playing), there is just one type of chest. What can be found in them varies between scenarios.
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Thanks! That will make things a little easier.
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The barrels look indeed very nice. The bleached, weathered look adds lots of interest and also looks much more realistic than a simple brown.
For the chests you could differentiate between simple chests and master chests, the latter made of iron, the former of wood.
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Yep, I’m trying to figure out what exactly to do with them still. I’ve got various chests from different games, such as the Dungeon Saga ones to do. The “problem” with the Conan ones is that they look the nicest, so much more likely to be master chests etc, but it seems I’m going to have more of them than any other type. Indecision is a harsh mistress.
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What about painting them up in different states of decay? This could be a subtle differentiation, even though they are all made of metal or bronze. You could also depict some half burried or overgrown with moss and roots for a jungle/lost city setting. Maybe a spectral or infernal chest would be a cool idea, too. The spectral one is basically a ghost chest, say as part of a ghostly pirate crew, the infernal one has gazing eyes, tongues and maws added.
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The latter is way too much imagination and creativity for me! At least on these identical boardgame chests. Perhaps if (ok, when) I find some interesting more individual chests I’ll come back to theming them a little more. I think a little variation on wear and tear might work well, though – and without adding too much work or thought. 🙂
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I appreciate your posting this as I really wanted to see how to achieve a nice weathered look. THESE ARE AWESOME! I also agree on Dagger and Brush – his work is art. I have a few questions: Windex? How did you use that with the AP Soft Tone? Did you use brush or air brush?
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Thank you! Windex is a glass cleaner we have here. I know a lot of people use it as a thinner in their airbrushes, and I find that (with a dropper bottle) it makes a useful medium to thin my paint when painting with a brush as well. (Just don’t lick your brush when using it!) I use Windex, GW’s Lahmian Medium, Warcolours’ Matt and Gloss Medium as well as Liquitex Matte Medium (and some homemade mixes) depending on “feel” for whatever I’m doing.
Oh, I’m talking about the Acrylic Wash (Devlan Mud-lite) version of AP soft tone that comes in a dropper bottle – not the Miniwax-alike polyurethane stain/dip. I just put a couple of drops in my palette, and do the same with the windex (I keep a dropper bottle filled with it), mix and apply.
Almost all my stuff is done with a regular brush. I’m rubbish with my airbrush and accidentally managed to kill it last time I disassembled it to clean it up. I need someone to teach me to use it properly in a hands-on manner, but to no avail so far. Probably need to buy a new one before I worry about that as well…
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Thanks, we have Windex, I just had never heard of using with paint so I appreciate the tip. I have no local AP dealer (there’s one in Boston 50 miles away), but I love their products.
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No worries. It makes for a cheap and easy thinner that’s quite effective. I get most of my paints via mail order at this stage, so most of my Vallejo and Army Painter comes from Firestorm games in the UK since local prices are so highly marked up and UK prices are cheaper and come with free shipping for a reasonable minimum (which local places almost never do).
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Cool! The Conan KS really did deliver some good quality stuff, didn’t it? Lovely barrels mate 🙂
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Thanks Alex. I have to admit, I like being pleasantly surprised. Much nicer than the usual reaction…
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Nice work on those barrels! I’ll be stealing that idea for my endless amount of barrels, thank you very much.
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Thanks mate – I appreciate it. 🙂
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