Saturday 29 April 2023

Final Descent

Some time ago I acquired the Descent board game and the Trollfens expansion, and Pete, Matt, Wes and I played through the main campaign to its conclusion. At the time I painted up everything we needed, which, because we had only 3 player characters and not 4, meant that not all of the monsters and only a few of the characters got painted.

Over time, some of the remaining monsters got done for other projects, which left just a handful still to paint.

This post is me doing that.


Please don't expect any amazing painting here. Firstly, I'm not an amazing painter and secondly because I was being deliberalty quick and dirty to get them done, such as with this Harpy.


Generally I've stuck to a base coat and wash/contrast paint, and occasionally I've pushed the boat out with a tiny but of dry brushing, such as with this Shadow Dragon.


The character models are a real mixed bag of sculpts that seem to want to pack too much detail onto a material that lack definition. The are annoyingly too small to use with anything else I own, which was arguably the biggest disappointment with a game that is generally really good.


The shallow detail doesn't really work that well with contrast paints or washes, but I think I get away with it more on the folded robes like on these two human models, a paladin and a wizard.


The Dwarfs are probably the best of the bunch when it comes to sculpts. I supect this is because their more cartoony and chunky design gives you more to work with and allows washes to cover a lot of sins.


Although they are also small, being Dwarfs that's not a massive issue, and they could even find their way to being used as gnomes at push.


The Elves, however, leave a lot to be desired. For some reason the game designed really wanted to cram details onto them and the soft shallow material just doesn't respond to it.

At least this ranger has a face...


...which is more than can be said for the Druid, whose surprised expression is possibly due to discovering that she doesn't have a mouth.


The goal was just to get these done should I decide to break the game out again in the future, but painting these models wasn't a pleasure. However, I can at least cross them off the lead mountain, which is helpful as I've just had my birthday which ended up adding a whole bunch more to the pile.

Acquired: 60
Painted: 146
Lead Mountain: 513




2 comments:

  1. I remember playing this game a lot with a friend of mine. That "too much detail on the wrong material" does feel like a problem with these slightly rubbery game miniatures. Still, the painting looks fine and they're definitely better with some paint on them!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks. 'Fine' was the goal, so I'm happy enough with them.

      Delete