I’m back! It’s been a hot second since I last posted my painted Ghost Spider, but I honestly just haven’t been allocating much time to miniature painting over the past few months. Teaching this semester along with coaching speech and Hearthstone has kept me quite busy to the point of barely even finishing any video games lately.
On Black Friday I finally received my copy of the Darkest Dungeon board game that I backed on Kickstarter in 2020. After two years of waiting, multiple delays (normal for Kickstarter), and an unexpected additional shipping fee (probably not as normal), it’s finally here!
I backed the Kickstarter for a lot of reasons, but my love of the Darkest Dungeon video game and the beautiful translation from screen to miniatures sold me pretty early in the crowdfunding campaign. October 2020 would have been a year and a half into my miniature painting hobby, and I knew that I really wanted those minis.
I certainly got what I asked for! There are 138 miniatures included in the Core box of the game, another 42 in the Crimson Court expansion, and oh so very many more in the other four expansions set to be released during Wave 2. Knowing that I spent a lot of money on the game and I’ve also spent two years waiting for it to finally arrive at my door, I’m pretty set on painting everything.
You can expect a lot posts recording this herculean effort. I can’t yet promise they’ll arrive at a specific cadence, but I want to post the work I put into it here on my blog. It all starts today with one of the heroes that players can choose to dive into dungeons with: the Highwayman!
What I Like
I’m really happy with how the Highwayman turned out! There are some specific details that I really love directing attention to like the eyes, the face and the scarf. A friend picked up the figure to look at him before I was finished painting and asked how I painted the eyes and pupils and I honestly don’t have a good answer aside from luck! I really hope I’m able to keep that up for the miniatures in this game that have well-defined eyes like this one.
While i’m not going to be able to fully match the colors in the video game, I think I was able to do a pretty nice job with the paints I already have. I do have an interesting dilemma with the heroes in the game though – do I stick with the first color variant or pick my favorite out of the four options? I’m working on the Crusader right now and while I initially started painting his tabard blue (because my main Crusader in the video game was the blue variant), I have now swapped over to a purple tabard to better match what’s on the cards and since it’s the first variant in game.
What I Want to Improve
This was my first attempt at zenithal priming and while it kind of worked, I believe I’ll need different primer the next time I attempt it. Something about the paint I used made my very first coat extremely difficult to apply, the paint just kept slipping off it seemed.
I also need to figure out just how stylized I want to go with the overall look of the figures. I want the miniatures to look pretty similar to their video game counterparts, but at the same time it can be difficult to translate a 2D look into a painted miniature that’s going to look good from every angle. I’m going to try and make the highlights pop out on my next character more to achieve this look and differentiate this game from how I paint the Song of Ice and Fire miniatures.
The Paints I Used
- Jacket/Boots/Hair: Citadel Abaddon Black, highlighted with Citadel Mechanicus Standard Grey
- Vest/Fur/Belt Buckle: Citadel Administratum Grey
- Pants/Bottom of gun: Privateer Press Umbral Umber
- Scarf/Gloves: Citadel Mephiston Red, highlighted with Citadel Evil Sunz Scarlet
- Belt: Vallejo Chocolate Brown
- Skin: Citadel Bugman’s Glow (Base), layered with Citadel Cadian Fleshtone
- Barrel of Gun/Knife/Ground: Citadel Mechanicus Standard Grey, highlighted with Citadel Administratum Grey
- Washes: Citadel Reikland Fleshshade for skin, Citadel Nuln Oil for everything else