Frost Fang Cavalry

Well, hello there. How you been? Yep, I'm still painting fantasy, although I have an excuse. I actually need to order paints so some of my historical models are still on hold due to lack of the right colours. 

 So, the pastel painted fantasy that is my Barbarian Dragon Rampant Army gets another unit. One of the joys of non miniature agnostic rules is you can jump around companies and just pick and choose stuff that you like the look of. So from Mantic games I ordered these amazing Frost Fang Cavalry. My Barbarian army have a Viking/Northern tribe fur wearing feel to them, so they fit in very nicely.

They are full resin, multi part kits. The beasts have two loose legs on one side and the riders have a loose head and both arms. The resin needed a good soapy bath as always. (I must recommend you must do this with any resin model kit otherwise you will find the primer layer won't adhere well at all) One model had suffered a missing foot as well, possibly an air bubble in the mould. A bit of green stuff however and my amateur sculpting skills and you couldn't tell which one.

 

 (I did have to resculpt it a couple of times though as I kept trying to hold the model by the foot when painting it before the green stuff had hardened, rookie mistake!)

The beasts were super fun and easy to paint, I only used washes on the riders, just relying on a couple of layers of dry brushing first and the painting in the details on the face and claws for the beasts. There is something so satisfying about drybrushing layers of paint on fur on a model. The sculpter has basically done all the hard work for you and with some careful selection of shades of paint you can get an awesome looking model. The riders had a choice of two different heads and two sets of arms in the kit, so to make my third guy not look the same as another (sadly there was nothing much I could do about the beasts all being in the same pose) from my bits box I grabbed a bow and arrow arm set left over from the Frostgrave plastic box set. I loved the idea of a barbarian letting loose an arrow while charging into the enemy on his roaring mount. In hindsight I realise he doesn't have a quiver now, but maybe I will find a way to add one to the saddle at some point.

 

So, as you can see, by keeping to a similar pallete and painting style models from different companies can appear as if they are from the same army. Why be beholden to one company's models? It's like a super expensive pick and mix that I can guarantee will make you feel very ill if you eat it.

Oh and finally, please do admire the background painting in my photo's. It was done by my youngest and with his permission I decided it would make an excellent background to my photo's. He came home from school clutching the A3 paper to show off his painting skills and I immediately decided it was far too good for the usual magnetic mounting to the fridge. It would be put to far better use here.