Hobby Update: Vampire Lord on Undead Dragon

This update has been a long time coming. Before I even started the blog here, back in my Warhammer days, I picked up a partial Mannfred von Carstein Mortarch mini for a few bucks from an online bits store during the early stages of the End Times. He was missing an arm and a big chunk of his swirly spooky cape, but for what I think was a ridiculous $3, I couldn't say no. It was quite the deal, but he's been sitting in a box for close to a decade now. I have since picked up Kings of War, and over Covid, I remembered Mannfred and then grabbed a Gargantuan Skeletal Dragon. I intended to combine these at some point, but it took me a while to pick up the Undead myself, and the entirety of 3rd Edition seems to have come and gone without this hitting the hobby table at all. With 4th Edition on the horizon, and high-end heroes becoming more impactful for list-building, these minis caught my eye again recently, and I was able to sit down for several longer sessions and knock this project out. Up now is a glorious Vampire on Undead Dragon!

Finished! And stretching the limits of my little light box.

The first piece was the big dragon. The mini is from a line of Pathfinder models, and "gargantuan" should be a mechanical term for the size of the monster, with something akin to a 100mm base when all is said and done.  That's a bit big for a Kings of War titan, but fortunately, the stance is compact, and this something we can work around. The model has three nubs connecting it to the huge base. While messing around, I popped my model off the base. One could just trim the nubs off, but I decided to keep them and hack away at the base itself, until it fit on a the appropriate 75mm square. I used some milliput to build up some "ground" around the base and make it a little less obvious, and after it dried, hit it with some paste, and then after that dried, primed it, and eventually hit it with my full Undead basing scheme of gray rocks, brown mud, and a glazing medium to to get a nice glossy effect. The base was done, and ready for the mini to be attached after it was painted up.

Nubs.

My friend Squirmin Vermin from the Nerd's Tale Blog has done up many wonderful discount titans, sidestepping modeling issues by just putting the rider on foot nearby. While the idea is very clever, and I like it a lot, I wanted a real rider for mine, due to the fog effect I use for this army. 

I had Mannfred, and I had a saddle for him from the same bits store, but connecting them to the model had stumped me for years. The dragon had these big spines along its uh, own spine, which complicated everything saddle-related, as I knew I couldn't really just stick a rider, or even just a saddle on there and have it look good. I was finally really motivated though, and I hacked off a few spines, and just started messing around with the bits. 

Sculpting cloth or something to hide the join didn't feel right with the verticality of the model (and would be a lot of work). I ultimately leaned into loose and lazy fluff to get me over this hurdle. I decided that the dragon was not like a dracolich or any kind of even partner here - it was forcibly raised by this vampire, with no reverence for the beast it was. The saddle covered two vertebrae, so I glued it down, shaving the saddle bit down to match up with the edges of the bones. I then cut up some cereal box style card board, and layered these like little armored plates along the neck ribs, fanning down from the saddle, adding some little rivets from slices of a spear bit, like the saddle was forcefully attached to these fused vertebrae. I took the tip of a spear bit and attached it to the bottom, implying the at infernal saddle was driven through the spine of the dragon in order to control it. The whole saddle part is definitely a bit overthought at this point, but I'm happy with it, and I think it's a nice little reward for anyone looking closely at the centerpiece model.

Saddle stuff. And the worse of the wing joins.

While messing with the saddle, the dragon fell, and broke both wings. I rolled with it, using the lack of stickey-outy-bits to better scrape away at mold lines. I also tried smearing sprue goo on the wings for some extra texture, but I don't think this amounted to anything. While the mini came primed, between the mold line scraping and goo on the wings, I felt the need to prime the whole thing, in black.

For painting, I pulled inspiration from Dev's and Dice. He went with a very deliberate and slow layering approach, something I tried a bit of with my Mounted Revenant King. I didn't want to use shiny washes and wanted to emulate his approach agin, but was also impatient, so settled on dry brushing the heck out of the dragon. The Skeleton was painted brown, then overbrushed with a dark khaki, then a bone color, and then a brighter bone color, with each color applied a little less than the previous layer. To top things off the teeth and nails were painted an off white or ivory color. 

All painted up, it was time to fix the wings. One had popped out of a socket, while the other snapped on the wing bit itself. The socket was an easy fix in the end and just got super glued in, but the snap was a harder fix. I had picked up a little rotary tool over the summer, but it sucks. I ended up using a full-sized power drill to bore into the wing and into the model to try and pin things with a paperclip, but even a quarter inch in the wing is very heavy and the join goofy, despite my best efforts. I ended up super gluing the join with the pin, along with part of the wing and part of the arm so the weight could be spread around a bit. 

Mr. Mannfred needed an arm, and got from from some old Marauder bits. I had what looked like a fitting shield from some Vampire Counts skeletons, and attached that as well. For the cape, he is supposed to have a big cape from the shoulders connecting to two strands coming from his waist, as if he's wearing this weird, ballooning jacket thing. I gave him a marauder cape for the top, and then added some plastic bits to the end of his waist strands, and covered those in sprue good to disguise it all.

Saddle, sword, cape bits and wings.

The wings were painted in a dark red, along with the vampire bits. I did some highlights to the vampire cape and shield, and then drybrushed that color onto the wings, and then followed up with a orange on the wings as well. I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but the orange is not as vibrant or overpowering as I had feared, and I really like how it turned out.

We'll just do away with the box.

The last colors were the weird phasing sword and the dragon's mouth, which looked weird all black/brown. I'm sure there is fluff surrounding the sword, but I don't know it, and it's also for another game! I went with a mix of greens and then a thin line of black on the flat parts of the sword to contrast things more. The interior of the dragon's mouth and eyes got similar treatment in greens, just trying to allude to some foul magiks going on. 

Very big, very imposing, and will be very difficult to transport.

There are definitely things to improve on, and even after taking the pictures I have gone back and touched up a few errant brush strokes and bettered the color transition from the body to the wings, since they were painted up separately.. but overall, I'm really pleased with how he turned out. The emphasis  on dry brushing worked well and I was able to build up some neat layers on both the bones and the wings, and the model (excluding the wings... and the arms... and the head) fits nicely on the 75mm titanic base. Everything should be tall enough to avoid clashing with other units though. Transporting is going to be rough, but we'll see what I can figure out, because he needs to hit the table sometime!

But dang that does look cool.

We will see what he can do in 4th Edition. Warlords are going to be rather rare on the battlefield, and this will be a highly competitive slot, but I don't think fliers are going to be bad by any stretch. Sure, no Withdraw and sticky combats means fliers will lose some versatility, but on the flip-side, anything fliers or other speedy things can catch and disrupt won't be able to get away either. It's just going to be a whole new dynamic, and I am excited to start exploring it soon.