Update 2020/05:

>>>> Original post:

Late to the party here, but this year, I finally started to tackle one of the "TODO" items I kept in the back of my mind: Painting my set of Descent 2nd edition minis. The last minis I painted before that were the Runebound minis in 2009 . Finally starting to play the game with a semi regular group, after I bought it in 2013 and had it sitting on the shelf for years greatly contributed to the motivation. Lastly, Sorastros excellent painting videos did their part, too. As motivation and as soothing background noise while painting. I'll post my minis here as I go along. Progress will be slow unfortunately, since painting minis is competing for time with everything else, as always.

Painting these is addicting. While the Descent minis don't touch GW or CMON minis in terms of quality, often both in terms of their sculpt and of production/material, they are satisfying to paint. It's possible to finish them relatively "quickly" (I paint slowly...) and they considerably enhance the ambience of the game once done. I'd really like to own all addons with minis painted up at some point. Realistically though, I'll never find the time, neither to play all that content, nor to paint all those minis. 🤷‍♂️ 🖌 CC away!

It started with the smaller minions.

... Then continued with the Merriods. The smaller minions' bases will be retrofitted with a bit of paint at some later point, but the Merriod's bases left so much empty room that it looked unfinished when left just black compared to small minions. And I was resolved to not mess around with any kind of structure or base texture for Descent.

Lastly, I painted two of the Lieutnant addons for the base game, Lady Eliza Farrow and Baron Zachareth.

All the heroes, most of the large monsters and the rest of the base game's lieutnants are still waiting... There may also be the Visions of Dawn addon sitting in a cupboard waiting to be painted after the base game is done. Lack of self control and all... 😝

Update: Adding minis I've since finished.

The elementals

Jane Fairwood

Syndrael

Asharian and Tarha:

Search Tokens:

The Ettins:

Your work is inpresive. I do not like the base of the lieutenants, but I would stole yours if I could

On 7/22/2019 at 9:45 PM, rugal said:

Your work is inpresive. I do not like the base of the lieutenants, but I would stole yours if I could

What is it specifically you don't like about the lieutnants' bases? Is it the purple rim?

I'd appreciate if you painted your own set and didn't steal my minis. They are quite a bit of work. 😝

6 hours ago, BurnyBurns said:

What is it specifically you don't like about the lieutnants' bases? Is it the purple rim?

I'd appreciate if you painted your own set and didn't steal my minis. They are quite a bit of work. 😝

LoL don't worry I'm too far away to steal yours.

I really don't like decorated base. I like only black base with nothing on it. That's all

On 7/24/2019 at 5:05 PM, rugal said:

LoL don't worry I'm too far away to steal yours.

I really don't like decorated base. I like only black base with nothing on it. That's all

I liked the plain black bases for the small creatures. It looked wrong for the large beasts to me. 🤷‍♂️ Consistency is king though, so all other models will receive painted bases, that hopefully will blend in well with the board artwork.

Today I managed to finish the first hero(ine): Jane Fairwood. Feels good to play with a painted hero now! Took quite a while however and there are seven more of those to go. 😭

All should be plain black for my, for gameplay wise but this is just my opinion. It is as "shadows" under the character so easier to see on the board and avoir strange thing like grass on interrior

Most impressive!

Some of the best descent-minis I’ve seen.

On 7/28/2019 at 11:06 PM, Utforskarn said:

Most impressive!

Some of the best descent-minis I’ve seen.

Thanks! I'd really like FFG to have professionally painted demo minis for all their board games. I just like to look at well painted minis, so I looked around quite a while for Descent.

My top Descent minis would be:

Sorastros set. In combination with his terrific videos, they served a great motivation to get the painting project started. There's also a definite progresssion from his first minis to the later ones, but none are painted to an outlandish showcase standard as to discourage others.

Darthtom's set . For my taste the style lacks some contrast, but they're incredibly meticulously painted. Also has quite a few expansion/lieutnant minis that you rarely see painted to such a high standard.

Darkstar's heroes. Undoubtedly the best Descent minis I've personally seen. Unfortunately they did only show a small set of hereoes and don't seem to be active anymore.

I see a lot of these bases with texture/art on them. How do you do that? I know about texture paints, but this is different. It looks amazing.

If they’re painted freehand my jaw will hit the floor.

5 hours ago, Lightningclaw said:

I see a lot of these bases with texture/art on them. How do you do that? I know about texture paints, but this is different. It looks amazing.

If they’re painted freehand my jaw will hit the floor.

Hold your jaw for a moment: Yes, they're painted freehand.

It's a lot easier than it might appear. You obviously need to have a bit of patience, brushes with a good tip, work with thin paint and generally paint in "layers": from dark areas to light areas.

E.g. all gras sections are just dabbed on in three to four layers from a darker green to lighter greens with a brush tip. For the Merriods and Zachareth I used a small bristle brush. For Jane Fairwood I did use a small regular brush's tip, since the base was too small otherwise. Take the time to paint a dark brown splotch underneath it beforehand that will just slightly extend beyond all sides of the gras patch and you're generating a depth effect.

As for stone, here's a great tutorial someone on BGG created .

Very nice work! I especially like your basing work on Eliza and Zachareth. Look forward to seeing more.

Thanks!

As for that... Tried to slightly improve some details on Jane Fairwood I wasn't quit happy with.

These things are tiny... If FFG ever brings a third edition, I'd love to just have slightly improved rules, but a slightly larger mini scale and better quality.

Also started the first elemental.

The elementals are done!

I wanted red-ish fire for the master monster to distinguish it. Turned out a bit more pink, but still firy enough for me. These weren't the easiest monster to paint, mostly because the sculpt is hard to "read". It's somewhat ambiguous where the elements start and end. Also, it's easy to produce a grating looking color scheme when the elements aren't "blended" a bit. I'm mostly happy with how they turned out, despite me losing a bit of patience towards the end. Had to rework places that weren't looking nice more than usual. It was also the first time I painted a larger surface with a fire effect.

Some great painting including Zachareth's arm and I like the colour variation on the flesh moulders, I'm hoping to get a set of rune golems from RWM to paint with different elemental themes so it seems you gave the flesh moulders a similar flavor- was that the idea? Great job - plenty of neat details throughout.

On 9/5/2019 at 10:06 PM, Watercolour Dragon said:

Some great painting including Zachareth's arm and I like the colour variation on the flesh moulders, I'm hoping to get a set of rune golems from RWM to paint with different elemental themes so it seems you gave the flesh moulders a similar flavor- was that the idea? Great job - plenty of neat details throughout.

Thanks!

The goal was purely to make the models distinct. Their magic thingy arcs simply lend themselves to do so and the colors were chosen purely based on color difference to stand out from the rest of the model as obviously magical thingy and to be distant from each other, therefore yellow-red-ish, blue-ish and green-ish as opposed to the more purple-ish arc from the artwork and the master minion.

There's more in the pipeline for next year, but I'll be first tackling the main game this year.

I'd like to eventually collect all Heroes and Monsters Addons. The Guardians of Deephall sculpts are definitely not on the same level as the Visions of Dawn and Stewards of Secret ones. I guess FFG has improved since.

On 9/16/2019 at 8:05 AM, BurnyBurns said:

I'd like to eventually collect all Heroes and Monsters Addons. The Guardians of Deephall sculpts are definitely not on the same level as the Visions of Dawn and Stewards of Secret ones. I guess FFG has improved since.

If there's any you've not got it might be worth getting them just in case D2e is being retired (we know about the new project but not if it means D2e will cease production or stay, I notice that 'Stewards..' doesn't seem to have a reprint planned (it may just be they've not updated the list/scheduled it yet), this may be meaningless though as 'Chains..' is both in stock and on the boat, but nevertheless it might be worth getting them sooner rather than later just in case you can't in future!)

FFG sure have improved on the minis- the contrast between some of them is huge- I've already said I was quite unimpressed with Merick Farrow of the near-invisible face, then at the other end the RWM minis and some of the D2e ones like Skarn are really well designed. Another potential improvement seems to be strength- some older games had very breakable, weak, flimsy minis but the new LOTR Journeys game from what I've seen so far looks like they may be more durable, so hopefully any miniatures for the new Descent/Terrinoth project will be both the higher quality that also suits painting them more and also the improved strength. Especially as the very breakable minis may not have done those particular Terrinoth games (now out of print) any favours with player perception of them.

On 9/17/2019 at 10:55 PM, Watercolour Dragon said:

If there's any you've not got it might be worth getting them just in case D2e is being retired (we know about the new project but not if it means D2e will cease production or stay, I notice that 'Stewards..' doesn't seem to have a reprint planned (it may just be they've not updated the list/scheduled it yet), this may be meaningless though as 'Chains..' is both in stock and on the boat, but nevertheless it might be worth getting them sooner rather than later just in case you can't in future!)

...

Another potential improvement seems to be strength- some older games had very breakable, weak, flimsy minis but the new LOTR Journeys game from what I've seen so far looks like they may be more durable, so hopefully any miniatures for the new Descent/Terrinoth project will be both the higher quality that also suits painting them more and also the improved strength. Especially as the very breakable minis may not have done those particular Terrinoth games (now out of print) any favours with player perception of them.

Thanks. Oath of the Outcast and Crown of Destiny are already ordered, but the shop of my choice is currently waiting for a restock, so it'll take a while. For what it's worth, their site says stock was ordered from the manufacturer. That doesn't have to mean anything, but we'll see. With those two, I already have five of the nine, missing the Crusade of the Forgotten, Bonds of the Wild, Treaty of Champions and Shards of Everdark. May potentially get them before the end of the year. For the boxed sets, I'm a lot more relaxed. I don't even know if I'd like to collect them all. The "big box" ones, Labyrinth of Ruin and Shadow of Nerekhall, sure. The others I'll see.

In the Descent mini range, I'm seeing a definite improvement of sculpt and production quality over time. On the other hand, the MoM 2nd edition from 2016 has what looks like some terrible and low production quality minis to me. Admittedly, this is from photos and I've never handlet the minis personally. Also didn't personally handle the JiME minis, but from photos, the sculpts and production quality look r ather good. I just really don't like the somewhat cartoonish style they've gone for, at least for this source material.

I was just gifted Descent 2E and the Conversion Kit, to add to my collection of every 1E expansion. So, I am looking at painting all the 1E and 2E base sets, plus all the 1E expansion figures. That's before I start adding more 2E expansions...

Its a very daunting idea. I already have a backlog of like half a Khador army to complete for Warmachine, not to mention various RPG mini's for various games. I just picked a few of the heroes that are commonly played by my group and started there. Maybe I'll be done in ten years.

On 9/20/2019 at 4:32 AM, kris40k said:

I was just gifted Descent 2E and the Conversion Kit, to add to my collection of every 1E expansion. So, I am looking at painting all the 1E and 2E base sets, plus all the 1E expansion figures. That's before I start adding more 2E expansions...

Its a very daunting idea. I already have a backlog of like half a Khador army to complete for Warmachine, not to mention various RPG mini's for various games. I just picked a few of the heroes that are commonly played by my group and started there. Maybe I'll be done in ten years.

Yeah, that's the way it usually goes. Which is why I'm done with any sort of "Wargaming". I need a self contained system with a mini range like Descent's to have any hope of finishing painting up the minis. Even there, hope is slim. Atm, it's just Descent, but Altar Quest and Trudvang Legends are going to join. But those two will probably be the last games I add to the mini game collection for the next ten years. For that time frame, it's more than enough painting material at least. 😂

Starting and one by one and finishing the currently played minis is a good idea. As I said, the base game is this year's painting goal.

Yeah, I was also working on Stuffed Fables, but my wife took over that set, and also picked up Mice and Mystics to add to the backlog of mini games to work on a while ago. Just today I was down at the FLGS thinking about picking up a horror kind of game for Halloween like The Others or Zombicide and had to stop myself because I have such a backlog already.

Syndrael is done.

Not happy with the mini's detail definition. Quite a few things are a bit rough, making painting a bit harder.

Started on widow Tarha.

Widow Tarha is completed.

Asharian

Blatantly staged game scenarios 😝

Some search token replacements from resin bits on acrylic bases:

The Ettins are finished:

They're among the nicer sculpts of the main game, despite some really nasty mold lines on the head/neck area.

I also went back to the earlier models I painted with plain black bases to give the bases some color: