After a staggering amount of hours for one miniature, I offer you my Tzeentch Hydra, the Spectral Dragon II from Grenadier, also known as Tiamat, the lawful evil goddess of greed, the queen of the chromatic dragons, for the more D&D versed companions!
War hydra - 200pts
That miniature was insane to get through to the level I had invisionned, and although I would still burn 4 more hours to refine the body and base, I am more than pleased with the actual result!
It all started with this beautiful kit I got my hands on during this OWAC planing. A lucky find, brand new, part of a "hobby shelve clearing lot", hidden in a closet for over 3 decades. It struck me, its called a dragon... but its anatomically a wyvern, and an epic lead scultp on top of that. A creature off-putting and unatural, clearly soaked in magic, perfect match for a Tzeentch army.
I attacked this project like a one of a kind, sort of stagging every step to realy feel the milestones passing by.
First, assembly, not a beginners kit at all, parts are heavy and the alloy shrinkage makes the 2 huge body parts leaving a huge crevasse on the back along the spine, or the belly, depending on where you apply pressure. Obviously I went for the back fit.
The mixed plastic and clay base was also an interesting build, which allowed me to easily deal with the miss alignment and mostly hide this flaw.
Building the structure of the base... terrain from the Warcry Catacomb box, I better make proper use of these! Plus these old movement trays are such great massive base!
The plastic sprues I glued at the bottom of the base help minimizing the displacement of the clay when it dries up, so it cracked along the weaker points I left on purpose and the contact line with the model remains intact. Now that the exposed parts have cured some 20 hours with the model in place, i can remove it for the inner part to cure... and the model will sit back in place properly afterward... mixing clay plastic and metal is tricky but I love the process.
The original plan was to paint it exactly in my flamers color scheme, I even considered changing the heads for bird like demons... but that would have been butchery!
I finaly started the base colors like my flamers but went for the standard 5 colors. I aimed to bring up as highlight/accent the yellow on the blue, the red and the green heads as well as on the back spikes... then use blue highlight on the black and use green as shadow on the white... and the front and back carapace bleached bones on green. I even kept my wet palette since January so that should go smoothly!
Which got me to the point of the actual painting, each head felt like painting an idependant miniature. It was very challenging, but after hours of grinding, it is done! Overall, I enjoyed the process as much as the result. Special mention to that lichen harvest I did in the forest behind one of the campsite I vesited last summer. My wife was delighted. 🤣
And a family photo of the "horde" so far;
Which makes me realize... I realy need a new background! 😅