Descent - Painting the Tomb of Ice

The Tomb of Ice is the last expansion with models for Descent (At least until Descent 2.... the REVENGE comes out)

Tomb did a good job of handing some power back to the players. After Altar and Well, the players were getting hammered by evil curses, tough missions, a good variety of beasts and treachery. In order to claw some of that back Tomb of Ice introduced feats for players, and they are a real help.

The Monsters are a real mixed bag, but the big problem is they just don't hit the table enough. We are playing a road to legend campaign, and these guys rarely see the light of day, which is a pity.

First up is the Shades. A simple paint job as they are all black ghostly things. A little dark gray dry brushing and they were mostly done. Probably the best monster in the expansion, they are fast, hard to hit and have piercing magical attacks. Shades are also a classic fantasy monster and a welcome addition to any army of the undead.

The lava beetles were fun to paint, I did a very quick colour highlight from dark red to yellow and it worked out all right. The faces were done with a leather base coat followed up with bleached bone.

In game, these guys are a bit annoying. So very very slow and blast is great on certain levels, but mostly they haven't been too effective.

The Medusas are pretty cool models and the first time I pulle done out and placed it on the board I got a solid "What the F is that" from my players.
Painting was real simple, base coat dark green, dark green ink, and then a light green drybrush.
The medusa stun in combat, and the master has quick shot. With a rage card you could conceivably stun the whole hero party with one model, I must try that.

On to the Wendigo. Honestly, i'm yet to use these guys in anger which is a bit of a waste as they are both amusing and scary at the same time. Scary if you contemplate them chewing on your legs, funny if you imagine them singing back up for a mo-town act.

Easiest paint job in the land. Spray white, use dark ink, then paint the mouth.Ok, the mouth was a little tricky.

Finally, the Ice Wyrm. It annoys me they haven't hit the table for one very good reason. THE STOMACH TILE! Yes, Fantasy flight games added in a separate location tile for people who get swallowed alive by these things.... how over the top is that? Anyways, this paint job probably looks a lot more complicated than it was. The blue and blue gray scales are just base coats of enchanted blue and space wolf gray washed with blue ink. Nothing more than that.

The moral of the story is this. You don't need to paint like a games workshop studio member to have models that look ok and are fun to play with. Just use the following steps

1.) Spray black
2.) Paint big areas with slightly watered down acrylic paint the colour you want them.
3.) Use an ink to fill in the shadows on the model.
4.) Use drybrushing to create some highlights.

These are very easy techniques and don't require you to be artistically gifted (Cause I am not... I can barely draw a stick figure). But I know how to cheat at painting.

Descent - Painting the Altar of Despair!

First off, I must say that the Altar of Despair has some excellent new rules for the game. More treachery, crushing walls and Invulnerability potions are my favorites. but i'm here to talk about the monsters, and you get a good range here, far better than well of darkness.

Blood Apes

First up are the blood apes. I took a simple approach with theses guys, perhaps too simple as I think the red looks a bit mediocre. I'm also not a fan of the narrow oval bases.

In game these guys are devastating. Very tough for how many you can bring in with a spawn card and the leap ability can cause players massive headaches if they a not ready. They also hit very hard and are solid melee monsters. The masters are signified by having a darker and bigger red stripe on their backs.

Dark Priests!

Now we are cooking with gas (or unholy power). I can't help but do a Darth Sidious impression when I attack with these guys. Something about rolling all those power dice makes me want to scream "UNLIMITED POWER!"

A nice simple base coat and ink wash effect with these guys works wonders. red robes = Bad ass powers!

Deep Elves


Not dark elves.... nope. Deep elves... must be into transcendental meditation or something.

These guys rock and my players hate them. Something about the master having more piercing damage than any character has armour just makes them shudder.... that and you cant stand back and shoot them from range. A great unit for game supported griefing of players. Master is wearing a red robe of course.

Chaos Beasts

These guys are tough, and a little odd to use. Its a case of pick whatever dice you want to use at any given time.... although invariable this leads to using the green heavy damage dice.

The models are rather nasty to look at and I painted them in flesh tones. Flesh colour just adds to the "WHAT AM I LOOKING AT" factor. The master is designated by its little pink primary tentacles. Subtle, but you very rarely have more than one on the table.

Trolls

I love classic monsters, and trolls are a quintessential bad guy in dungeon crawlers. I'm slightly surprised they don't regenerate,which would have been nice. They do, however, hit as hard as anything in the game. I've had one kill a character even though he took an invulnerability potion (something like 17 damage on one roll.... obscene!)

Paint job was simple, these guys respond really well to inks and dry brushing. Master has a red hair do!

Right, only one more post to go for Descent and I'm done!

Descent - Well of darkness

Well of darkness was a pretty cool expansion in a lot of ways. 6 pretty good heroes, treachery for the overlord, loads of new traps like rolling boulders and dart fields, and many little extras.

The only let down, compared to the other expansions was with the selection of new monsters. Kobolds, while amusing, aren't really very effective. The best they can do is act as a delaying tactic, but one heroes with breath or blast can clear them out very quickly.

The ferrox's are an effective creature, a good middle sized hard hitter. I suppose the issue with them is they don't have any real resonance. They don't invoke an classic feelings of D&D dungeon crawling, in the same way Ogres and Trolls do.

Finally, the best monster of the set, and one of my favorites in the whole game is the Golem. Hard as nails, and a classic dungeon monster, these things give players fits as the usual tactics don't work very well against them. They need to be taken down slowly, with lots of hard hits, but sniping them will rarely work as they are immune to pierce. they were also super fun to paint, undercoat, codex grey, black wash and then some detail work. All done in a very short amount of time.

Descent - ALL THE HEROES!

So i finally, after many many moons got around to finishing off all the hero characters in Descent, with all the expansions. 38 heroes and about 74 bazillion monsters in total.

The key to these guys was not painting to prefection, in all honesty the sculpts are a bit crap and trying to master paint a game as rough and tumble as descent is a collosal waste of time. In most cases its

1.) Spray
2.) Base coat
3.) Ink wash
4.) The old small detail here and there

The good thing about these characters is the colour palate is nice and varied, its also painting by numbers as you have the nice artwork to follow.

So here it is, all 18 heroes from the 3 expansions.

WELL OF DARKNESS

 ALTAR OF DESPAIR

 TOMB OF ICE

BONUS PIC - ALL 38 HEROES

Descent - This box of monsters comes with heroes also

Well, this could be a really really complicated post where I discribe every single hero in descent and what I did with them..... or it could be a short post that tells the story in images.

To put it as simply as I can, all i did here was paint by numbers. You see, the descent character cards have some nice art on them that clearly shows what the model looks like. It's normally even in the same pose.

So why reinvent the wheel when you can paint by numbers instead.

Descent - Its a big box of Monsters

Ah Descent, it's what Warhammer Quest would look like if GW ever supported their products for longer than a month.....

ANYWAY! Enough of that! We had enough of that with the Warmachine vs Warhammer review.

And others have ranted so much better than I could..... see here for additional extra spicy rant

NO! This blog is about the gaming, not the ranting.

Descent! Yes Descent, this big box game full of monsters and dungeon crawling goodness. It's what D&D was supposed to be before role-players discovered ANGST and ENNUI. (and using dots instead of hyphens in surnames)

That right, kick open the 20' by 20' room and smack the goblin over the head with your broadsword and take his chest of gold.

That's all Descent is, a big monster hunt in a dungeon.It puts on airs about being a competitive game, but really its an excuse to get treasure, kick monsters and then slay a dragon! WHAT FUN!

The plan with descent was never to master class paint the monsters. The plan was to have a painted, functional set done in the two weeks leave i had one Christmas. Yes, this was a Christmas gift.... and yes I got it for myself (ANGST and ENNUI again?)

Anyway, here's what happens when you have a tight time frame, lots of models and simply spray, basecoat, ink, and drybrush your way to a painted collection. Even the bases, which don't look half bad were a simple 4 colour blob process done assembly line styles.