I’m a sucker for limited editions, so when the Nightmare Edition Herald of Obliteration box was available again at Wyrd’s Black Friday sale, I knew I had to pick it up. I’m not a big fan of the clear plastics, but for only $5 more I figured I’d see if I could do anything interesting with it.
I’ve only played Neverborn so far, so they’ve been sitting unloved. I decided to break them out for Wyrd’s Frozen Moments painting contest in the crew category.
Read on for some commentary on each model.
I left Tara’s freaky arm transparent, and hit it with some green washes and a bit of drybrushing. The rest was primed and painted as normal.
I struggled with what to do with Karina. Doing her left hand like this maybe isn’t very different than Tara. I considered offering to swap with a non-transparent one. In the end, I decided to use what I had. I hit the left the hand clear, then hit it with Tamiya Clear Red. The idea is to evoke the glowy magic from the art.
The Nothing Beast got primed gray for the lower body, leaving the it transparent from about the waist on up. Painting directly on the clear plastic didn’t work well, as you’d expect (paint pooling up, and tending to rub off), so a layer of Dullcote acted like a clear primer. Successive drybrushing and washes brought it up to mostly opaque, with just a but of translucency in the arms, hands, and tentacles.
Bête is the clear red version from the Black Friday sale. Waist down was left transparent, but with Dullcote and some washes to give it some depth and texture. I had kind of hoped for a smoother transition from opaque to transparent, but it didn’t really turn out.
Miss Terious is the one non-transparent model in the crew, but at least she’s a special edition. After I went painted the arm breaking out of the coffin green I remembered that it’s not some zombie breaking out, but whoever got trapped there. Oops.
The Wretches were all painted up like the Nothing Beast, although with no fully opaque priming.
Overall I think I made the transparent models work, but I’m not super excited about transparent in general. It works pretty well with Tara’s theme, and the neutral color of the plastic meant I could do interesting things to it. I’m not sure I could do the same with the pink Dreamer box, for example. The clear plastic is also harder to work with than regular gray plastic. It’s brittle, and doesn’t cut or sand as easily. Seams are harder to fill and clean up, which really shows on the Void Wretches.
I’d like to give a shout out for Element Games. I purchased the MicroArts Studios Wasteland bases from them using my winnings from being the best (and only?) newcomer in #MFXTOP. Even though it was shipped from the UK to the US, it was fast and competitively priced.
Updated October 2016 with improved images.
