The Pawns of Dis

Several months ago I finished painting my first figure from the old SuperFigs line, Kriegshunde. I was mostly pleased with how that one turned out, and have several others from the line in my massive pile of unpainted miniatures. I needed some test subjects for priming with acrylic gesso, and these fellows were waiting on my priming board. Since I've already got plenty of cultist figures around, I decided that these would be good candidates and gave it a shot.

A brief aside about acrylic gesso: it works much better than I'd expected. It shrinks a ton while it dries so you can really glop it on. I bought white, and have since done a second test adding matte medium and paint to it to create a coloured brush-on primer. It has a very nice tooth to paint over, although it may be a little rough for some of you, so I do recommend adding in a tiny bit of water to smooth it out. If you are somewhere with weather that makes spray priming outdoors a challenge, give gesso a shot!

A pre-dip shot for posterity

Back to my SuperFigs. One of the nice things about the line is that every model produced also had a SuperSystem profile provided for it online for free. The "Pawns of Dis" are no different. In my miniature collection I currently have two different cults, both intended for Strange Aeons / Kulten: my arcanists (dressed in red and gold), and my serpent worshippers (dressed in yellow and purple). Now black or green would be the obvious choice for another cult, but I didn't want to be obvious...and my recent work on a Skeletor miniature probably swayed me into using blue.

The sculpting of the figures is quite exaggerated; it's decent but certainly not the best quality. In particular the hands and feet for these figures are rather crude, although they're still quite serviceable. I used the same AP Crystal Blue on their robes that I did for Skeletor's skin. Next I added a coat of GW Snakebite Leather to the sash and neck piece (I don't know what it's actually called). A coat of GW Iyanden Yellow on top of the snakebite, plus some GW Elf Flesh for their skin and GW Gorthor Brown on their sandals and I was pretty much finished.

I decided to try out my Minwax Polyshade Walnut (supposedly the equivalent to Army Painter's Strong Tone) to shade the figures. As with all the varnishes, it dries extremely glossy, and to be quite honest looks like utter shit when it dries. After brushing on a coat of AP anti-shine the figures start to look much more presentable, although I certainly wouldn't want to field an army done exclusively with this method (based on my limited experience). I went back over the figures with the original blue and flesh colours to smooth things out and make the shading softer. At this point the shading is softened enough that it looks pretty good.

With that finished and the bases completed, I can call these figures done. Now if only I knew what I am going to use them for...