Painting the Balor from The Legend Of Drizzt Board Game

 

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This year I was lucky enough to receive The Legend Of Drizzt board game as a gift for my Birthday. I was overjoyed when I opened it and found the variety of miniatures provided for playing. My immediate favourite was The model of Errtu, the Balor game boss.

I am looking forward to using this Balor outside of the board game for the homebrew D&D campaign I am running. I imagine the looks on my players faces when I plonk this guy down on the table after my big bad evil summons them.

This model appears to also be available here pre-painted from Troll and Toad if you don’t fancy buying the whole boardgame. I would reccomend the board game if you can afford it as the other minatures in the box make the board game worthwhile. The range of miniatures in the box can be seen on BoardGameGeek here.

This model towers over the others at a massive 4 inches tall and boasts an almost 5 inch width with it’s large wingspan. I did find that I needed to adjust the wings to open away from the body more, which was easily done by heating the plastic in very hot water and adjusting it before putting it in ice water. I gave the model a brushing with a toothbrushg and some dishsoap to remove any release agent left over at this point also. It has held it’s shape without problems after this process.

My favourite part of the painting process was the flame whip, as I had never painted open flames before. I followed the Warhammer TV guide, which can be found here. I used the same painting concept for the Vorpal sword using blue shades.

I primed the model with Citadel Mephiston Red spray paint to help the paint have a non shiny surface to adhere to. I find that the spray can colour is darker than the potted Mephiston Red and this worked out well as the next colour I applied was the darker Khorne red.

Overall this model has a lot of texture detail which made washing it with shades and highlighting quite easy. The muscles of the body were easily picked out.

I used all citadel paints for this model. The colours I used are as follows:

Demon skin:
– Khorne Red all over
– Mephiston Red over all but the deeper recesses
– Carroburg Crimson washed all over and then reapplied only in recesses
– Evil Sunz Scarlet highlighting raised areas
– Wild Rider Red over the most raised edges, particuarly the face

Wing skin:
– Skaag Brown all over
– Tuskor Fur drybrushed twice over the raised bits
– Agrax Earthshade washed all over and then focused in the deep recesses
– Bugmans glow drybrushed multiple times

Hair over spine and weabon handles:
– Gorthor Brown all over
– Agrax Earthshade washed over
– Highlights of Skraag Brown and Gorthor Brown

Horns, teeth, and nails:
– Ushabti Bone all over
– Agrax Earthshade washed over
– Highlighted with Ushabti Bone

Eyes:
– Abbadon Black all over eye
– Dots of Ushabti Bone
– Nuln Oil in the socket

Metals:
– Ironbreaker for steel, Retributor Armour for gold
– Nuln Oil washed over
– Runefang Steel highlights for steel, Liberator Gold for gold

Flame Whip:
– White scar all over
– Yriel Yellow from flame tip almost to base
– Troll Slayer Orange from halfway up to tip
– Mephiston Red right near the tips
– Abbadon Black at very tip of some flames
– Thinned Lamenters Yellow all over to tie the colours together

Vorpal Sword:
– White Scar all over
– Lothern Blue almost to centre of sword
– Teclis Blue halfwau to centre of sword
– Caledor Sky towards very edges fo sword
– Drakenhof Nightshade lightly washed

 

 

At this point I have decided not to do any basing for this minature as I intend to use it for the board game and a black base seems fitting. To this end I covered the base in Abbadon Black. If I do decide to base it in the future I will update this post with pictures.

Thank you for reading!