Let's Paint - Ice Witch (RPG Mini Painting)

Cheap Miniature Hunting

When I first got into D&D about two years ago, my friends were using board game pieces and other various items to represent monsters and characters.  I raided my games and childhood toys and found a small collection of minis.  This started my obsession.  I spent the next summer avidly devouring as many miniatures as I could get my hand on.  My focus was on quantity over quality, with a focus on affordability.  This drive led me to buying lots of Mage Knight miniatures from Ebay.

Mage Knight



For those who are unfamiliar, Mage Knight is a now-defunct war-game from WizKids.  You might be more familiar with the current running HeroClix game and miniatures.  The point of Mage Knight was to contain all of the relevant character stats on the rotating base.  They also came pre-painted.  But most of all, they were cheap.  As a result, the painting isn't amazing, and the sculptures are sometimes lacking, but you can't beat the price, especially for the common minis being resold in lots on Ebay.  See, lots of collectors buy sets, pick out the minis that are rare or that they want, and then resell the rest.  This is where you can buy a lot for around $1 a mini, which is arguably a great value for quickly filling your ranks.  The problem is the bases are larger than the standard 1" bases used in D&D and other games, and are pretty ugly.  And the paint jobs need saving.  But if you're up for the challenge, they can be easily converted.

Rebasing

The first step to converting Mage Knight minis into something usable is to pull them off of their clunky bases.  Depending on your model this can be as easy as snapping off the old dried out glue, or far more difficult.  For most of my minis, I used a box cutter to saw underneath the model's feet.  I will warn you to be careful as it is easy to break the minis legs if you bend them too much, or cut gouges out of their feet if you are careless with the blade.  Just take your time, slowly saw the glue away underneath them, going around at different angles.  You can also apply gentle force and wiggle the mini to see if the glue will snap clean.  Some minis are easy and snap off without trouble, and others took a good thirty minutes of sawing and wiggling to free.


Eventually you'll get the minis off their bases and you can start making them look presentable.  This week I'm only working on converting the Mage Knight Rebellion: Mending Priestess #017.  In my current D&D campaign, I required a Bheur Hag which is a winter themed witch.  I glued the model onto a Reaper 1" base and used baking soda and super glue to quickly texture the base so I could later paint it as snow.


Painting the Witch

With the mini rebased, I set in on working on her paint job.  Now a word of warning, even with miniature paints that are already thin, every layer of paint thickens the model and begins to obscure the sculpt beneath.  Normally if you are repainting a mini, you'd want to try to remove the paint job beneath.  But Mage Knight uses a kind of paint that is notoriously difficult to remove completely, even with stronger chemicals.  This can result in a flaky texture on the model.  I chose to skip the paint removing step to avoid that problem and I set in to put a new primer on my model.  I tend to use craft paints for my primers which can take away from the sculpt, but one coat normally isn't an issue.


With the model based and primed, she's ready for a paint job as usual.  I did try a new technique with underpainting on this model, but I didn't take any pictures, so I'll explore that technique further next week when I finish the other Mage Knight conversions.


I stuck to a blue-tone theme with the washes on this mini, and I even tried a bit of a glazing technique on the staff to try to make it seem magical.  I'm not sure how effective this was, but I'm happy with how she turned out.


I used the same snow technique I used on the Elf Wizard last week and I think it helped tie her into the base.

Compared to the original mini, I really like my witch.  Next week I'll paint up more Mage Knight minis to create a small band of mercenaries.

Minis Used:

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