Mierce Miniatures

Nice, never thought of using wheatabix to mount he minis on
How do the PK holders hold the minis on?

Andy, you pin them into the cork.

Oh, those are version 1 holders from Stephan Rath. version 2 have a split cork to clamp the pins in I hear.

Oh right, so its just a cork base then. Didn't look like it it was cork

It's a cork insert in a ceramic base. very nice to hold I must say!

Hmmmm, may have to invest in a couple.

So, inspired by Bohun's Duguth I had a little go last night, most of this was done a few weeks ago and left. But last night I got of my ass to do some more!









Still lots to do. But hopefully the painting funk is over!

Nice work so far, loving the feel of the colour scheme.

Cheers Andy. I'm blatantly following Rob's guidelines!

No shame in that. I generally follow studio colour schemes anyway. Must put the effort in and crack on with my trolls, not touched a brush since the wamp comp ended.

Yeah, I'm struggling too. May abandon these for a bit and convert my troll unit. Or build blood maw!

I'm still painting, but I'm stuck fixing things for my WHFB O&G army for the US Masters, so I'm not painting Mierce stuff at the moment. Let me tell you, after months of Mierce-only, Hordes models are OK to paint, but Mantic models are painful! All the details just seem so flat!

I've never painted any. The last non mierce I painted was ax faction troll hunter. That's a nice model. Also halfway through their bear rider. Got distracted by trolls then!

I've got about a day left on these "Fleabag Riders," then I move on to Mierce trolls this weekend!

So it's been a while since I worked on these guys. They've been giving me the evil eye since I started playing with the Trolls. But 2 Trolls are converted enough now so i decided I should do some more.
The problem was I was not happy with the way they were going. These guys are small! smaller than Meloda even and the details are very fine. I was not happy with the skin, beard or red cloaks. So all of it really!
I began fixing these problems with a glaze of Foundy meditteranean flesh shade and a glaze of good old blood red for the cloaks. I was happier with these results!




Oh, and if in doubt, work on the bases! Always motivates me for some reason!

From there I just ploughed on. There is more work to do of course. here is where they are now.




Oh, i broke one at the ankle while painting! I've not managed to avoid that after all!

They are coming g out very good! As always clean paint job, these minis are small and photos are near, cheers

These guys look great. You needn't worry about what's wrong with them as you are the only one that will notice. They are great looking pieces.

Cheers guys! here's the latest pic. Titled 'why I dont paint freehand!'



Looks like you'll need to open it up to see why!

There is nothing wrong with that. It is just the style of design I would expect to see on an infantryman's shield. Looks good

Shield design look very good, don't be so hard on yourself

Cheers guys. Will have the (possibly) final pics up tomorrow.

here are the latest (of finished, not sure yet) pics. The spear shaft is plain, I may shade it up a bit yet.



below is a scale shot next to Erik, so you can see how small these guts really are. I hope the Gesith are a bit larger!

Wooo! That is a HUGE difference. I know that Eirik is supposed to be large, but goddamn...!

I think consistency of scale is something that needs some improvement. Comparing Penda on horse to the Duguth he is going to lead into battle, the difference is quite striking.

Yeah, Penda has the same size difference. Still not sure about it myself. Hopefully they will look ok together on the battlefield

How do Duguth compare to Drune axemen and bowmen? Anyone have a pic of them together?

Ask and you shall receive

Cheers Andy. Not too small then. But more realistically proportioned!

Drunes are slightly bigger but only in an Arnie versus normal human kinda way. Kraan, Eiric and Penda, however, are like Xerxes from 300

Yeah, one touched by his god, one part wolf and the other just bloody huge!

Regarding scale it's something we keep a very close eye on.

We have different categories for humans

'regular guy/gal' these are between 28-32mm to the eye - 30mm to the eye (when stood up, crouched etc will differ) is, to us a six footer (yes we know people were smaller than, doesn't matter it's all relative a taller person is taller) so a warchief for example would be 30-32mm to his eyes - these would be big lads! The Albainn and Brythoniad humans are much the same - these are all 'normal' humans. Men, of course are usually taller than women, though that doesn't mean that all men are taller than all women!

'super-human blokes' for want of a better phrase off the top 'o' me head. The Fomoraic humans are largely imbued with power from Baalor - Kraan is a good example, he's a massive warlord but Maagan and Tundaar are all head and shoulders above normal people. . Carrowek is a Drune Warlord (and see below, the Drunes are big anyway) with a questionable birth history......... ;0) Eirik is just freakishly large, we figure that you get one of these man-giants in a generation (think of freakishly tall basketball players like these guys http://www.businessinsider.com/really-t ... rs-2011-11 ) and he would naturally be an able warrior and leader of men. Penda, of course is a werewolf - look at the size of Cearl in the pic above, that's a full on Waelwulf - later you will see (smaller) Werewulfs. Penda is between a man and a Werewulf. So he's bigger and much more powerful as a result. Erebius, will also be taller than a normal Joe (he has a daemon inside him!)

Bulk-wise Drunes are much bigger than a regular guy. The way we see it the Duguth are just normal blokes that you would walk past in the street, an average Drune warrior is someone you would walk past at a Mr Universe gathering, they're still human but maybe they've 'had some help'. Andy has it right with the Conan comment - they're big lads!

Hope that helps with regards to the scale - at the mo it looks slightly skewiff because perversely we have more big guys than little guys (mainly because we started working mainly on Ysians and Fomoraic and we have loads of monstrous infantry too) - though with the new characters coming through and new units planned (Gesith, Legionaires) and hopefully some to soon be funded (such as the Teulu) the pendulum will swing back so the big guys look big rather than average! Though the Gesith will be a bit bigger than Duguth - they're the elite!

I guess that working with a lot of different sculptors can't make the scale very easy, either, which is understandable.

Well scale in terms of height is easy enough as we have steel rulers in all the early WiPs.

Scale in terms of bulk is more difficult - though where possible we assign certain sculptors to certain ranges/races. For example Juan and Olivier both sculpt very fine in an almost true-scale (apart from weapons we often boost them up a little) so we assign them to the 'real world' humans such as the Anglcynn, Brtythonniad, Albainn humans. Stephane Simon is great at 'exageratting the mass' he loves his big, hulking dudes so we usually assign him to the Drunes as a rule (Leofwen aside though she was something of a rescue effort and turned out great) he is also ideal for your big, bearded blokes like Gesith and Holumen.

We also always send sculptors reference minis to work from and also we always send a sculptor a copy of evey mini they sculpt for us so they have a reference of their own back catalogue (plus it's a nice thing to do and they can take them to shows etc)


Now we're trying 3d it makes sense to use 3d for the snake sculpts - all those scales and underbellies are ideal for this method. Plus I think I made Stephane slightly insane from all those scales he had to sculpt individually by hand! :0P


Before we assign a sculpt we always look at a sculptor's style and versatility. I would say our 'hit ratio' is excellent, especially when you take into account that we have humans and 'humans plus' in Darklands.

This was interesting

Interesting to hear the sculpt decisions and the scale ideas. It does make sense in many ways!
Andy, some spectacular painting! Why is it that mierce minis all seem to be painted by very talented people? Never heavy handed poor eye sighted souls like myself!??

Mierce minis are of a quality where they make even basic paint Jobs look great. That said, there are some fantastic painters on here. Andy S being one of them

Well I've been gradually making progress on the command trio for these guys. I'm actually surprised that I haven't posted anything on them before! maybe because its basically just more of the same.
One thing I will say is regarding the Reaper paints. They have NO rub resistance. The paint comes off of raised areas very badly when touched. Making painting a bit of a pain for ham-fisted folk like me!

Here are some pics anyway!






They're starting to come together now, with the bases and shields started.

More soon!

Looking great. Can't wait to see the full unit lined up.

Man.....you want another 5 warriors done???......

Well I meant a five man unit including the three command figures, but if you're offering

Good color scheme with nice contrast. Looking forward to see more!

I'm torn between ploughing on with the other 5 and painting Penda. Or maybe Bloodmaw? Something big!

I'd be interested in seeing what you do with Bloodmaw. Hrudinn not taking your fancy yet?

not really Andy. I prefer the ground based models.

Could you do a quick tutorial on your basing? I don't know why but I think they are amazing !

Yeah. When I next do some bases I'll do that.

Just one pic of the champion's shield today.



Base half done.

bloody mould line on the sword crossguard dammit!

Always trust a photo to highlight a fault