Norse Undead: Draugr by Ragnarok Miniatures

Seeing as it’s the festive season, it’s probably time for the pics of the Draugr from Ragnarok Miniatures. I’ve never been a massive fan of undead but the current crop of outstanding miniatures has been slowly crumbling my resolve; the rather wonderful Oathmark Revenants, alongside skeletons from Reaper, Oathmark and Wargames Atlantic have all found their way onto my painting table in recent years.

These ten minis are the Draugr Hearthguard in tattered robes, led by a Draugr Lieutenant and a Necromancer Warlord. Coincidentally, one of the sample force lists that I’ve written for Midgard Heroic Battles is an undead horde under to command of a necromancer by the name of Ulric Deathwhisperer, and I’m wondering whether this is the mini for the job.

These are chunky 28mm sculpts from Colin Patten and very compatible with most of GB’s other ranges. After painting a fair bit of plastic and resin recently, it was fun feeling the heft of a metal mini again. The castings I received were very clean and required only minimal clean up, quickly pushing their way to the front of the painting queue! Plastic bases for Saga and cast metal weapons are provided, though I used Northstar wire spears alongside the metal swords and axes.

I hemmed and hawed about whether to go with GW Contrast Paints on these (requiring a white undercoat or black with white dry brushing) or traditional acrylics over black. Eventually I went with the latter, but then spent some time being slightly unsure of what I was after. Colin Patten’s painted examples are incredibly good but I wanted something with a little more colour. However, my first attempt probably had too much bronze and blue.

After taking some advice from chums on social media, I revised the bronze armour idea (which doesn’t really work as they’re meant to be Viking age) and went for a lighter skin tone. 

Having used a dry brush of Army Painter Gunmetal as the basic armour layer on all the models, I tidied up the undercoat and then used a base layer of white acrylic on all the skin. When dry, I used some GW Contrast Paints to pick out the skin, followed by a thinnned-down highlight of acrylic white. This gave me a stronger contrast between skin and clothing. I cut down on the blue clothing of the test mini and went with black, grey, blue-grey and off-white instead.

Several folk recommended Kev Dallimore’s guide to painting the Oathmark Revenants, which in turn sent me hunting for green ink in the painting cupboard.

I found dug out some elderly bottles of ink: Oldhammer fans will recognise the venerable example on the left and I suspect the right hand one dates back to my student days. Both were still perfectly serviceable!

Some thinned-down washes of the green ink really did the trick, tying the models together and giving an unnatural tinge to proceedings. I also weathered the armour with a little brown ink to suggest rust and age.

Shields received some Celtic-inspired spirals painted in light grey and then highlighted in white. It’ll sound crazy to some of you, but I really enjoy hand painting shield designs – it’s challenging at the start of a session, but once I get into it, I find it very therapeutic. 

The eye sockets were shaded in black before I dotted in the eyeball with a light blue and a final highlight of white for that ‘restless undead’ look. After a coast of matt varnish, I added a few extra highlights and then based them up in a fairly neutral scheme that should work both on grass and snow mats for gaming.

After the initial prevarication, I’m pretty pleased with these and am sorely tempted to knock up an undead horde! One for 2024 maybe? Season’s greetings to you all!