Winged Beasties – Reaper Bones Temple Dragon & Bats

On a whim, I recently bought some Reaper Bones miniatures from Mighty Lancer Games.

Reaper Bones minis, if you’re not familiar with them, are made from a semi-flexible plastic that feels similar to the Siocast used by Warlord Games and other companies. They have their limitations (human-sized models often have very flexible weapons; mould lines are hard to remove entirely) but they are unbeatable for big beasties.

The Frost Giants used in last year’s Rainbow Bridge game at Salute & Partizan are from Reaper Bones; they cost an absolute fraction of a metal or resin miniature of similar size, and are much less likely to damage in play or transport. My first encounter with Reaper Bones was actually via Mighty Lancer during a wargames show ten years ago, but they also offer a very efficient mail order service too – great folk to deal with if you’re in the UK.

Having given the models a wash (the Temple Dragon (77503) comes in an impressive six pieces), I took a new scalpel blade to remove the few mould lines as best I could. The Dragon was then assembled with superglue and gaps filled with some Milliput.

The Reaper Bones packaging proclaims that no primer is needed, and they market their own range of paints specifically for these miniatures, warning that regular spray primers may react badly with the plastic. While I’m sure that the former works, I haven’t painted a mini without primer since I was ten, so I prefer to use one.

All the models got a couple of light coats of Halfords Grey Plastic Primer followed by some Halfords White Primer for the Temple Dragon and Halfords Matt Black for the bats.

The Temple Dragon then got a base coat of thinned down GW Contrast paint Skeleton Horde to bring out the detail. I still hadn’t fully decided on a colour scheme at this point but was verging towards green with a yellow-white underbelly.

The green then went on in layers, mostly being GW Contrast Creed Camo. I thinned this at various points with Contrast Medium and added additional layers with Contrast Dark Angels Green and some Army Painter Grim Black Speedpaint mixed in. I’d be lying if I said there was a plan to all this, it was just a case of adding darker areas until it looked right!

Finally I picked out the claws, eyes and teeth using traditional acrylics, as well as adding some light highlights to raised areas.

With this done, the model received two coats of matt varnish (I’m using my last of my stash of Testor’s Dullcote at the moment but will be moving on to Winsor & Newton when that runs out),

The whole thing went on a 60mm Warbases MDF base and then off for a photo session with the Jon Hodgson Backdrops book.

The Bats were a Werebat (77448) and Giant Bats (07058) for general flying beastie duties. These were a very simple paint job (so simple I forgot to photograph any of the stages!), consisting of layers/ dry brushes of grey on top of the black undercoat, then picking out teeth, eyes and claws for contrast.

After two light coats of matt varnish, the models went onto 2p coins (26mm diameter) which add a nice bit of weight to the minis.

I suspect that the Werebat might serve as one of Morgoth’s servants in the Silmarillion, whereas the giant bats will probably find themselves accompanying the evil forces in the Battle of Five Armies.

Anyway, these were a pleasure to paint, and come highly recommended!