"Guardian of a Glittering Prize" - Vault Warden

...The towering Vault Warden is very likely 

to tear you limb from limb, 

and the chances of you killing 

this horned beast are almost nil. 

But this Abomination has access to secret vaults, 

and it often finds priceless weapons in them...

-Zombicide

Hello one and all, and welcome back to another Friday on The Art of Caesura!

I hope you all had a great Canada Day yesterday, and are still drunk on maple syrup!

Last week we looked at one of Zombicide: Green Horde's dreaded necromancers, and this week we're peering into the gloom to see one of the game's scariest enemies: The Vault Warden.

In this game, when drawing a card to bring new enemies on to the board, there is always a chance that you might bring in an Abomination. These enemies are absolutely brutal. Not only can they kill your guys with one hit (ignoring armour!) but the normal weapons that you start with can't even hurt these monsters! Better hope your aim with the trebuchet is good...

The base game comes with one of them, but loads of the Kickstarter exclusives were different flavours of abomination that you can sub in to make things more interesting. The Abominabunny that I previously painted, and today's feature - The Vault Warden - are two such exclusives. 

The Vault Warden is probably the "kindest" of the Abominations because, while he follows the universal rules for Abominations, he also has a special rule: when you kill him you get a vault weapon - one of 10 or so best weapons in the game!

I fell in love with this model when I first clapped eyes on him on the Kickstarter page. I would even say that he is probably my favorite enemy model in Zombicide: Green Horde! He's just got such a great, creepy hunched Minotaur posture, with a weird skeletal head and hulking muscles. I'm not totally in love with the Zombicide aesthetic for the larger monsters, where they have big huge upper bodies and teeny tiny lower bodies - like they've skipped A LOT of leg days - but for some reason it doesn't bother me quite as much on this guy. 

I like that he has a nice mix of textures - the fur, skin, cloth and small areas of metal. And I also like that he is not overloaded with detail. 

While these minis come pre-assembled, I still like to clean them up a bit - scraping mold lines and filling gaps, you can see the little bit of re-sculpting of his left forearm fur I did with milliput above to cover a larger gap in his elbow joint. Fur is the easiest thing to sculpt, don't be afraid to give it a try if you've never done it before. 

So, on to the painting! I imagined being one of the survivors in the game, stumbling through a dark corridor in search of powerful weapons to fight back against the zombie orc horde, when slowly a huge dark figure rises before you, back-lit by a shaft of light piercing the gloom from the collapsed ceiling above. 

It brought to mind this guy from the Vermintide II expansion:

Although I didn't attempt any kind of OSL on this model (though, man, wouldn't the ol' blue moon-light from behind, red firelight from the front look amazing on this model!?), I still wanted to capture that sense of atmosphere through the muted, desaturated colour palette for much of the model. 

From a 2:1 Steel Legion Drab : Abaddon Black undercoat with a Nuln Oil shade, I built the skin up with multiple thin layers of Steel Legion Drab then adding a bit of Ushabti Bone.

His horns, claws and hooves began as Ushabti Bone shaded with Agrax Earthshade and Nuln Oil. For his horns especially, I got into some kind of zen state and spent a happy half an hour or so building up the thinnest of layers to bring out the texture of his horns. Was it necessary? Absolutely not! Was it fun? You bet!

For his fur, after the all-over Nuln Oil wash for his skin, I covered the fur areas with Contrast Black Templar. Once this was dry, I gently dry brushed with several layers of Abaddon Black + White Scar with more and more White Scar added. I painted on the lightest layer (rather than dry brushing) for more precision. This neutral grey contrasts the brown skin, and against the bright red loincloth it feels quite cool. 

In terms of composition, I know I should have painted the loincloth a dark off-black or dirty neutral beige or almost any colour other than red so as not to draw too much attention away from his face, but...well...I wanted to do it red! And so: Mephiston Red -> Carroberg Crimson -> Mephiston Red + Evil Sunz Scarlet -> a bit of Troll Slayer added in. 

I painted his eyes at the same time and even accomplished a subtle glow effect. 

I finished him off with a bit of Blood for the Blood God on the offal coming out of his mouth and a few errant drips on his left hand.

And there you have him! Over the course of each game the Vault Warden seems to pop up at some point. It's nice to have this forboding miniature to plop on the table! See you next week for more on The Art of Caesura!

Watching: The Last Kingdom - Season 4

Reading: Death Masks (Dresden Files Book 5) - Jim Butcher

Next Week:

Bad fatties...