Painting Massive Darkness 2: Monks and Necromancers

I am still working my way through the heroes of Massive Darkness 2. Previously, we looked at the base set heroes and then the druids, bards, and tinkerers. Today we are looking at the four heroes from the Monks & Necromancers vs Paragon expansion. 

Riya (front)

Riya (back)

This set contains a lot of interesting sculpts, and Riya is a great place to start. I like how there is a lot of motion around her despite it looking like she is still. I think that's really what you want in monk. Unfortunately, this figure had some pretty bad mold lines, and the face was hard to clean. I think the paint mostly covers it up, but there's something a bit eerie about her lips--not just the cyan color.

The card art is shown from the front, of course, so I had to make a creative choice about the back of the figure. I was actually on the phone with my mother when my eyes caught the front of the box for this expansion, and I saw that there, she was shown from the back. It quite distracted me from what were were discussing! The illustrator had different colors than I do for the back, but I am content with my choice to echo on her outfit the maroon tassels from her head.

Harin (front)

Harin (back)

Harin's pose is also very cool. Of course the plastic of his cape is holding him up, but the sculpt sells the illusion that he is floating. Also, once again here there is a sort of stillness in his pose and yet an action in his clothing. Maybe I'm imagining things, being an old Dragon Clan player. 

With the two monks out of the way, we move on to the Necromancers, starting with the one who took much longer than her compatriot.

Ygraine (front)

Ygraine (back)

I remember when Ygraine was revealed during the Kickstarter campaign. I was not impressed with the direction things were going. I would have liked more emphasis on classic fantasy tropes early in the campaign. Having the miniature in hand, though, is a different matter. This is a really wild sculpt. Like with Harin, we get the illusion of flight through that strange fox/dragon/stole she is wearing. The hat is just plain bonkers: she's basically wearing a peacock. 

I feel like the fox/dragon/stole should be a focus of this piece, but I worked with it for an over an hour and just couldn't get it to be very interesting. At some point, I simply had enough of it. Putting a face on it did help a lot, though, as did just getting some paint on the pieces around it.

I ended up busting out the wet palette for this figure, but I'm still struggling to get the right amount of thinning and the right amount of paint on the palette. Fortunately, the hat was happy to take basically any mix of green, blue, and yellow.

Mortemyr (front)

Mortemyr (back)

Finally, here's Mortemyr, who is really tame in comparison to the rest of the figures in this box. He was straightforward to paint, and I think he looks pretty good. The stitching on his satchel is sculpted in, and I think hitting those little details give this some class.

Here's a party shot of everybody in the box:

Monks & Necromancers

Next up for me will be Kickstarter exclusive figures from the Darkbringer pack. I have some on my painting table already. Thanks for reading!