Episode 1: The Gang Paints pre-Slotta Slann

1980S Slann and Meier Troglodyte

I was talking to the owners of our local gamestore, Dice Saloon, earlier in the week about how excited I was that I had won 4 Slann on ebay - I felt that hit of nostalgic joy that only old lead can bring.
Axel very kindly gave me 5 pre-slotta Slann from his own collection to tide me over while the Ebay wins arrived.

The paint was a little difficult to shift due to its advanced age and I was concerned about scrubbing the soft lead too hard and obscuring any detail. After a trip to the Dettol bath I decided to start with the guys armed with blow-pipes and paint them as Venom Tribe - +1 Missile Elites.

To prep the minis I primed them with black, grey and white primer. The black was sprayed from underneath, the grey centrally and the white at an angle from the top giving a Zenithal effect that really helps to add additional volume to the shading of the mini and also gives a good guide to light source while you are painting.  You'll notice that the full group contains a Slaver and two Palace Guards - I'll get to them later.

Zenithal Prime

For the Venom tribe I wanted to use a suitably vivid and dangerous looking shade, akin to the Poison Dart Frog. After all, their main weapon is a poison dart.

Am I an Alien or a Frog?

While I was painting the Slann the weirdest thing happened - I had to go scrabbling around my bits boxes to find some 25mm square bases to attach the pre-slottas to and I found a Tom Meier Troglodyte in the bottom of one of my trays. If you haven't seen them, they are fantastic sculpts that really hold up despite their age. Tom also did a range of Lizardmen and both races feature as vassal troops in the 3rd Edition Slann army.

Lurking at the bottom of a bitz box

He was sitting in the bottom of the box next to an old resin scenery piece from Figone and given the Temple themes of Lustria I thought that I shouldn't separate the two.

I'm pretty pleased with the results below, especially given the rarity and cost of the models it isn't really possible to do test schemes as I would normally. The basing is crackle paste and a few bits of etched brass I had spare - I think I'll have to add some jungle foliage to my shopping list now to carry on the theme.