From TeemuL: The Last Ducks and Orcs (50 points)

My last post of the Challenge has elements of two of my favourite fantasy worlds, Glorantha and Middle-Earth. First Glorantha and heroic ducks. I recently painted first five of them here: Ducks from 2022. And now was the time to paint the rest and claim one more squirrel!

They being fantasy ducks and not real I was able to use varied colours - one of them is blue, another one is green, one yellow and light and dark grey pair to finish them off. I tried to again use a limited palette to tie them together, look unified, but not uniformed. So lots of greys, greens and browns, followed by wash and gentle drybrush. It is a miracle indeed how many colours you can shade with Reikland Fleshshade and drybrush with Caucasian Flesh and the end result is great! I give you hint, basically anything but blue and green on these ducks...

For those of you don't know, ducks from Glorantha are barbarians and live side by side with other barbarians following their Storm God called Orlanth. Ducks don't take criticism well, especially if it is targeted towards their height, size or skills with weapons. They are short tempered, I wonder if Donald Duck is related to them...

Times like these, Challenge coming to end, skull duel almost tied, every skull counting, it would be tempting to paint free hand skulls everywhere, for example on the shields of these ducks. But skull is not a symbol widely used in Glorantha, so one of them got a storm rune and other one got a luck rune. Whirling storm rune is also the mark of Orlanth. They are smallish minis, 20mm in height, but in 28mm scale and previously counted as 28mm so it would be 5 points per mini and total of 25 points and a "Glorantha Duck" squirrel.

<Enter some quack jokes here>

And lets move on. Here are five more Uruk-hais for my army. You might remember my earlier entry where I said these were surprisingly easy and fast to paint. So I primed five more and they were still easy and fast to paint. I need to remember that, because I have quite a lot of them waiting for paint.

The recipe is the same and since there are dozens of entries on the final hours, I'll save you from long rants. 5 minis for 25 points, no squirrels or skulls. 50 points total. Thank you and "See You In December!"

From Millsy:

One of my favourite aspects of Gloranthan lore is the quirkiness of it and the ducks are the epitome of that quirkiness. I would never have though to use such bright colours on them as you've done mate but it really works.

Lovely work Teemu and another 50 Lunars added to your tally.

PS. I tried to think of a duck joke that would quack you up but couldn't manage it.

Cheers,

Millsy

From TeemuL: Hero Ducks with Runes on a Quest [Glorantha] (45 points)

Quickly leaving Klendathu and arriving in to the more peaceful Glorantha to find some heroes and here they are, a bunch of ducks! In fact they might not be much less hostile than those Genestealers, but at leasts they are smaller and some of them know how to behave.

Ducks are rather unique fantasy world race, there are not many bird people in the main fantasy worlds, but they do exist in Glorantha. Most of them are outcasts, thieves, bandits and rogues, some of them create small clans and behave like human clans near Dragon Pass in Sartar, southern part of Genertela continent in the world of Glorantha. They usually worship Orlanth pantheon (like these ducks, some of them even have the Storm rune on their shields) and get along with the other righteous barbarians on the area fighting against the invading Lunar Empire and their false gods. These ducks follow Orlanth the Storm God, others might follow his companions, like Humakt the God of Death or Urox, the Chaos fighting Storm Bull, or perhaps the Lhankor Mhy the Knowing God.

Glorantha is the rich and detailed world, where the RPGs RuneQuest, HeroWars and HeroQuest take place as well as some others probably and the great computer game King of Dragon Pass. I like the world a lot and surprisingly have bought these duck miniatures years ago just because I love the world even though I haven't played the RPGs on this millenia.These miniatures are from Mongoose Publishing (Duck Adventurers), they are made of metal and are in 28mm scale, so about 20mm tall.

Wears robes, has a stuff and a skull, a magic user perhaps?

I tried to keep my palette limited to get unified feeling

All these have painted eyes, it felt pretty easy this time!

There are 10 ducks in the box, here is the first half. The second half might came later in this Challenge or not. Anyway, since these are smaller ones, they score only 4 points a piece, so 20 points in total (not enough for squirrel). May be I have something planned - or not. I have painted these in traditional way (as I like to paint my older minis), basecoat, wash and drybrush. The exception is the feathered parts, which are basically watered wash or Contrast over white undercoat. Simple, but works. And as you can see, I have painted them in few different colors to make them even more different.

Rune of Storm or Air

So these ducks are from Glorantha, so they should be suitable for this planet. Just to make it sure I painted those two storm runes there to meet the Rune requirement. They might not be super heroes, but they are adventurers and they are usually called heroes in the RPGs (at least in the good old days). And they most likely are on a quest, since that's what people (ducks included) do in Glorantha - they are HeroQuesting, travelling to the other dimension to re-enact the actions of gods in order to gain knowledge, power, treasuers or nothing, if they fail and gods are not pleased. All this should be enough for the Glorantha planet, and since this is the fourth one on the Outer Ring, I'll dive (pun intended) on to the oceanic Perelandra planet on the Middle Ring.

Right between the eyes

So, 4 20mm ducks for 20 points and 20 points for the Glorantha planet for 40 points. And one skull!

My journey so far...

From Millsy

Runequest ducks are awesome in so many ways. They are so very iconic of Glorantha and the weirdness it has packed into it. Lovely brushwork on each and every one of these mate, but I think my favourite is the chap with the Storm rune on his shield.

Despite their small stature these are 28mm scale so I have scored them accordingly. Keep the Gloranthan stuff coming Teemu!