"Mudmen Are Formed In Pools Of Mud..."

"...Where enchanted rivers collect and evaporate and concentrate the dweomer."

These ten 15mm scale metal miniatures of some Lesser Earth Elementals are produced by “Alternative Armies” and can be bought either separately as blister HOT88 Lesser Elementals or as part of the company's pre-made twenty-four point strong HOTT1017 Elemental Army pack. The diminutive sculpts count as a Horde for "Hordes Of The Things", with five figures sitting quite snuggly upon a 40mm x 30mm base.

To begin with, each model was super-glued upon a wooden baton to help my brush-tip better reach all their details, and were primed in two coats of "Vallejo" Heavy Sienna. The Mudmen were then washed in "The Army Painter" Strong Tone Quickshade, before being dry-brushed with (more) "Vallejo" Heavy Sienna.

"Because they are creatures of magic, mudmen are sometimes called dweomerlings."

I did consider subsequently applying a lighter tone to the diminutive figures so as to highlight each sculpt's smooth details a little bit more, perhaps by giving them all a fleeting touch of "Vallejo" Heavy Brown. But I soon realised that I had a bigger problem to solve first because the Strong Tone Quickshade seemed to have acted like paint stripper on all the Lesser Elementals and disconcertingly disintegrated their base layers down to the bare metal.

As a result I had to reapply two more coats of "Vallejo" Heavy Sienna to all of the miniatures and reapply the "The Army Painter" Strong Tone Quickshade once again. This time whatever chemical reaction had occurred before failed to materialise, so I swiftly gave them a (second) dry-brush of "Vallejo" Heavy Sienna and thought it best to leave the brutes well enough alone...

"The Power Of Kroll" WIPs - A Swampie Warrior, Rohm-Dutt and Ranquin

I therefore simply 'snapped' all of the Mudmen off of their painting sticks, and super-glued them onto some pre-cut plastic bases I bought off "eBay". Admittedly, "Alternative Armies" do supply the necessary bases for the figures as part of their HOTT Army packs. However, the resin stands are a bit chunky for my liking, and I was keen to maintain the aesthetic established by my previously painted "De Bellis Antiquitatis" forces.

Finally, having recently watched several viewings of the 1978 "Doctor Who" adventure "The Power Of Kroll", I have assembled and based my collection of Swampie Warriors by "Black Tree Design". This is by far my favourite of the "Key To Time" stories, so I was rather pleased to discover I also own figures of the Swampie Leader, Ranquin, and the traitorous gun-runner Rohm-Dutt too.