Calden Keep: Resurrected Goliath

A twisted giant of metal and bone and death and hate, the Resurrected Goliath strides through the ruins of Calden Keep in search of more victims to feed its strength.

Part of my Christmas pressies from Alicia was a large order of Calden Keep minis from Etsy, as the store I get them from was for some reason ceasing to sell Bestarium prints. So I jumped online and slapped about $60 worth of figures into my cart. Upon opening the box on Christmas Day, I discovered the seller had thrown in a bunch of free figures, including the Resurrected Goliath, a mini that would have cost me around $15 if I'd bought it separately. Awesome.

The Goliath is from the second set of Calden Keep figures and is one of the largest, clocking in at about four inches tall. It's such a superbly creepy sculpt that really slams home the horror of Calden Keep. It is missing a ball-and-chain that should be hanging from its right hand, but as this is a freebie I can't complain.

I kicked off by gluing it to a 60mm base and spraying the whole model with grey primer. I wanted to follow the same quite basic scheme I'd used on the Lordsguard, metals and reds, but without the rust effect wash. Leaving the skulls and cloth bare grey, the armour was painted with Iron Warriors and given a wash with thinned Nuln Oil. 

Once the wash dried, I plastered it with thinned Agrax Earthshade and Serpahim Sepia to add a few more tones to the iron armour, and then gave it a drybrush with some Leadbelcher and Plate Metal. I thought these looked a bit too bright, so I daubed on more washes until they were duller but still visible as highlights.

I wanted to pick out some areas of the armour so it wasn't just one shade, so I painted the padlocks Bronze and gave them each a couple of coats of Seraphim Sepia.

The Goliath's whopping weapon went through three schemes before I was happy with it. Originally it was the same colours as the armour, but I thought it just made the whole model look like a mass of iron. The second scheme was Incubi Darkness highlighted with some Emerald Green, like I did for the Tomb Tapper, but I thought it didn't suit the overall look.

Finally I decided to go back to metallics, so I repainted the whole weapon Chocolate Brown and plastered on some Nuln Oil and Agrax Earthshade before giving it a gentle drybrush of Bronze. Some Seraphim Sepia to tone down the shininess and I was finally happy with it.

The leather straps were painted with more Chocolate Brown and shaded with Agrax Earthshade, and then highlighted with some Mahogany Brown.

The cloth was basecoated with Black Red and then washed with more Nuln Oil to mute it a bit and deepen the shadows. I'd usually switch to Burnt Red for the first layers of highlighting, but instead I jumped straight to Red as I thought the cloth looked dark enough. I didn't take too many layers until I got the shade I wanted, and then the whole model got a coat of matte varnish to protect the painted parts.

The final portion to be painted was the pile of skulls. After a basecoat of Chocolate Brown, I gave them a decent coat of Aged Bone and a couple of washes with Agrax Earthshade to bring out the shadows. They were highlighted with Bonewhite and a touch of Ivory before being washed again with thinned Seraphim Sepia to add an aged look.

After that it was just a case of touching up the reds and metallics where I'd gone over the lines.

The base was covered in the same cheap Crayola modelling putty that I used for snow on the model of our house. Considering it's made for kids to play with and costs all of a dollar a pack, it's among the best value for money basing material out there. I used a sculpting tool (part of a set Alicia got me for Christmas, bless her) to get the lumps and bumps the way I wanted, and then I stuck a gravestone, sword and a couple of stones from the drive into the putty and left it overnight to dry.

After a coat of thinned matte Mod Podge to seal the putty, I painted it Dryad Bark and then slathered on plenty of Stirland Battlemire to get a nice muddy look. After applying flock and a few tufts I drybrushed the mud with some Balor Brown. The gravestone was given a pretty basic scheme of Neutral Grey, Nuln Oil and Ghost Grey, and the broken sword some Iron Warriors and rust wash. I used Atholian Camoshade to tint the stones and he was finished.

More Calden Keep minis to come, including another huge monster, so stay tuned!